How to Win Friends and Influence People for Teen Girls

Chapter One If you want to gather honey, don't kick over the beehive.--Dale Carnegie Imagine waking up one morning only to discover that every move you made -- from the clothes you picked out to the way you greeted your parents and friends to the questions you answered in class -- was recorded on a giant scoreboard for everyone to see. Although you realize that your score is changing how people see you (just like theirs is changing how you see them), you can't quite figure out which choices are increasing your tally and which aren't. In fact, you're beginning to wonder if your place in the world is decided totally at random. It sounds like some kind of nightmare, right? Unfortunately, it's not. Every day, girls find themselves navigating just such a world: school. There are few times in life that we find ourselves more aware of divisions like being in or out, us or them, cool or hopelessly uncool -- and so constantly reminded of where we fall on the continuum.A recent study looked at students in grades six through ten. Among researchers' findings was that nearly 30 percent of students surveyed had experienced bullying, either as a victim, a perpetrator, or both. As alarmed as I was to hear this statistic, none of the girls we interviewed for this book even appeared surprised -- except to say they would have thought the number was higher. Many of them shared their own experiences, including Julie, age 14: There was a girl in my class named Marie that everyone makes fun of. She's a total perfectionist and always uses the full hour to take a test that the rest of the class finishes in ten minutes. She's obsessed with ballet and all she ever wanted to talk about was her dance classes. Also, it was kind of the way she looked. I tried to be nice to her, but I also participated in teasing her. She laughed at herself and didn't let people know that she was hurt by what they said about her, but her mom told my mom that she cried every day after school. When my mom confronted me about it, I felt terrible. I told her that I tried sticking up for her, but it was hard. You want people to like you and I didn't want to become a target by sticking up for her. I know how horrible that is. I've been teased before, too.... From Julie's story, we see that she falls into the "both" category, experiencing teasing both as a participant and a victim. It seems unbelievable that someone who knows how horrible it feels to be singled out and ridiculed could ever take part in doing it to someone else. But if we look closely at Julie's words, we can see that she isn't really putting herself in Marie's shoes, regardless of her past experience. If Julie were truly empathizing with Marie, she wouldn't be able not to stick up for her. Rather, Julie is responding to her mom's criticism. Dale Carnegie once said, "Criticism is futile. It puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself." Or, in this case, herself.Actually, he felt so strongly about criticism that he always taught the following principle first: Don't criticize, condemn, or complain. It may seem obvious why we shouldn't follow this path when we look at Julie's example. She is indulging in all three big Cs: criticizing Marie, condemning her for her looks and personality, and complaining that she herself can't do anything to help. As tempting as it may be to think that we would never act in such a way, this kind of thinking is, in itself, a form of criticism. We're not here to judge Julie. Dale Carnegie believed the following: "Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain -- it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving." We can, however, learn from her. We all know how rotten it feels to be on the receiving end of an unkind word, but Julie's example also shows us how ugly it can be to know you've hurt someone else. No one wants to see themselvCarnegie, Donna Dale is the author of 'How to Win Friends and Influence People for Teen Girls', published 2005 under ISBN 9780743272773 and ISBN 0743272773.