Simon and schuster

I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.
” 
 
That is what Schwab did. But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a 
thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing. As the old couplet says: “Once I did 
bad and that I heard ever/Twice I did good, but that I heard never.” 
“In my wide association in life, meeting with many and great people in various parts of the world,” 
Schwab declared, “I have yet to find the person, however great or exalted his station, who did not do better 
work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than he would ever do under a spirit of criticism.” 
That he said, frankly, was one of the outstanding reasons for the phenomenal success of Andrew 
Carnegie. Carnegie praised his associates publicly as well as privately. 
Carnegie wanted to praise his assistants even on his tombstone. He wrote an epitaph for himself which 
read: “Here lies one who knew how to get around him men who were cleverer than himself.” 
Sincere appreciation was one of the secrets of the first John D. Rockefeller’s success in handling men. 
For example, when one of his partners, Edward T. Bedford, lost a million dollars for the firm by a bad buy in 
South America, John D. might have criticized; but he knew Bedford had done his best, and the incident was 
closed. So Rockefeller found something to praise; he congratulated Bedford because he had been able to save 
60 percent of the money he had invested. “That’s splendid,” said Rockefeller. “We don’t always do as well as 
that upstairs.” 
I have among my clippings a story that I know never happened, but it illustrates a truth, so I’ll repeat it: 
According to this silly story, a farmwoman, at the end of a heavy day’s work, set before her menfolks a 
heaping pile of hay. And when they indignantly demanded whether she had gone crazy, she replied: “Why, how 
did I know you’d notice? I’ve been cooking for you men for the last twenty years and in all that time I ain’t 
heard no word to let me know you wasn’t just eating hay.” 
When a study was made a few years ago on runaway wives, what do you think was discovered to be 
the main reason wives ran away? It was “lack of appreciation”. And I’d bet that a similar study made of 
runaway husbands would come out the same way. We often take our spouses so much for granted that we never 
let them know we appreciate them. 
A member of one of our classes told of a request made by his wife. She and a group of other women in 
her church were involved in a self-improvement program. She asked her husband to help her by listing six 
things he believed she could do to help herself become a better wife. He reported to the class, “I was surprised 
by such a request. Frankly, it would have been easy for me to list six things I would like to change about her—
my heavens, she could have listed a thousand things she would like to change about me—but I didn’t. I said to 
her, ‘Let me think about it and give you an answer in the morning.’ 
“The next morning I got up very early and called the florist and had them send six red roses to my wife 
with a note saying: ‘I can’t think of six things I would like to change about you. I love you the way you are.’ 
“When I arrived at home that evening, who do you think greeted me at the door: That’s right. My wife! 
She was almost in tears. Needless to say, I was extremely glad I had not criticized her as she had requested. 
“The following Sunday at church, after she had reported the results of her assignment, several women 
with whom she had been studying came up to me and said, ‘That was the most considerate thing I have ever 
heard.’ It was then I realized the power of appreciation.” 
Florenz Ziegfeld, the most spectacular producer who ever dazzled Broadway, gained his reputation by 
his subtle ability to “glorify the American girl”. Time after time, he took drab little creatures that no one ever 
looked at twice and transformed them on the stage into glamorous visions of mystery and seduction. Knowing 
the value of appreciation and confidence, he made women feel beautiful by the sheer power of his gallantry and 
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consideration. He was practical: he raised the salary of chorus girls from thirty dollars a week to as high as one 
hundred and seventy-five. And he was also chivalrous; on opening night at the Follies, he sent telegrams to the 
stars in the cast, and he deluged every chorus girl in the show with American Beauty roses. 
I once succumbed to the fad of fasting and went for six days and nights without eating. It wasn’t 
difficult. I was less hungry at the end of the sixth day than I was at the end of the second. Yet I know, as you 
know, people who would think they had committed a crime if they let their families or employees go for six 
days without food; but they will let them go for six days, and six weeks, and sometimes sixty years without 
giving them the hearty appreciation that they crave almost as much as they crave food. 
When Alfred Lunt, one of the great actors of his time, played the leading role in 
Reunion in Vienna,
he 
said, “There is nothing I need so much as nourishment for my self-esteem.” 
We nourish the bodies of our children and friends and employees, but how seldom do we nourish their 
self-esteem? We provide them with roast beef and potatoes to build energy, but we neglect to give them kind 
words of appreciation that would sing in their memories for years like the music of the morning stars. 
Paul Harvey, in one of his radio broadcasts, “The Rest of the Story,” told how showing sincere 
appreciation could change a person’s life. He reported that years ago a teacher in Detroit asked Stevie Morris to 
help her find a mouse that was lost in the classroom. You see, she appreciated the fact that nature had given 
Stevie something no one else in the room had. Nature had given Stevie a remarkable pair of ears to compensate 
for his blind eyes. But this was really the first time Stevie had been shown appreciation for those talented ears. 
Now, years later, he says that this act of appreciation was the beginning of a new life. You see, from that time 
on he developed his gift of hearing and went on to become, under the stage name of Stevie Wonder, one of the 
great pop singers and songwriters of the seventies. * 
* Paul Aurandt,