[00:00.00]Lesson One Text
[00:05.09]Courtesy: Key to a Happier World Dr.Norman Vincent Peak
[00:14.24]Many years ago trying to help people with every kind of trouble
[00:21.08]left me with one sure conviction:
[00:25.65]in case after case the difficulty could have been overcome
[00:32.10]or might never have arisen
[00:35.55]if the people involved had just treated one another with common courtesy.
[00:43.21]Courtesy, politeness,good manners call it what you will,
[00:50.86]the supply never seems to equal the demand.
[00:56.50]"It's not so much what my husband says,"a tearful wife confides,
[01:03.58]"as the way he says it.Why does he have to yell at me?"
[01:10.24]"I hate my boss," a grim-faced office worker mutters.
[01:16.77]"He never shows appreciation for anything."
[01:21.74]"All we get from our teenagers,"
[01:25.79]a worried parent says," is a moody sullenness."
[01:33.15]Such complaints are not limited to people who sit in my study.
[01:39.79]Human beings every where hunger for courtesy.
[01:45.35]"Good manners," said Ralph Waldo Emerson,
[01:50.68]"are the happy way of doing things."
[01:54.81]And the reverse is equally true.
[01:58.78]Bad manners can ruin a day or wreck a friendship.
[02:04.73]What are the basic ingredients of good manners?
[02:09.70]Certainly a strong sense of justice is one;
[02:15.65]courtesy is often nothing more than a highly developed sense of fair play.
[02:22.81]A friend once told me of driving along a one lane,unpaved mountain road.
[02:30.96]Ahead was another car that produced clouds of choking dust,
[02:37.62]and it was a long way to the nearest paved highway.
[02:43.08]Suddenly, at a wider place,the car ahead pulled off the road.
[02:49.85]Thinking that its owner might have engine trouble,
[02:54.71]my friend stopped and asked if anything was wrong.
[02:59.98]"No, " said the other driver.
[03:03.82]"But you've endured my dust this far;
[03:08.47]I'll put up with yours the rest of the way.
[03:12.91]"There was a man with manners, and an innate sense of fair play.
[03:19.76]Another ingredient of courtesy is empathy,
[03:24.90]a quality that enables a person to see into the mind or heart of someone else,
[03:33.68]to understand the pain or unhappiness there and to do something to minimize it.
[03:42.93]Recently in a book about a famous restaurant chain
[03:48.39]I came across such an episode
[03:52.54]A man dining alone was trying to unscrew the cap of a bottle of catsup
[04:00.90]but his fingers were so badly crippled by arthritis that he couldn't do it.
[04:08.66]He asked a young busboy to help him.
[04:13.41]The boy took the bottle,
[04:16.57]turned his back momentarily and loosened the cap without difficulty.
[04:24.23]Then he tightened it again.
[04:27.86]Turning back to the man,
[04:31.10]he feigned a great effort to open the bottle without success.
[04:37.16]Finally he took it into the kitchen and returned shortly,
[04:43.61]saying that he had managed to loosen it but only with a pair of pliers.
[04:51.47]What impelled the boy to take so much trouble
[04:56.52]to spare the feelings of a stranger Courtesy,compassionate courtesy.
[05:04.88]Yet another component of politeness is the capacity to treat all people alike,
[05:13.13]regardless of all status or importance.
[05:18.17]Even when you have doubts about some people,
[05:22.43]act as if they are worthy of your best manners.
[05:28.18]You may also be astonished to find out that they really are.
[05:34.55]I truly believe that anyone can improve his or her manners by doing three things.
[05:42.80]First, by practicing courtesy.
[05:47.77]All skills require constant repetition to become second nature;
[05:54.72]good manners are no exception.
[05:58.79]One simple way is to concentrate on your performance
[06:04.15]in a specific areafor about a week.
[06:09.40]Telephone manner,for example.
[06:13.16]How often do you talk too long, speak abruptly,
[06:19.51]fail to identify yourself,keep people waiting,
[06:25.67]display impatience with the operator or fail to return a call?
[06:32.65]Or driving a car,why not watch yourself sternly for aggressive driving,
[06:40.80]unnecessary hornblowing, following too closely,
[06:47.07]failing to yield the right-of-the-way?
[06:51.61]One difficult but essential thing to remember
[06:56.29]is to refuse to letother people's bad manners
[07:01.43]goad you into retaliating in kind.
[07:05.98]I recall a story told by a young man
[07:10.84]who was in a car with his father one night
[07:15.20]when a driver in an oncoming vehicle failed to dim his lights.
[07:22.96]"Give him the brights.Dad!" the young man urged in exasperation.
[07:29.72]"Son," replied the father, "
[07:33.98]that driver is certainly discourteous and probably stupid.
[07:39.94]But if I give him the brights he'll be discourteous,stupid and blind
[07:47.70]and that's a combination I don't want to tangle with!
[07:52.84]The second requirement for improving your manners is to think in a courteous way.
[07:59.97]In the long run, the kind of person you are
[08:05.15]is the result of what you've been thinking over the past twenty or thirty years.
[08:13.98]If your thoughts are predominantly self directed,
[08:19.30]a discourteous person is what you will be.
[08:24.16]If on the other hand you train your self to be considerate of others,
[08:31.82]if you can acquire the habit of identifying with their problems
[08:37.77]and hopes and fears,good manners will follow almost automatically.
[08:45.64]Nowhere is thinking courtesy more important than in marriage.
[08:51.88]In the intimacy of the home it is easy to displace disappoint ment
[08:59.25]or frustration or anger onto the nearest person,
[09:05.59]and that person is often a husband or wife.
[09:10.74]"When you feel your anger getting out of control,
[09:15.89]"I have often said to married couples,"
[09:19.96]force yourself for the next ten minutes to treat your married partner
[09:27.69]as if he or she were a guest in your home.
[09:32.84]I knew that if they could impose just ten minutes of good manners on themselves,
[09:40.41]the worst of the storm would blow over.
[09:45.06]Finally, to have good manners you must be able to accept courtesy,receive it gladly,
[09:52.72]rejoice when it comes your way.
[09:56.87]Strangely, some people are suspicious of gracious treatment.
[10:02.62]They suspect the other person of having some ulterior motive.
[10:09.38]But some of the most precious gifts in life come with no strings attached.
[10:16.62]You can't achieve a beautiful day through any effort on your part.
[10:23.15]You can't buy a sunset or even the scent of a rose.
[10:29.42]Those are the world's courtesies to us,
[10:34.28]offered with love and without thought of reward or return.
[10:36.32]Good manners are, or should be, like that.
[10:41.28]In the end,it all comes down to how you regard people
[10:47.34]not just people in general but individuals.
[10:53.40]Life is full of minor irritations and trials and injustices
[10:59.96]The only constant,daily,effective solution is politeness
[11:07.40]which is the golden rule in action.
[11:11.53]I think that if I were allowed to add one small beatitudeas
[11:18.61]a footnote to the other it might be:Blessed are the courteous. |