Application Article –Give Honest, Sincere Appreciation and Be a Good Listener 

My wife likes to make decisions in family life.  So I seldom pay attention to her opinion selection from me although sometimes I want to stick to my ideas that always results in argument.

Recently, we were busy with sprucing up our new apartment. We need to buy all the needed interior finishing materials according to decoration design. This is a huge workload.  We spent days in B&Q to select the materials with bargaining on the price, discount and the give-away items etc. This Saturday we also ordered a large wardrobe. For efficiency, I tried best to listen to her with asking her criteria of selection only. As an award of my virtue that was seldom shown up, she agreed with me to use glass sliding doors for the wardrobe and the design I selected. 

This Sunday, she went to the supplier of wardrobe again, I stayed at home for Dale Carnegie reading. Later time in the afternoon, she backed and seemed very excited. I looked at her eyes, and smiled, resuming my reading. Then she went to me and took my book away, eagerly relating what good things happened.

“I went to the supplier where I coincidently met one of my coworker Ms Wang who told me using glass door was risky. Ms Wang said she had broken her two glass door in the past two years. “ 

“So you want to revise the order?” I asked with smile.

“Yes. Actually I had replaced the glass door with wooden door in Apple-Red on which there is a beautiful design.”

I did not condemn this time, and asked: “What advantage else?”

She was proud and said: “I cut down the price from RMB500 to RMB300 each square meter due to using wooden door. And the color of wardrobe should match the wooden floor tile well. Finally, our apartment has good nature light, no need to make it brighter.”

I started to doubt my original ideas, and praised she was a smart wife. She was happy that I did not argue with her.

Sometimes we use to overvaluing ourselves and judge other ideas without thinking more. Maybe sometimes nothing is right or wrong, but an effort has been offered by others as facilitates us. I appreciated my wife again. She gave the book to me and went to prepare dinner.

GOAWAYCOMEBACK COMMENTS:

Family is not the place for right and wrong, but a place for love and understanding.

When I was hosting a wedding ceremony, I asked a happy old couple who married more than 50 years their secrets of long time marriage, the husband smiled and answered:

“We have a rule in our marriage life. The person who made a mistake will run 400 meters. That’s why we are happy and healthy!”

“Who ran more, you or your wife?” I asked

“My wife is always right, it’s me who ran every time!” every audience laughed with enlightment.

In our family life, we either lose love for pride, or compromise pride for love, it’s hard to have both. So when argue with our loved ones, asked ourselves ----- what result we want: love or pride?

卡内基训练简介：https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8QOnBFFWDU0