The empathy motif
Carnegie outlines various rules that have this fundamental axiom in common: Understand that other people are experiencing you as you experience other people. It sounds like a simple task, but Carnegie gives rules of thumb, standards, and opinions helping to explore that idea more fully. After all, if people understood others with the same clarity they understood their self, what would be the purpose of this book? This book urges its reader to become the kind of person that others gravitate toward, by treating other people as important and honored.
Criticism as a vice
Although judgment can be very important, Carnegie says that if your goal is to win someone to your side, there is one vice above all others: criticism. He says that criticism can occur verbally, if a person critiques another person's stance or opinion, or it can happen behaviorally, where a person can tell that another person is scrutinizing them. In other words, humans are sensitive about criticism, and when they detect the other person might be criticizing them, they put a wall between them.
The habit of smiling
Carnegie asks his reader to consider what a smile symbolizes to other people. Not only does it demonstrate happiness. It represents a disciplined approach to staying positive, and he even elaborates what he means by that. Instead of smiling only by accident, he urges his reader to practice smiling in private at happy thoughts that one summons in their own mind, so that they can understand what it feels like to smile. Then, he says a smile can be used as a tool to gain rapport with other people.
Names
When Carnegie talks about using names, it isn't just that he wants the reader to remember names—also, he says it is very important to actually remember other people's names—but there is more. He says that a person's name symbolizes something to their self. By using a person's name, one brings another's self into the equation. Instead of being abstractly oriented in the business at hand (for instance) the use of a person's name can orient the other person in the concrete social reality of the situation, so that friendship is on their mind.
Friendship
Carnegie's book explores through motif what a "friend" even is in the first place. Instead of seeing friendships as a possession, he sees them as an opportunity, especially in business. For a stranger, few people will exert energy for favors, but in a friendship, favors are a common currency. One person calling another to see, "Can you do me a favor?" is a request on the basis of friendship. So, Carnegie's version of friendship can be said to be this: A friend is someone who will enjoy helping you.
