|
Wuf, with regards to your hesitant approach to studying this subject: I've been paging through How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and without exception everyone who notices the book and talks to me about it thinks it's some sort of nefarious tome that outlines the dark art of mind control. I think this is an understandable reaction-- there's something about certain skills, particularly social skills which are thought to be "natural" or innate that causes alarm bells to go off when they're studied in a systematic way.
The reaction, while understandable, is without warrant. If a thirty year old, having never been on a boat in her life, wanted to learn to sail, no one would find it odd that she pull books on the topic from the library, enroll in classes, etc. However, should this same person have had the misfortune of not being socialized in a way that granted them "innate" charisma, they must be some sort of sociopath on the road to cult leader to approach the topic of persuasion by way of similar resources and with the same diligence.
While the "nerd" archetype has come a long way in gaining acceptance in the mainstream, there's still a weird double standard when it comes to self improvement-- it's acceptable for "jocks" to acquire nerd skill sets, but off putting for "nerds" to do with inverse.
|