What you need to become

Who You Are

This is the Gap

What do you want

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Being likable

What can one do to make certain that he is being making progress through life by making himself likable?

How can one tell whether or not he is disliked without going to the embarrassment of asking his friends and associates? What can one do to control his own conduct and attitudes so that he will be better liked?

These are all practical questions of the greatest personal importance.

Likable traits

Watch these traits closely

People in general like accuracy in words, dependability, and the man who will go out of his way to help others.

These broader traits they feel very strongly. The underlying moral code indicated by the nature of these is definitely a good one.

In general we dislike people for one of three reasons.

1. We may dislike them because we are afraid of them. They are sarcastic, or they are likely to make fun of us to our backs.
2. We may dislike them because they deflate our ego. They boss us, they are domineering, they know more than we know, or in some way make us feel smaller.
3. We may dislike them because they do petty things of one kind or another that annoy us.

Now for the more important traits, the ones which definitely make most people like us. In order of their importance, we have given these positive traits a weight that varies from one to three.

Weight of 3.

• Do what you say you will. This trait alone may not make people like you, if you have others in large numbers which offset it, but it is one which you can gamble on. It affects not only your responsibility to your superior, but your relations to practically every person with whom you come in even casual contact. 

• Go out of your way to help others.

• Do not show off your knowledge.  The teacher or parent or executive is apt to be disliked, from the very nature of the tasks he is called upon to perform. Those who want to be liked must try to gain favor by other traits. They must, for instance, possess the two just described above.

• Do not let yourself feel superior to your associates, and be careful lest they get the impression you do.

• Do not reprimand people who do things that displease you.

• Do not exaggerate in your statements. In spite of the commonness of the habit of telling tall stories, this is one of the traits which was found to be most important as a ground for dislike. A chronic habit of overstatement certainly will lose you some friends.

• Do not make fun of others behind their backs. Here is a case in point. I know the general manager of a certain company, a man in some ways very clever in social matters. His company dominates the small town in which it is located. When he came there they almost had the brass band out to welcome him. Six months later he could hardly have found a townsman to give him a lift down the road without a scowl. This man is tremendously capable. What got him into trouble was nothing that he did on the job. It was what he did after office hours. Out on the local nine-hole golf course, in the post-office while waiting for the evening mail, or to entertain guests in his own home, he would tell embarrassingly funny things that had happened to fellow townsmen, or would imitate in hilarious fashion a fellow golfer’s manner of making a shot. Good entertainment –

  • it left everyone feeling a little afraid that “tomorrow he may be making fun of me.”

• Do not be sarcastic This habit probably operates on the mental reactions of others in very much the same way as the habit of making fun of other people.

• Do not be domineering.

This completes the list of the traits to which I have given a value of 3. These alone give us already a pretty fair picture of human likes and dislikes and their reasons.

Weight of 2.

• Keep your clothing neat and tidy. Cleanliness is still next to the greatest virtues. It is liked almost as well as dependability and helpfulness.

• Do not laugh at the mistakes of others. Never laugh at a man because he comes to a social function in a queer costume, or uses the wrong fork at table, or appears on the street with his shirt tail hanging out. Get your laugh from the movies, the vaudeville act, or the pages of Judge or Life. Don’t take it out on other people in real life.

• Do not take a vulgar attitude toward the opposite sex. Although most people do not object to shady stories, they do object by and large to a generally vulgar attitude toward the opposite sex.

• Do not be inclined to find fault with everybody else. Like a good many of the other traits which promote dislike, this one tends to increase a little with age, especially with extreme age. This accentuation of disagreeable traits with advancing age explains why young people think old people are harder to get along with.

• Do not correct the mistakes of others. Don’t try to serve as a grammar or a book of etiquette for your friends. If they want to get criticism, they are perfectly capable of asking for it, or learning their errors from an authoritative book. It doesn’t pay to give gratuitous advice of that kind.

• Do not tell jokes at the expense of those listening. Very similar to, but not the same as the trait of making fun of people behind their backs. 

• Obey. Do not try to have your own way. This is not the same as domineering! If your superior tells you to do such and such a thing in a certain way, don’t insist on going ahead doing it the same old way you always did just out of obstinacy.

• Do not lose your temper.

• Do not take the initiative in argument.

• Smile pleasantly.

• Do not talk continuously. It does not matter whether your voice is high-pitched or low-pitched, rasping or musical, whether you use pet phrases, foreign phrases, or slang. These habits are all neutral in effect, but continuous talking is not.

• Do not pry into other people’s business. Keep your curiosity on tight hold.

Weight of 1:

• Do not ask favors of others.

• Do not be out of patience with modern ideas.

• Do not talk about your personal troubles. You can talk about your health, but do not discuss your other troubles, such as your financial reverses, your family quarrels, or the mean things other people have done to you.

• Do not spread gossip. Gossips are not popular even among their own kind.

• Be cheerful.

• Be enthusiastic, not lethargic.

• Do not mispronounce words. This builds up dislike for one who continually made mistakes in pronunciation

• Do not be suspicious that people are trying to put something over on you.

• Do not be lazy. You can be a high pressure worker or an easy going one without any visible effect on your popularity, but if you are lazy you will be disliked for it. 

• Do not borrow things.

• Do not correct the mistakes of others.

• Do not try to get people to believe as you believe This habit is similar to that of taking the initiative in argument.

• Do not be a political radical, nor religious, nor have any ideological leans

• Do not talk rapidly. Talking continuously has a value of 2, talking rapidly has a value of 1.

Like if you want to be liked

If you dislike many people you probably are in turn disliked by many people. And by the same token if you like many people you are probably liked by many.

Traits that don’t matter:

• You can dress flashily or conservative. It will make no difference to your acquaintances. They will continue to like or dislike you just the same. What does make a difference is whether you keep your clothing neat and tidy.

• It makes no difference in your popularity whether you are always easy-going or always in a hurry. You can be a go-getter, a prodigious worker, or relatively leisurely, calm, and unperturbed. But don’t be lazy. As we shall see later, laziness makes a difference.

• You can discuss your health in detail. It doesn’t matter that much to talk about your pains or good sound health.

• It does not matter whether you watch the pennies closely or not. Tight wads and spendthrifts share equally in friends.

• You can argue on either side of religious questions.

• You can swear only under emotional strain, or swear as habitually as you like.

• You can play practical jokes.

None of these things affects the feelings of other people in general towards you.

Your voice can be musical or rasping. To the average person voices make no difference. It does not matter whether a voice is high pitched or low pitched. But there are some things about the voice that are important, as will be apparent soon.

You can giggle and laugh at everything.

You can use big words. You can use slang. You can talk on intelligent topics. You can have an accent in your speech. You can use foreign phrases. You can indulge a weakness for pet phrases, such as “I should say so.” None of these habits will have any noticeable effect.

You can pause and hem habitually in the midst of conversations, in search of the right word.

You can make puns.

You can pull on the coat lapels of your auditor, or even put your arm around his shoulder.

All these things, in general, may be done with safety.

It may be, however, that the key man on whom your chance for promotion depends is one who, like myself, dislikes people who talk about their personal troubles, or who have rasping voices. If the liking of some one individual is especially important to your happiness or your advancement, it is hardly safe to go by any general rules. That individual’s tastes are worth a special study.