THE INTERESTED CHALLENGE!
1. Lesson learned from the reading “Do This And You’ll Be Welcome Anywhere”.
“Talk to someone about themselves and they’ll listen for hours.” -Dale Carnegie
I am feeling so much honored to share the lifelong lessons I have learned from the reading.
To become “You” oriented:
To be honest, I am not a good reader and quick learner. While reading the chapter given in the project activity, I feel amazed and blessed to be reading this amazing piece of work and read it completely. I became astonished to know that as per study conducted by the New York Telephone Company, people used personal pronoun “I” 3,900 times in just 500 telephonic conversations. It reveals the general behavior of all of us that we are all “I” oriented people. This is the first takeaway I got by reading this insightful chapter that we must change our approach towards the people around us from “I” oriented to “You” oriented. This brings the people closer to us, and I am determined to apply this lesson throughout my life, more love for Amal team for making it happen in our lives.
Become genuinely interested in People:
The most important lesson I have learned through this reading to become genuinely interested in people. We can win the attention, time, company and mentorship of even the most sought-after people by becoming genuinely interested in them the same as for people around us to whom we met or interacted daily. The writer shared his experience while he conducted the course in fiction writing at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, their team needed distinguished and well known authors to come and give them the benefit of their experiences. He wrote letters to them, appreciate their work and showed deep interested to get their advice and learning the secrets of their success, later they got benefited by them. Once I was attending a seminar and there I learned about this technique it really worked for me. Just as, if we really needed the guidelines and mentorship from the experts in their fields. We just needed to reach out to them through any possible medium of communication by simply showing them our eagerness and passion to learn from them that we are actually being interested in them. We must show them how interested we are in their work. I always tried to apply this technique in my life after learning it from a seminar and it worked for me every time. I would love to share my own experience while we were working on the training induction & reforms to induct soft skills in the I.T force of the Public Sector Organization (Law and Order) we need the expertise of corporate sector’s distinguished trainers and experts, we applied the same technique and approached the experts. They helped us building a proper mechanism and curriculum of soft skills in the training of force to enhance their soft skills. Being genuinely interested in people can make our critics into long lasting friends and well wishers.
People loved to be remembered:
The writer shared an amazing technique through a story, how we can convert the people into our long lasting friendship by remembering the important days of their life and wished them accordingly, like he used to get information from the people, they cared about. On the specific day he always wished them which created an amazing impact in the life of people around him. Same like we can use the latest social media tools to put a positive impact and sense of being important of us in the lives of people who are connected with us socially and professionally.
2. The lesson I have learned to apply these lessons in real life!
It is an awesome experience, the first time in my life I counted the people I have met in 24 hours for two days. On average I met 54 people in two days. I tried to apply these lessons in my daily routine to meet the people. I started this with my mother and amazingly it brings a great amount of satisfaction in me and through deep conversation with her, I came to know that she is worried about her friend who is suffering from severe fever now a days. I immediately took my mother with me and dropped to the place to attend her friend. I learned the lesson by doing this activity that we must give extra time to our loved ones so we can get to know what is going on their mind and life. After that we can do our best to get closer to our loved ones.
When I reached the office and tried to implement what I need to do as a project task, I asked the same questions from my many office mates and other people to whom I met for the first time, like how they are, what they are working on these days, how about their family, their plans about next weekend, about their goals this year, about the challenges they faced these days in office as well in their home, I am amazed to get their responses it was beyond my expectations and lifelong learning experience. Everyone was astonished about what had happened to me, I am giving time to everyone and listening to their own opinions wholeheartedly. The next day, I observed that everyone was eager and passionate to greet me the good morning.
I am very thankful to Amal for giving me this great opportunity so I can approach people and listen to their heart, one of the senior employees aged 52, record keeper at the office told me about his plans regarding the education (BsCS Hons) from Lahore leads university of his son, the old man is looking for a part time job to meet the expenses of his son’s education. I listened to him and let him to speak his heart out about 45 minutes after he finished, I requested him to let me see his son or may I can talk to him on the phone, after talking to him on the phone, I realized he is much interested in teaching. I assured him, I shall arrange home tuition for him, so there is no need for his father to find another part time job. The lesson which I have learned while doing this activity, by listening to people we may find some better solution of their problems and can be a source of relief for them.
I expressed the feelings to my mentor (former boss) that I am interested to learn from his experience about the topic of mega project on which our team “Screaming Eagles” is going to work on. It really worked for me, he guided me in such a great way so I may be able to give my best to my teamwork and later we can arrange an in-person meeting with him along with my team fellows so we can learn collectively regarding our mega project.
Throughout doing this activity I avoid talking with people about myself, it brings great humbleness in me. This activity made me realize that we must develop the ability to listen to others and talk about them, instead of talking about ourselves so we can better manage the people around us and convert them into the relationship of long lasting friends. This practice can bring peace in our life which I experienced within me in last two days. All credit goes to team Amal for designing such lifelong learning lessons and activities to reshape our lives.
