“How to win friends and influence people” felt like a quality work but applying them made me messed up a lot and alot

TLDR; The book is really useful for engaging in corporate culture, salesmanship, marketing, and other highly recommended areas. However, life is full of stumbling blocks; our real issues are limited, and we cannot apply generic counsel to a unique case. We require tailored advice for that or professional counsel for that.

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Now coming to the main part,
I purchased that book during my undergraduate studies; it was my first self-help book. I found Carnegie’s explanations to be fascinating as I read the first chapter. He ends each chapter with awesome one-liners: “don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.”

The second chapter addressed saying “thank you” to people, and the other chapters covered listening, the value of a smile, keeping in mind to show interest in other people, and other topics.

I continued in doing this among others in the hope that they would like my company and because I believed I could be the idealistic personality when it came to conversations, ethics and what not. But as they say, real life is unpleasant.

When it came to me, I discovered that there were very only few listeners and others who didn’t care about me at all. I continued to act and kept listening to people, I was constantly happy on the outside, but on the inside, I was in pain. I continued my silence while listening. I was listening to them and trying to cheer them up, kept them saying thank you, smiling, showing genuine interest etc etc.

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It was too late for me to realize that others had made my life unpleasant, by trivializing my feelings and hurting me as a result of me being especially nice to them. While writing this, I keep thinking of the book’s advice to “not criticise, whine, or moan.” That annoys me, so screw it.

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To feel human again, I really want to complain, criticize, speak a lot, find listeners, vent my feelings, become furious, and conquer morons. But I guess I am a little too kind. I ought to quit acting that way; it consumes me completely.

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To summarize,

* Applying the concepts in the book to corporate culture, company growth, salesmanship, married relationships, marketing, and other areas is highly recommended. However, life is full of stumbling blocks; our real issues are limited, and we cannot apply generic counsel to a unique case. We require tailored advice for that or professional counsel for that.

* The problem emerges when you generalize the advice in the book; this world is full of fools, fraudsters, abusers, name-calling scumbags, tyrants, bullies and so on. We can’t apply those nice ideas to everyone. We must stand firm against such morons.