Honest Sincere Appreciation

Yes, I am a Dale Carnegie Graduate. Aren't you glad you didn't know me before? --RonJeffries

Dale Carnegie says, "Begin with honest sincere appreciation." He's talking about how to help someone improve what they're doing.

With rare exceptions, the hard and most valuable challenges to what I'm trying to express have come from people with a sincere hunger to understand. Peter, William, Sam, Brad, and many others: I'm talking to you. You cause me to think about what I've said, and to think about what I believe, by asking hard questions and asking me to put things differently.

I try hard to accept every response to my writings as coming from someone with a sincere hunger to understand. Sometimes it's difficult.

Sometimes we're too busy to observe amenities. Sometimes we feel so close to the other person that we feel we shouldn't need to. Perhaps most often, we're so engaged with the problem that we forget the person.

Recent experiences have reminded me to begin my responses with HonestSincereAppreciation. If I really have no appreciation for someone's work, I should probably say nothing at all. Usually I do have some appreciation for what they're trying to do and how hard they're working on it, and I'll try to express it first.

I ask others to consider doing the same.