One day, Ralph Waldo Emerson and his son tried to get a calf into the barn. But they made the common mistake of thinking only of what they wanted : Emerson pushed and his son pulled. But the calf was doing just what they were doing; he was thinking only of what he wanted; so he stiffened his legs and stubbornly refused to leave the pasture. The Irish housemaid saw their predicament. She couldn't write essays and books; but, on this occasion at least, she had more horse sense, or calf sense, than Emerson had. She thought of what the calf wanted; so she put her maternal finger in the calf's mouth and let the calf suck her finger as she gently led him into the barn.
Every act you have ever performed since the you were born was performed because you wanted something.
Lloyd George, Great Britain's Prime Minister during World War I, when someone asked him how he managed to stay in power after the other wartime leaders - Wilson, Orlando, and Clemencau - had been forgotten, he replied that if his staying on top might be attributed to any one thing, it would be to his having learned that it was necessary to bait the hook to suit the fish.
Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd. Of course, you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you : we are interested in what we want.
So the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.
Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
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