A few days ago, I decided to write my new article about an extremely important issue when it comes to live a happy life. The topic of „How to treat people“ means a lot to me, due to the fact that I have always been struggling with being empathic and making people feel better about themselves. A few months ago I decided to develop this kind of skill and it will still take me years to master this area. If you do not handle this problem you‘ll loose people who are important to you. Additionally, this won‘t just hurt yourself but also the person you lost. Therefore, I read many books and tried to work on myself during the last months, in order to become better at dealing with family, friends but also strangers. I have to admit that I still struggle from time to time, but my results have increased a lot over the past. As you can imagine, I am not an expert and I simply would like to share the things i could learn so far by working on myself at this particular subject. Generally, you should always scrutinize everything you read on the internet and then find out for yourself what works and what doesn‘t. The same goes for this blog. Nevertheless, I suggest taking these tips into consideration and trying things out before evaluating them.

1. The biggest rule when it comes to deal with people in general is in my opinion the fact that everybody wants to feel important and valuable to others. Dale Carnegie talks about this concept in his book „How to win friends and influence people“ which I highly recommend If you would like to improve your interpersonal skills (a book review will come soon on this blog). Whenever someone is offended by your words or actions, it means that you made them feel less important or valuable.

2. Be yourself. In order to cope with people always be yourself and don‘t try to be someone else. But don‘t get me wrong, you should always strive for being your best self. So don‘t use this as an excuse for not improving your character, but as well if you are trying to fake your hobbies, humor or other peculiarities, people will sense your incongruence and mistrust you. 

3. Treat every single person with respect as long as they they don‘t attack you verbally or trying to put you down. Phrases like „Excuse me“, „Sorry for bothering you“ or „Thank you so much, I really appreciate your help“ are key in day to day life situations.

4. Don’t ever talk bad behind the back of others. Gossip is a big weakness in our humanity and you should‘t fall into the trap of trying to socialize by putting others down.

5. Always point out your own mistakes before criticizing someone. Doing this will prevent that the person ist going to be hurt. You should as well mention something that the person did well, so that he is motivated to take your critics just as an invitation to improve.

6. Show people who are important to you that you actually care about them. This point is a huge one. We are often times the least friendly with our family, partners and friends, due to the fact that wie take them for granted. If you are a very busy person and you are not able to meet up with them, you can at least call them or send them a little text like „Hi, thought of you today. I am very busy in the moment but I just wanted to ask how things are going for you“. This will show them that you actually care and you‘ll get much happier with time by doing this.

7. Make people feel happy about themselves. Whenever you admire something about somebody, tell him or her without wanting anything in return. You should always give people sincere appreciation for what they do and what they are. Don‘t just give people random compliments with the intention of making them like you more. People will feel your dishonesty and this won‘t get you anywhere.

8. Listen. Sounds simple right ? In order to be a good communicator, I analyzed many conversations in different situations and I realized that everybody is actually just interested in himself. In fact, the most often words I heard were „my“, „me“ and „I“. Additionally, people aren‘t even properly responding to each other. Many conversations I heard were similar to this one.

A: „Dude, I hate dogs“ B:“Haha man I love them, dogs are so nice. I once had one“ A:“Nah a dog once bit me. I was so scared“ B:“My dog would never bite. I bought him as a baby“

Do you see the problem ? People are just focused on themselves. Try it out for yourself. Listen to some conversations and you will see that everybody is actually just talking about himself and that there is rarely someone who is interested in the other person. We call this low level communication. Next time when you talk to someone and he is making a statement about himself, ask him questions about it. Instead of telling your own opinion or story ask him for the why, the how or the when. Let people talk about themselves and listen carefully to what they have to say. Then, when they get the feeling that there is somebody who is actually listening to them, they will get interested in you as well. They‘ll ask you back and you will experience a much more enjoyable conversation.

9. Treat others how you would like to be treated yourself. Nearly everybody knows this quote but who is actually living it ? You don‘t even have to overblow this, just think of it in a simple way. Do you feel good when people forget your name ? Do you like it when someone makes fun of you ? Would you like to be barred by a group ? The answer to these questions might be no, so why do we then hurt others by doing these kind of things? Pull yourself together and start treating others the way you would like to be treated.