Chapter 14 Fourteenth Letter: Be a Stupid and Smart Man

Motto: He who has no misfortune experience is misfortune. Compliment a pig enough to climb a tree. A person who is smart is a fool, and a person who knows how to pretend to be a fool is really smart. (The leaders who offer high sentiments always win in the end, and get more out of their followers) October 9, 1890 Dear John: Tomorrow, I'm going back home to Collieverland to take care of some of our family's own affairs.I hope you can take care of some affairs for me during this period.But I remind you that if you encounter some difficult or uncertain things, you should ask Mr. Gates for advice and consultation.

Mr. Gates is my most powerful assistant. He is loyal, sincere, outspoken, conscientious, and shrewd. He can always help me make wise choices. I trust him very much. I believe he will be of great help to you. The premise is that you respect him. Son, I know you are an outstanding graduate of Brown University, and your handy knowledge in economics and sociology is excellent.However, you should be clear that knowledge is empty, unless knowledge is put into action, nothing will happen.Moreover, the knowledge in textbooks is almost all compiled in ivory towers by knowledge craftsmen with rich heads and poor books, and it is difficult to help you solve practical problems.

I hope you can get rid of your dependence on knowledge and learning, which is the key to your smooth journey in life. You need to know that knowledge itself is not very good, and knowledge must be used in order to be effective. To become a person who can use knowledge, you must first become a person with practical ability. So where does the practical ability come from?It seems to me that it is hidden in suffering.My experience has taught me that walking the hard road—the road of hardship, misfortune, failure, and difficulty—builds not only our strength of character, but also the ability to perform that we need to achieve great things.People who climb to and from get off work in suffering know what it means to do everything possible to find ways and means to save themselves.It is one of the creeds of success that I firmly believe in.

Maybe you are all mocking me, thinking that there is nothing more stupid than wanting to suffer.No!People who have no experience of misfortune are unfortunate.Many things come and go quickly. For those people who realized their dream of becoming famous overnight and getting rich overnight, who didn't disappear soon?What you get from suffering is to build your career building on solid ground, not in quicksand.People must have foresight, and only long-term hardship can bring long-term gains. I believe you have discovered that since you came to work with me, I have not given you a burden to carry.But this does not mean that I doubt your ability, I just hope that you are good at doing small things.

Doing small things well is the cornerstone of doing great things. If you are superior from the beginning, you will not be able to consider the feelings of your subordinates, and you will not be able to truly make use of others. To survive and create achievements in this world, you must rely on human power , That is, the strength of others, but you must start from doing small things to understand the mood of being a subordinate. When you get to a higher position one day, you will know how to make them contribute all their enthusiasm for work. Son, there are only two kinds of smart people in the world: one is to use their own smart people, such as artists, scholars, and actors; the other is to use other people's smart people, such as managers and leaders.The latter kind of people need a special ability - the ability to grab people's hearts.But many leaders are smart fools who think that to win people's hearts, they have to rely on top-down command.In my opinion, instead of gaining leadership, this will reduce it a lot.You know, everyone is very sensitive to being underestimated, and being seen as short will lose motivation.Such a leader will only incapacitate subordinates.

If a pig is well praised, it can climb a tree.Managers, leaders or people who are good at driving others have always been magnanimous, and they know the art of looking up to and praising others.This means that they have to pay emotionally.And the leader who pays deep feelings will eventually win and gain more respect from his subordinates. A person without knowledge is useless, but a person with knowledge is likely to become a slave to knowledge.Everyone needs to know that all knowledge will be transformed into preconceived notions, and the result is an overwhelmingly conservative mentality, thinking "I understand", "I understand", and "society is just like this".With the feeling of "understanding", there will be no interest in knowing, and if there is no interest, the motivation to move forward will be lost, and all that is waiting for him is boredom.This is the reason why you succeed because you don’t understand.

However, dominated by self-esteem and a sense of honor, many knowledgeable people always find it difficult to say "don't understand", as if asking others for advice, expressing that they don't understand, is shameful, and even regards ignorance as a crime.This is being smart, and this kind of person will never understand that great adage-every time we don't understand, it will become a turning point in our life. A person who thinks he is smart is a fool, but a person who knows how to pretend to be a fool is really smart.I'm obviously not a fool to think of being smart as a criterion for profit.

To this day, I can still clearly remember a scene of pretending to be stupid. At that time, I was thinking about how to borrow 15,000 yuan, and I was thinking hard about this problem while walking on the street.It's interesting to say that just when I was thinking about borrowing money, borrowing money, a banker stopped me. He asked me in a low voice in the carriage: "Do you want to use fifty thousand dollars, Rockefeller?" Sir?" Am I lucky?I kind of can't believe my ears.But at that moment, I didn't show the slightest eagerness. I looked at the other person's face and told him slowly: "It's like this...can you give me twenty-four hours to think about it?" I reached a loan contract with him on conditions favorable to me.

Playing dumb brings you many benefits.The meaning of being stupid is to put on a low profile and become humble, in other words, to hide your intelligence.The more intelligent a person is, the more necessary he is to pretend to be stupid, because as the saying goes - the more mature the rice, the more the ears of rice hang down. Son, with hobbies, you can be lightweight.Now, start loving playing dumb! I figured it wouldn't be easy for you to be left alone while I was away, but that's okay. "Let me wait and see" is a motto I have always followed in business.I always have a habit of doing things. Before making a decision, I always think and judge calmly, but once I make a decision, I will carry it out without hesitation.I believe you can too.