Member Stories

February 20, 2014

This story was contributed by Eben Haezer!

I remember the days before I read this book. I always thought that I was the smartest guy on earth. Nobody can tell my mistake and they should be in awe of my brilliance. When I was a kid, I used to think that I was the smartest boy on earth. When I talked to other kids, one of the first things I asked was whether they got first rank on their class. That attitude was carried until I came to university. Although somewhat more tempered, I tried in every chance to show off my intelligence through what I now call "humble brag", the act of subtly bragging. Got accepted to a school club's VP of Finance? Humble brag. Just read something on the paper? Humble brag. Go to networking event? Humble .... brag. It is no wonder that I find myself very hard to keep in touch with people I meet. By the end of second year in university I have piles and piles of cards from school networking events. But none of them are worthy to follow up because I don't know any speck about them. Now it was obvious, because all I did was trying to mesmerizing someone.

Enter “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. The title might sounds deceptive, but the content is anything but. The book teaches one of the best lessons that I hold dear to this day: you influence people by helping their motivation. Now I almost cannot think of a situation where I don't use this principle, even with things as simple as writing work email. In fact, I made an experiment using this principle when writing to my CEO. The first email contains only instruction: boss please do X. The second email contains some reasonings: boss please do X because Y. The third email though, contains a reasoning that he cares the most. In this case, because he was worried about web conversion - my email became boss please do X because it will increase web conversion. The first email was never replied, second was replied "I will take a look" after a few days, the third one was replied almost right away with thoughtful response. To close, not everything can be solved through Dale Carnegie's methods. Sometime the situation demands speed that no explanation will go through. At other time, the person tries to hide their motivation. But at the end of the day, it is worth noting that seeking someone's motivation should be the default mind set in almost any situation.

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March 10, 2014

This story was contributed by Jalkóczi Miklós Márton! It's not about what he learnt from reading books, but it's still very interesting to read. These are real photos taken from the trip.

In 2007, my father and I decided to do a nearly 800-km-long pilgrimage in Spain. The route is called El Camino which translates into English as “ They Way”. However, approximately 240 000 people complete it each year. We knew it was going to be physically and mentally challenging. That is why, we had trained a lot prior to commencing the pilgrimage. The training involved walking long distances, walking on the hot surface of the road barefoot to get calluses that would prevent blisters. And most importantly, we did not save money on buying proper shoes.

The pilgrimage is from Saint Jean Pied du Port, France to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. According to the legend, Saint James, one of Jesus` apostles is buried in the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. The shrine was discovered in the 9th century and since then pilgrims have been coming from all over Europe, and recently from all over the world. Even though I believe in God, I do not consider myself as a religious person, I had no religious motivations to complete this journey on foot.

However, my story does prove that, we humans with a lot of will power, and support from outsiders, we are capable of accomplishing tasks, tackling great challenges. Some people find this source of power in religion. Walking along the Camino is not difficult, however, walking 25-30 kilometres on a daily basis all day, can be challenging.You might expect big words here, but I cannot think of any. I kept this pilgrimage plan as a secret, would not share it with my friends or anyone as I was scared that what if we cannot complete the task? I think, we tend to attribute to much importance of what others might say. Since then, I have become a lot more mature and realized that the only person I had to prove something was I myself.

Now, I think back and smile, when my Godfather laughed at me and my father for attempting to do something, he believed, we could not accomplish. I had troubles with my toenails and my father is a vegetarian, all these features were thought to be disabling when it comes to walking 800 kilometres during the course of 33 days. They were not!

I find it really hard to talk about this life-changing, spiritual experience. I learnt a lot through the pain I felt in my legs, sharing accommodation with hundreds of pilgrims over the same roof and through meeting like-minded people from all over the world. Pilgrims are not tourists, as pilgrims embrace suffering as kind of sacrifice. This experience has nothing to do with monetary success, what many of us are striving to achieve, it is all about a great spiritual journey to get to know ourselves and the nature a little bit better. I gained a lot of confidence and respect from the people. I also started learning Spanish so that one day, if I go back, I could talk to the people in their own language. And I will go back. I am closing with the greeting that only pilgrims use to great each other along the Camino. Buen Camino! It means, “Have a good journey!” After all, we are all pilgrims on the path of our life and wish you best of luck along this amazing journey!

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