Brian Johnson explains Dale Carnegie's advice to stop criticizing and complaining, comparing it to kicking over a beehive. He connects this to Jesus's teaching about the beam in your own eye before pointing out the speck in someone else's, arguing you must fix yourself first if you want to influence others.
Chapters
Carnegie tells us we need to do— stop criticizing people. He says, yeah, yeah, yeah, you see how this person needs to improve, that person needs to improve, etc. That's great. Congratulations that you can see that, but stop telling them all the things that are wrong with them. You want to win friends and influence people? Pro tip: stop criticizing, stop condemning, stop complaining, he says. You want honey? Quit kicking over the beehive. Not a winning strategy. Goosebumps as I say that. So check in, notice how often you go around criticizing people. And remember another spiritual teacher that Carnegie quotes, Jesus had something to say about this 2,000 years ago. Why are you trying to remove a speck out of someone's eye, a little mote in someone's eyes, when you have a beam, you have a log in your own eye? You got more than enough work to do just to take care of yourself. Start there. Focus on that. Then when you've figured everything out in your life, then you can go out and try to fix everybody else. So again, you want to win friends and influence people? Stop criticizing.