This book is about people, all kinds of people, good and bad, rich and poor, black and white. Each and every one is different, but they all share the same traits. This book is to help you identify the traits and hopefully understand others as well. When you can understand other people, you will be able to understand yourself and vice versa. This is a social world and we must interact with people we come into contact with. How well this interaction takes place depends upon our ability to read people.
Hopefully when you have read and digested this book, your interactions with people will be better. There are a couple of realities that we need to be aware of. The first is that no matter how bad a person is, there is some good in them, and no matter how good a person is, there is some bad in them. The other thing to remember, especially with friends and relatives, is we must accept them as they are, not the way we want them to be. We do not have to accept what they do, but we need to accept them.
This book will not only show you how to read people, it will help you have smoother relations with everyone. There are ways to become a more likeable person, and if you really begin to know yourself and what you are all about, you will wind up liking yourself better, which will lead to a happier life. People are fascinating creatures and become even more so when you see through them.
Excerpt:
The Answer and the Quest
Our happiness, our life, our fate, and even our fortune is dependent upon our relations with other people and our personal interaction with them. This is all contingent upon knowing and controlling our own nature and being able to “read” other people to the extent that we have an insight into their thinking and their motives involving other people and ourselves. We are all mirrors of others. We can see ourselves in other people and vice versa. Our motives and the motives of others have one thing in common: The very simple but true motive for all is that we are motivated to do what makes us feel good.
If we are in a situation where feeling good is not our primary motive, then we do what is in our best interest. Example: If we are in a life-or-death situation of which feeling good is not an issue, then we do what is in our best interest, which is basically doing what makes us feel good. This is a given. Next comes the big question, why does what we do make us feel good? What makes you feel good and why? We probably can’t answer that question for others, and we may not even be able to answer that question for ourselves.
Our conscious mind is only 10% or even less. We use the conscious mind to study and learn new movements. It also governs our movement and willful thought. The subconscious stores away all we have ever learned or experienced, good and bad; this allows us to do things automatically without thinking. It controls the beating our heart and all bodily functions. It is an all-important force that makes us great or makes us amount to nothing. Our subconscious is where the answer lies as to why things make us feel good. You can plummet the depths of your subconscious, maybe, but you cannot go down into the subconscious mind of others.
The good news is that when you are able to get into your subconscious mind, then you will finally find out that a lot of what makes you feel good, also makes the other person feel good. Take a look at a traumatic incident in your life and relive it frame by frame as in a motion picture, and see how each frame makes you feel and what impression it made on your mind. This can be difficult because the pain, guilt, and regret that lies buried in your subconscious will now surface, but you will understand or realize why it makes something feel good in your mind, even if it’s nothing but avoiding what’s down there in your subconscious.
We rarely refer to the Bible, but in this case it makes a perfect illustration of the subconscious. James 3:6 states, “the tongue is a flame of fire . . . it can set your whole life on fire . . . it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” This is a true statement, but one vital thing has been left out. A fire needs fuel. If someone speaks with anger or hatred or lies, belittles or insults others, then the fuel comes from their subconscious.
This is basic and just the beginning in the quest to see through others and know yourself.
