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William Ury, coauthor of the international bestseller Getting to Yes, returns with another groundbreaking book, this time asking: how can we expect to get to yes with others if we haven’t first gotten to yes with ourselves?
Renowned negotiation expert William Ury has taught tens of thousands of people from all walks of life—managers, lawyers, factory workers, coal miners, schoolteachers, diplomats, and government officials—how to become better negotiators. Over the years, Ury has discovered that the greatest obstacle to successful agreements and satisfying relationships is not the other side, as difficult as they can be. The biggest obstacle is actually our own selves—our natural tendency to react in ways that do not serve our true interests.
But this obstacle can also become our biggest opportunity, Ury argues. If we learn to understand and influence ourselves first, we lay the groundwork for understanding and influencing others. In this prequel to Getting to Yes, Ury offers a seven-step method to help you reach agreement with yourself first, dramatically improving your ability to negotiate with others.
Practical and effective, Getting to Yes with Yourself helps readers reach good agreements with others, develop healthy relationships, make their businesses more productive, and live far more satisfying lives.
194 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 13, 2015
Another study showed that people who give away more money to charity tend to be happier and end up, on average, earning more. The research suggests that giving works in part because it increases the probability that someone else will do something good for you.
Einstein: "Is the universe a friendly place?"
Ury: "Einstein reasoned that, if we see the universe as basically hostile, we will naturally treat others as enemies."
Longfellow: "If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."
Ury: "It was yet another confirmation for me of the wisdom of setting prejudgment aside and, instead, putting myself in the place of another person with dreams, loves, and grief."
Edwin Markham: "He drew a circle that shut me out/ Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout/But love and I had the wit to win/We drew a circle that took him in!"
Ury: That from the chapter titled Respect Them Even If
In the morning when I look at myself in the mirror, I like to remind myself that I am seeing the person who is probably going to give me the most trouble that day, the opponent who will be the biggest obstacle to me getting what I truly want.