Peter D. Kaufman

How many want to be loved?

And every single hand goes up.

Everybody's exactly the same, Peter observes.

The only difference is the strategy that they're employing to try to get to fulfill those needs.

He illustrates this with what he calls the strategy that dogs use.

In Peter's telling, your dog goes to the fence and tells the neighbor's dog, can you believe how easy it is to manipulate human beings and get them to do whatever you want them to do for you?

And the neighboring dog agrees.

I know it's a piece of cake.

The secret, all you have to do is every single time they come home, you greet them at the door with the biggest unconditional show of attention that they've ever gotten in their whole life.

And you only have to do it for about 15 seconds.

And then you can go back to doing whatever you were doing before and completely ignore them for the rest of the evening.

However, you have to do this every single time they come home.

And the result, the human will do anything for that dog.

It will feed it.

It will walk it.

It will care for it completely.

All for 15 seconds of genuine attention.

Peter's lesson here is all you have to do if you want everything in life from everybody else is first pay attention, listen to them, show them respect, give them meaning, satisfaction, and fulfillment.

Convey to them that they matter to you and show you love them.

But you have to go first.