What I Learned During the Dale Carnegie Course : Three Largest Lessons

 

What I Learned During the Dale Carnegie Course

Three Largest Lessons

By Adam Mundorf

What I Learned During the Dale Carnegie Course

Recently, the company I work for decided to host a Dale Carnegie Course for all of its managers and leadership team.  Dale Carnegie is a course meant to enhance leadership qualities while giving you thought provoking scenarios and lessons to use in the real world.  I had a really good time, it allowed me to get out of my comfort zone and taught me three valuable lessons (there are more but I want to limit this blog to the three biggest lessons I learned).  Here they are :

Lesson #1 - Adam 'Pause' Mundorf - Avoiding the Stutter

Now, anyone who knows me, knows that I've had somewhat of a stutter since a young age.  I'm not talking like King George the Sixth but it's there.  It gave me grief as a childhood but as I got older, it got funnier because I knew it wasn't a disability but my brain moving entirely too fast for my mouth.  There's an exercise we did in the course where you had to say your first name 'pause' and then your last name.  We then had to do a public speaking exercise with different emphasis and pauses littered throughout.  This taught me a valuable insight, take your time and say it right.  It's better to speak deliberate and with purpose than to feel in a rush to put words out into the universe.  Even during conversations where I find myself getting ahead of myself, I will remember this lesson and reel myself back a bit.  It's a work in progress.

Lesson #2 - We ALL Have Issues, Insecurities and Traumas

We all have our issues, insecurities and traumas.  My fellow managers and assistants all shared stories about their personal hurdles they've had in life.  I'll be honest, they all wear it really well.  I was rather shocked when I heard where some of them came from/overcame.  It definitely showed everyone a more human side of ourselves.  It's easy in life to assign people titles and roles without realizing that there is a whole human being behind that title.  A person with a soul, people who love them and animals who adore them.  A person with struggles, insecurities and issues.  You never know what someone had to overcome to get to that point in their lives.  So, all in all this lesson taught me to view people as human beings rather than just simply ranks or positions within an organization.

Lesson #3 - Do Your Best, Leave the Rest and Priorities

Just do your best and leave the rest.  As Bruce Lee says, "Be like water."  It's far too easy to be so hard on ourselves.  Your best will change from day to day and sometimes even from hour to hour.  Stress is cumulative.  A sleepless night, days without a meal, up late taking care of a newborn and even psychological stress can cause issues.  In class we had a couple sections on stress.  The key takeaway was just try your best and don't stress.  It brought me back to saying that "Calm is contagious."  Just stay calm, be like water and let the stressors flow around you.  The other thing that really jumped out at me was priorities.  Knock out the essentials first and work your way down the list.  Funnily enough, I already believe this with exercise.  If you do the essentials of maintaining the body, most of the time everything else more or less handles itself.  Yes, I know not always that is why I said 'more or less' and 'most of the time'.

Conclusion

Overall, I really enjoyed the Dale Carnegie Course.  It taught me a lot and gave me some lessons I can take far into the future.  If I had lesson number 4 in this blog it would be gratitude.  Everything in your life is amplified if you can show gratitude for every situation no matter how positive or negative.  So I will leave you with that.

Thank you.

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