The key to success and happiness.
**DJ Khaled major key alert**
Bit cliche I know. But at the end of the day, that's what everyone is after isn't it. So what is this key. 

Well, actually it's all of these things and none of these things. Let me explain. So I watched this video the other day and realised having loyal friends and generally being liked is the real key to success by any measure. Think about it, would you be the same person you are now, without the support of your closest friends. Even the richest and most successful people in the world, all wouldn't be where they are now without having the support of loyal friends. Take Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. This guys puts in work to show his appreciation and build loyalty, because he knows that his success is built upon it. So, having loyal friends is great and technically, the more you have, the more success you're likely to have. Of course, 30 million loyal friends was an extreme example to make a point, but there is something to take from it. We should be making more of a conscious effort to build loyal friendships.

👋 Introduction
As students, we move around a lot. We meet new people at every transition. From school to university, from university to work, and so forth and so on. So becoming successful and overall leading a happier life, ends up being heavily dependent on our ability to make loyal friends. For a long time, I thought loyalty just happens, and we have no control over who is and isn't loyal. But after reading this book, I realised that loyalty we get from others, is directly controlled by the way we behave. In this book, Dale Carnegie, talks about ways we can behave that'll help us to be liked and create the opportunity for loyal, sincere friendships to form. Now, I want to be clear that I don't wholheartedly buy into all of his principles and I certainly don't think that these alone are enough to form loyal, sincere friendships. Loyal friendships are born out of circumstance, character and lots of fixed parameters, but what this book allows us to do, is learn what we can control and act on them to create a vehicle of opportunity to form more loyal friendships.

📍Become genuinely interested in others 
Now unfortunately, we tend to favour talking about ourselves. Because to us, we are very important and very interesting. Let me illustrate this. The New York Telephone Company made a detailed study of telephone conversations to find out which word is the most frequently used. You guessed it: it is the personal pronoun “I.” “I.” I.” It was used 3,900 times in 500 telephone conversations. When you see a group photograph that you are in, whose picture do you look for first? The problem with this is, being instinctively slef-interested means that we put a barrier to people liking us and put a barrier to loyal friendships. There's a great quote from the book:

 Really, the point Dale Carnegie is making here is stop being selfish and show genuine interest in other people. Find out what they have been up to, what they're proud of and what problems they have. Invest your interest in them. So, does this work? Here's a story from the book. So there was this fella called Mr Knaphle who owned a fuel company and for years he had tried to sell his fuel to a chain company who was based in his town. But the owner of the chain company would always buy fuel from out of town and not from Knaphle. So Carnegie, the author of the book, suggests to Knaphle that he is more likely to be successful if he were liked by the chain company owner And he can be more liked by showing genuine interest in the owner of the chain company. So Knaphle goes to the owner of the chain company, asks for a 1 minute meeting, explains he doesn't want to sell fuel, but just wants to talk about the merits of chain companies for an upcoming debate he has. The owner spent not juts a minute, but almost 2 hours talking about chain companies and how they are transforming communities. At the end of the conversation, the owner wished Knaphle good luck with the debate and told Knaphle to contact him later in the year, because the owner wanted to put an order for fuel. The moral of the story is, if you want others to like you and form sincere loyal friendships, become genuinely interested in them, talk about their interests and make them feel important.

And a smile is so important because it speaks louder than your words. A smile says “I like you, You make me happy. I am glad to see you.” And this is even scientifically legit. Chang et al in 2014, carried out a study where they imaged people's brain whilst they carried out 2 actions. Holding a pen with their teeth - which used the smiling muscles Holding pen with lips - which used the frowning muscles They found that the areas of the brain active during happiness was also active when they were holding the pen with their teeth and therefore were smiling. So the areas of the brain involved in happiness becomes active when you smile. This smile is so powerful in modulating our emotion that it doesn't actually have to be seen to work. For example, telephone sale companies train their employees to smile when talking on the phone, because the smiles comes through in your voice. In the book, Carnegie used an example of a researcher who was looking to hire a PhD student. He found someone who had amazing qualifications and spoke to him on the phone, consciously smiling throughout the conversation like he does with all his conversations. The researcher also found out the student had offers from numerous other, bigger companies and labs. But, the student rang back a few days later and accepted his offer. When the researcher asked why did you pick this lab, over the other better ones, the student said, it's because the way you spoke made me feel like you care about me, much more than the other labs did. The takeaway from this, is smiling is a powerful and easy thing to do, that'll help us come across more likeable.

📍Give honest and sincere appreciation
Now this is something I buy into completely. Drawing from my own experiences. I've had days where I've been working in the hospital, seeing a whole load of patients and putting in work. Way more than I'm actually expected or paid to do. Sometimes staying back 2-3 hours after I was meant to go home. But, if that patient or my seniors, take a moment to appreciate my work and say a genuine thank you, any feelings of annoyance drastically reduces and I actually feel good about it. What I and Carnegie in this book are saying is that honest appreciation has the power to transform emotions and create a feeling of warmth towards those who appreciate us. And at the same time, non-appreciated work creates feelings of resentment. Take this story from the book:

Not enough appreciation, comes with negative consequence. So is the solution to go around flattering and complimenting everyone? Well, not quite. Flattery is fake, it's selfish and most people can see right through it. In fact there's a great quote from the book:

No, flattery isn't it. Instead it's honest, genuine appreciation. Something that the richest man in the world worth 188 billion dollars, does very well. Most companies offer discounted rates for their employees as a way of showing appreciation. Not Tesla however. Musk believes discounting products shows a lack of integrity. So what does Musk do to show his appreciation? Well, he says a genuine and sincere thankyou at every opportunity to both his employees and customers. But going beyond that, he openly admitted, one of the main drivers for creating the tesla model 3 is so that all his employees could have a tesla that they could afford. Instead of discounting existing models, he created a brand-new car just to show genuine appreciation, whilst at the same time maintaining the company integrity. And the employees in return made him the richest man on the planet. 

Takeaway messages from this: Always show genuine appreciation to everyone and it'll create a vehicle for genuine connections to form.