You get more out of your relationships with others — more easily — by not approaching them directly. It’s because of something called the Law of Indirect Effort.

For example, if you want to impress someone, the direct way to do it is to point out your admirable qualities and accomplishments. But talking about yourself usually makes you feel a little foolish. (And sometimes embarrassed.)

The indirect way to impress another person is simply to be impressed by him. The more impressed you are — by who he is or what he has accomplished — the more impressed he will be by you.

If you want to get someone interested in you, the direct way is to tell him all about yourself. But the indirect way works better. Simply become interested in him. The more interested you become in him, the more interested he will become in you.

If you want to be happy, the direct way is to do things that will make you happy. However, the most enjoyable and lasting form of happiness comes from making someone else happy. It’s the Law of Indirect Effort at work again. When you do or say anything that makes someone else happy, you feel happy yourself. You boost your own spirits, your own self-esteem.

How do you get another person to respect you? The best way is to respect him. When you demonstrate respect or admiration for another person, he feels respect and admiration for you. Sociologists call this the Principle of Reciprocity. When you do something nice for someone else, that person will want to reciprocate by doing something nice for you. (Most romances and friendships are based on this principle.)

How do you get a person to believe in you? The answer is to believe in him. By showing that you have confidence in him, he will have confidence in you too.

You get what you give. What you send out, you get back.

The most important application of the Law of Indirect Effort has to do with developing a healthy personality. You are structured in such a way that everything you do to someone else has a reciprocal effect on you. Everything you do to raise the self-esteem of another person raises your own self-esteem — at the same time and in the same measure. Since self-esteem is the hallmark of a healthy personality, you can actually improve the health of your own personality by taking every opportunity to improve the health of the personalities of others.

What you sow in the lives of others, you reap in your own life.

Everyone you meet is carrying a heavy load. This is especially true in the area of self-esteem and self-confidence. Everyone grows up with the need to be praised and recognized. No matter how successful or how elevated people become, they still need to have their self-images reinforced.

There is a line that says, “I like you because of the way I feel about myself when I am with you.” This line contains the key to human relations. The happiest men and women are those who make other people feel good about themselves when they are with them.

When you go through life raising the self-esteem of others, opportunities will open up. And people will help you in ways you cannot now imagine. So take every opportunity to say and do things that make other people feel more valuable. Each time you express a kindness toward another person, your own self-esteem improves. Your own personality becomes more positive and healthy.

The way to raise the self-esteem of others is simply to make them feel important. Everything you do or say that makes another person feel more important boosts his self-esteem at the same time.

When you practice the Law of Indirect Effort — going through your day looking for ways to make others feel important — you will be popular and welcome everywhere. You will be healthier and happier. You will get more real satisfaction from life. You will have lower levels of stress and higher levels of energy. You will experience greater peace of mind. Above all, you will genuinely like and respect yourself.

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

It’s a serious mistake to allow yourself to get caught up in the “what-if” and “how-to” trap before taking action. The reality is that no one can ever hope to know all the problems in advance, let alone all the solutions.

Further, most of the things people worry about never even come to pass. Or, if they do, they end up being not nearly as bad as envisioned. Even better, some of the most minatory circumstances often turn out to be nothing more than disguises for great opportunities.

I thought about this a couple of weeks ago when my son asked me to take him to a University of Maryland football game on a perfect-weather Saturday.

It was quite a request, considering:

1. I had never been to Maryland’s Byrd Stadium, and was not certain how to get there.
2. I estimated that the University was at least an hour away in modest traffic.
3. It would take us about an hour to get ready to leave the house.
4. It was 10:00 a.m. — two hours before kickoff.
5. We had no tickets.

Nevertheless, seeing a chance to be anointed Father of the Week, I replied, without hesitation, “Sure. Let’s do it.”

Some might call this impulsive. Others might refer to it as abject stupidity. I would argue that a fair and enlightened individual would recognize it as nothing more than temporary insanity.

But something just felt right about it. It was a beautiful, sunny day. I felt like I could run a marathon backward. And I saw it as one of those great Steve Martin-type bonding opportunities (as in Father of the Bride).

We pulled out of the driveway at 11:00 a.m., an hour before game time. Surprisingly, traffic was light, even as we began to near the campus. Even more surprising, the stadium came into view about 40 minutes after we left the house. I still haven’t figured out how that was mathematically possible.

Now for the not-so-small matter of parking. Cars were jammed into every square inch of space on the side of every road anywhere within sight of the stadium, so I frantically looked for a parking garage. But before I could locate one, would you believe that a parking space suddenly appeared on the side of the road — about a five-minute walk from the stadium?

After I parked the car, my son and I jumped out and joined the crowd walking toward Byrd Stadium. At this point, I was thinking what a shame it would be if it were a sellout and we’d have to turn around and go home.

Amazingly, however, as we approached the front gate, two men were standing right in front of us, one of them holding up a pair of tickets. He said they were his season tickets, but that he was going to be sitting elsewhere with his friend that day, so he just wanted to “get rid of them.”

He told me they were on the 50-yard line, and I braced myself for his asking price — $75? $100? $150? Another surprise: Almost apologetically, he asked if $20 a ticket sounded reasonable to me. I refrained from hugging him, and quickly peeled off two $20 bills from the cash stash in my pocket.

Thus far, I had been wrong about every dire thought that had crossed my mind before agreeing to take my son to the game. But I felt certain I would be right about one thing: No way was I holding 50-yard-line seats in my hand. Scalpers are hardworking entrepreneurs, but they have been known to shade the truth a bit.

Surprise again: Our seats were, indeed, smack-dab on the 50!

At halftime, since we hadn’t had time to eat lunch before leaving the house, we were starving. Perusing the menu board at a garbage… er, concession… stand, it became evident that our substitute lunch was going to be a hotdog, an ice cream sandwich, and a Pepsi.

To avoid apoplexy, I reminded myself that what we were about to eat was at least healthier than cyanide-laced Kool-Aid… though not by much. Besides, the dogs were only $2.50 apiece, which wouldn’t even buy you a bun at a pro football game.

After we finished “lunch,” we stopped by one of the restrooms for a little relief. How pleasant. It made the restrooms at Washington, DC’s RFK Stadium look like the Ritz-Carlton. Shows how easy it is to please college kids.

The bottom line is that it was a great day, a day when everything that seemed like a problem ended up being a plus. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that things turned out so well, because I’ve witnessed the playing out of this type of scenario so often over the years.

The moral is that when you really want to do something — but are apprehensive because you see so many “problems” on the horizon — do it anyway! Don’t worry about it. You won’t bat 1,000 percent. But if you continually fail to take action, you’re guaranteed to bat zero.

And even when things don’t work out, you’ll find that, in a vast majority of cases, the fallout won’t be nearly as bad as you’d imagined.

The many wonderful, unexpected things that will come into your life as a result of taking action will more than offset any pain you might endure from your few missteps.

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money,improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.