“Figuring out your butterflies, deciphering what they say about the status of your mind and body, is the first step to making them work for you.” (12)
“It’s not enough to hit everything the dragon fires at me; my father wants me to hit it harder and faster than the dragon. He wants me to beat the dragon.” (28)
“I’ve been let in on a dirty little secret: winning changes nothing. Now that I’ve won a slam, I know something that very few people on earth are permitted to know. A win doesn’t feel as good as a loss feels bad, and the good feeling doesn’t last as long as the bad. Not even close.” (167)
“When you chase perfection, when you make perfection the ultimate goal, do you know what you’re doing? You’re chasing something that doesn’t exist. You’re making everyone around you miserable. You’re making yourself miserable. Perfection? There’s about five times a year you wake up perfect, when you can’t lose to anybody, but it’s not those five times a year that make a tennis player. Or a human being, for that matter. It’s the other times. It’s all about your head, man. With your talent, if you’re fifty percent game-wise, but ninety -five percent head-wise, you’re going to win. But if you’re ninety-five percent game-wise and fifty percent head-wise, you’re going to lose, lose, lose.” (187)
“Perfectionism is something I chose, and it’s ruining me, and I can choose something else. I must choose something else. No one has ever said this to me. I’ve always assumed perfectionism was like my thinning hair or my thickened spinal cord. An inborn part of me.” (189)
“You know everything you need to know about people when you see their faces at the moments of your greatest triumph.” (196)
“I stand and feel an overpowering urge to forgive, because I realize that my father can’t help himself, that he never could help himself, any more than he could understand himself. My father is what he is, and always will be, and though he can’t help himself, though he can’t tell the difference between loving me and loving tennis, it’s love all the same. Few of us are granted the grace to know ourselves, and until we do, maybe the best we can do is be consistent. My father is nothing if not consistent.” (202)
“This is the only perfection there is, the perfection of helping others. This is the only thing we can do that has any lasting value or meaning. This is why we’re here. To make each other feel safe.” (231)
“It took me twenty-two years to discover my talent, to win my first slam – and only two years to lose it.” (259)
“Unless I can accept that I’m where I’m supposed to be, I’ll never belong there again.” (259)
“It’s not like me to want a win this badly. What I normally feel is a desire not to lose. But warming up before my first-rounder, I tell myself I want this, and I realize precisely why. It’s not about my comeback. It’s about my team. My new team, my real team. I’m playing to raise money and visibility for my school. After all these years I’ve got what I’ve always wanted, something to play for that’s larger than myself and yet still closely connected to me. Something that bears my name but isn’t about me. The Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy.” (267)
“Scaling down the task makes it seem manageable and makes me looser.” (292)
“Having averted disaster, I’m suddenly loose, happy. It’s so typical in sports. You hang by a thread above a bottomless pit. You stare death in the face. Then your opponent, or life, spares you, and you feel so blessed that you play with abandon.” (297)
“Later I tell her that I don’t understand why I sometimes come apart – still. She gives me insights from her experience. Stop thinking, she says. Feeling is the thing. Feeling. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. It sounds like a sweeter, softer version of my father. But when Stefanie says it, the words go in deeper. We talk for days about thinking versus feeling. She says it’s one thing not to think, but you can’t then decide to feel. You can’t try to feel. You have to let yourself feel.” (328)
“The same court on which you suffer your bloodiest defeat can become the scene of your sweetest triumph.” (333)
“If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that time and practice equal achievement.” (336)
“It’s easier to be free and loose, to be yourself, after laughing with the ones you love.” (342)
“He thinks it’s his day, and when you think it’s your day, it usually is.” (344)
“Losing to Pete has caused me enormous pain, but in the long run it’s also made me more resilient. If I’d beaten Pete more often, or if he’d come along in a different generation, I’d have a better record, and I might go down as a better player, But I’d be less.” (354)
“I play and keep playing because I choose to play. Even if it’s not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything.” (359)
“I think older people make this mistake all the time with younger people, treating them as finished products when in fact they’re in process. It’s like judging a match before it’s over, and I’ve come from behind too often, and had too many opponents come roaring back against me, to think that’s a good idea.” (372)
“Life is a tennis match between polar opposites. Winning and losing, love and hate, open and closed. It helps to recognize that painful fact early. Then recognize the polar opposites within yourself, and if you can’t embrace them, or reconcile them, at least accept them and move on. The only thing you cannot do is ignore them.” (384)
“When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.” -Kikuyu proverb (24)
“Riles’ Rule of Rebirth: In any dead-end situation, a team’s members are ready for rebirth when: Survival instinct overrides territorial instinct. Being a part of success is more important than being personally indispensable. The team’s energy and enthusiasm take on a life of their own.” (27)
“Every player has a style – a certain collection of choices and tendencies that flows through his entire game. An exceptional player usually demands that the team’s personnel and game plan revolve around his style, so his performance can flourish and he can be recognized as a great star. Whenever a clash erupts within a team, it’s usually over who gets to put his individual stamp on the team’s identity, who will occupy the center ring of the big circus.” (33)
“The best way to cheer yourself up is to cheer everybody else up.” -Mark Twain (36)
“You’re always just one ego, one disagreement, one rough patch away from disintegration.” (60)
“Never demean the time you spend in the trenches. If you pay attention to what you’re doing, you can learn an awful lot about how an organization behaves, and that can be very useful later on.” (63)
“Use any time when you aren’t on center stage to strengthen your power of perception. Even being on the bench or working around the periphery of the Lakers was like attending a master class is professional basketball. It’s strictly attitude that lets you learn.” (63)
“Keep reminding yourself that attitude is the mother of luck.” (63)
“These people are unlikely to be lucky. Not because they’ve not advanced fast enough. But because they radiate fear, anxiety, and defeat. Luck is literally all how you look at it.” (63)
“The essence of the Core Covenant is totally positive peer pressure. It replaces blaming and finger pointing – two vicious enemies of teamwork – with mutual monitoring and mutual reinforcement.” (72)
“A Thunderbolt is something beyond your control, a phenomenon that one day strikes you, your team, your business, your city, even your nation. It rocks you, it blows you into a crater. You have no choice except to take the hit. But you do have a lot of choice about what to do next. That much is in your power. In the coming years, expect the sky to blaze with Thunderbolts. They’re part of the game of constant change.” (80)
“Sympathy is like junk food. It has no real nourishment. The emptiness comes back very quickly. And nothing gets accomplished in the meantime.” (84)
“If you’re going to be a championship team, you have to think championship thoughts. “It’s OK to lose” will never be one of them. If you hear yourself, or your teammates, starting sentences with “If only” or “I could’ve” or “We should’ve,” you’ve heard thoughts that are going in the wrong direction.” (85)
“Giving yourself permission to lose guarantees a loss.” (85)
“It’s critical to realize that failure is as much a part of the picture as success. No matter how hard you compete, you ultimately have to absorb losses. So you do absorb them, with grace and a determination to learn whatever they might teach. But never be tempted to embrace them. Be angry. Be upset. Be determined to come back stronger next time. But do not be accepting. People who are negatively conditioned accept defeat. People who are positive don’t.” (86)
“The truly great ones can take criticism. Not just from the opponent, but also from their coaches, from the press and the fans.” (127)
“It’s a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don’t quit when you’re tired – you quit when the gorilla is tired.” -Robert Strauss (132)
“Competition brings out the very best and the very worst in us. Right now it’s bringing out the worst, but if he sticks with it, it’s going to bring out the best.” (132)
“Anytime you stop striving to get better, you’re bound to get worse. There’s no such thing in life as simply holding on to what you’ve got.” (149)
“Peter Drucker describes how a company has to prey itself out of the strategic mud when a business goes stale. “It requires stopping saying ‘we know’ and instead saying ‘let’s ask.’” (151)
“Excellence is the gradual result of always wanting to do better.” (161)
“The marketing campaign that we have launched over the past two years had to change how people felt about us, not how they thought about us.” (192)
“A business mission is likely to succeed if it puts a clear concept above raking in money; if the mission is updated to keep pace with a company’s own success; if the mission sets out what’s needed to be the best, not just an acceptable, performer in the industry.” (196)
“A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.” -John Barrymore (209)
“Security is always imaginary… deceptive… unattainable.” (215)
“I know one thing. It might be exhilaratingly bad or it might be exhilaratingly good. But I know it’s going to be exhilarating.” (233)
“When you’re playing against a stacked deck, compete even harder. Show the world how much you’ll fight for the winner’s circle. If you do, someday the cellophane will crackle off a fresh pack, one that belongs to you, and the cards will be stacked in your favor.” (249)
“Upstarts don’t win championships unless they score an absolute knockout. Upstarts win the right to come back next time and compete for the championship. That right is the key.” (250)
“The Winner Within’s Ladder of Evolution From nobody to upstart From upstart to contender From contender to winner From winner to champion From champion to dynasty” (251)
“The best persuaders become the best through pre-suasion – the process of arranging for recipients to be receptive to a message before they encounter it.” (4)
“What we present first changes the way people experience what we present to them next.” (4)
“In deciding whether a possibility is correct, people typically look for hits rather than misses; for confirmations of the idea rather than for disconfirmations. It is easier to register the presence of something than its absence.” (22)
“Half were stopped and asked if they wanted to provide their addresses for this purpose. Most were reluctant – only 33 percent volunteered their contact information. THe other subjects were asked initially, “Do you consider yourself to be somebody who is adventurous and likes to try new things?” Almost all said yes, following which, 75.7 percent gave their email addresses.” (26)
“The guiding factor in a decision is often not the one that counsels most wisely; it’s one that has recently been brought to mind.” (28)
“While timing his reintroduction of the crucial insight to coincide with the worst of the noise, he would lower his voice. To hear what Erickson was saying, patients had to lean forward, into the information – an embodied signal of focused attention and intense interest.” (30)
“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.” (33)
“The central tenet of agenda-setting theory is that the media rarely produce change directly, by presenting compelling evidence that sweeps an audience to new positions; they are much more likely to persuade indirectly, by giving selected issues and facts better coverage than other issues and facts.” (34)
“As the political scientist Bernard Cohen wrote, “The press may not be successful most of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling them what to think about.” (34)
“We can be brought to the mistaken belief that something is important merely because we have been led by Some irrelevant factor to give it our narrowed attention.” (35)
“While reading an online article about education, repeated exposure to a banner ad for a new brand of camera made the readers significantly more favorable to the ad when they were show it again later… Further, the more often the ad had appeared while they were reading the article, the more they came to like it.” (39-40)
“Classrooms with heavily decorated walls displaying lots of posters, maps, and artwork reduce the test scores of young children learning science material there. It is clear that background information can both guide and distract focus of attention; anyone seeking to influence optimally must manage that information thoughtfully.” (41)
“When you have a good case to make, you can employ – as openers – simply self-relevant cues (such as the word you) to predispose your audience toward a full consideration of that strong case before they see or hear it.” (84)
“Whether you offer your statement just before or after his, according to the next-in-line effect, Alex will have a hard time processing your solution, no matter how good it is. If your statement comes immediately prior to Alex’s, he’ll likely miss the specifics because he’ll be mentally rehearsing what he plans to say. If it comes immediately following Alex’s, he’ll likely miss those specifics because he’ll be internally rehashing what he just said.” (85)
“Unfinished tasks are the more memorable, hoarding attention so they can be performed and dispatched successfully.” (86)
“The greatest recall occurred for details of ads that the researchers stopped five to six seconds before their natural endings.” (88)
“When an important outcome is unknown to people, “they can hardly think of anything else.” And because, as we know, regular attention to something makes it seem more worthy of attention, the women’s repeated refocusing on those guys made them appear the most attractive.” (88)
“She never lets herself finish a writing session at the end of a paragraph or even a thought. She assured me she knows precisely what she wants to say at the end of that last paragraph or thought; she just doesn’t allow herself to say it until the next time. Brilliant! By keeping the final feature of every writing session near-finished, she uses the motivating force of the drive for closure to get her back to her chair quickly, impatient to write again.” (89)
“When presented properly, mysteries are so compelling that the reader can’t remain an aloof outside observer of story structure and elements. In the throes of this particular literary device, one is not thinking of literary devices; one’s attention is magnetized to the mystery story because of its inherent, unresolved nature.” (91)
“One of the best ways to enhance audience acceptance of one’s message is to reduce the availability of strong counterarguments to it – because counterarguments are typically more powerful than arguments.” (95)
“We convince others by using language that manages their mental associations to our message. Their thoughts, perceptions, and emotional reactions merely proceed from those associations.” (100)
“Multiple studies have shown that subtly exposing individuals to words that connote achievement (win, attain, succeed, master) increases their performance on an assigned task and more than doubles their willingness to keep working at it.” (103)
“The concept pre-loaded with associations most damaging to immediate assessments and future dealings is untrustworthiness, along with its concomitants, such as lying and cheating.” (110)
“Anything that is self-connected gets an immediate lift in our eyes. Sometimes the connections can be trivial but can still serve as springboards to persuasive success.” (110)
“When we grasp something fluently – that is, we can picture or process it quickly and effortlessly – we not only like that thing more but also think it is more valid and worthwhile.” (112)
“Within the domain of general attraction, observers have a greater liking for those who facial features are easy to recognize and whose names are easy to pronounce. Tellingly, when people can process something with cognitive ease, they experience increased neuronal activity in the muscles of their face that produce a smile. On the flip side, if it’s difficult to process something, observers tend to dislike that experience and, accordingly, that thing.” (113)
“An analysis of the names of five hundred attorneys at ten US law firms found that the harder an attorney’s name was to pronounce, the lower he or she stayed in the firm’s hierarchy.” (113)
“Background cues in one’s physical environment can guide how one thinks there.” (119)
“Steps people can take to make their lives better, emotionally – according to Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky: Count your blessings and gratitudes at the start of every day, and then give yourself concentrated time with them by writing them down. Cultivate optimism by choosing beforehand to look on the bright side of situations, events, and future possibilities. Negate the negative by deliberately limiting time spent dwelling on problems or on unhealthy comparisons with others.” (125)
“The basic idea of pre-suasion is that by guiding preliminary attention strategically, it’s possible for a communicator to move recipients into agreement with a message before they experience it.” (132)
“If/when-then plans are superior to simple intention statements or action plans such as “I intend to lose five pounds this month…” The “if/when-then” wording is designed to put us on high alert for a particular time or circumstance when a productive action could be performed. We become prepared, first, to notice the favorable time or circumstance and, second, to associate it automatically and directly with the desired result… Chronically unsuccessful dieters eat fewer high-calorie foods and lose more weight after forming if/when-then plans such as “If/when I see chocolate displayed in the supermarket, then I will think of my diet.”” (139-141)
“If we want them to buy a box of expensive chocolates, we can first arrange for them to write down a number that’s much larger than the price of the chocolates. If we want them to choose a bottle of French wine, we can expose them to French background music before they decide. If we want them to agree to try an untested product, we can first inquire whether they consider themselves adventurous. If we want to convince them to select a highly popular item, we can begin by showing them a scary movie. If we want them to feel warmly toward us, we can hand them a hot drink. If we want them to be more helpful to us, we can have them look at photos of individuals standing close together. If we want them to be more achievement oriented, we can provide them with an image of a runner winning a race. If we want them to make careful assessments, we can show them a picture of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker.” (151)
“What we give first should be experienced as meaningful, unexpected, and customized.” (155)
“I heard an assertion made repeatedly with great confidence: “The number one rule for salespeople is to get your customer to like you.” That was the case, we trainees were assured, because people say yes to those they like – something that was so undeniable that it never seemed interesting to me. What did interest me, though, was what we were told to do to arrange for customers to like us. Being friendly, attractive, and humorous were mentioned frequently in this regard. Accordingly, we were often given smiling lessons, grooming tips, and jokes to tell. But by far, two specific ways to create positive feelings got the most attention. We were instructed to highlight similarities and provide compliments.” (158)
“Compliments nourish and sustain us emotionally. They also cause us to like and benefit those who provide them; and this is true whether the praise is for our appearance, taste, personality, work habits, or intelligence.” (159)
“Similarities and compliments cause people to feel that you like them, and once they come to recognize that you like them, they’ll want to do business with you. That’s because people trust that those who like them will try to steer them correctly. So by my lights, the number one rule for salespeople is to show customers that you genuinely like them.” (160)
“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” (160)
“When we see evidence of the increased frequency of an action, it elevates our judgements of the act’s moral correctness.” (161)
“A great strength of social-proof information is that it destroys the problem of uncertain achievability. If people learn that many others like them are conserving energy, there is little doubt as to its feasibility. It comes to seem realistic and, therefore, implementable.” (163-164)
“A communicator who references a weakness early on is immediately seen as more honest.” (165)
“The weakness-before-strength tactic works best when the strength doesn’t just add something positive to the list of pros and cons but, instead, challenges the relevance of the weakness.” (167)
“Any constraint on access increased the worth of what was being offered.” (168)
“If one romantic partner agrees to pray for the other’s well-being every day for an extended period of time, he or she becomes less likely to be unfaithful while doing so.” (169)
“Organizations can raise the probability that an individual will appear at a meeting or event by switching from saying at the end of a reminder phone call, “We’ll mark you on the list as coming then. Thank you!” to “We’ll mark you on the list as coming then, okay? [Pause for confirmation.] Thank you.”” (169)
“The stage of one’s relationship with them affects which influence principles to best employ. At the first stage, the main goal involves cultivating a positive association, as people are more favorable to a communication if they are favorable to the communicator. Two principles of influence, reciprocity and liking, seem particularly appropriate to the task. Giving first (in a meaningful, unexpected, and customized fashion), highlighting genuine commonalities, and offering true compliments establish mutual rapport that facilitates all future dealings. At the second stage, reducing uncertainty becomes a priority. A positive relationship with a communicator doesn’t ensure persuasive success. Before people are likely to change, they want to see any decision as wise. Under these circumstances, the principles of social proof and authority offer the best match. Pointing to evidence that a choice is well regarded by peers or experts significantly increases confidence in its wisdom. But even with a positive association cultivated and uncertainty reduced, a remaining step needs to be taken. A this third stage, motivating action is the main objective. That is, a well-liked friend might show me sufficient proof that experts recommend (and almost all my peers believe) that daily exercise is a good thing, but that might not be enough to get me to do it. The friend would do well to include in his appeal the principles of consistency and scarcity by reminding me of what I’ve said publicly in the past about the importance of my health and the unique enjoyments I would miss if I lost it. That’s the message that would most likely get me up in the morning and off to the gym.” (171)
“The relationships that lead people to favor another most effectively are not those that allow them to say, “Oh, that person is like us.” They are the ones that allow people to say, “Oh, that person is of us.”” (175)
“Acting together – in motoric, vocal, or sensory ways – can serve as a surrogate for being together in a kinship unit.” (194)
“The help wasn’t rooted in rationality at all. It was spontaneous, intuitive, and based on an emotional sense of connection that naturally accompanies shared musical engagement.” (198)
“Recipients with nonrational, hedonistic goals should be matched with messages containing nonrational elements such as musical accompaniment, whereas those with rational, pragmatic goals should be matched with messages containing rational elements such as facts.” (200)
“Managers led to believe that they’d had a large role in developing the end product rated the ad 50 percent more favorably than did managers led to believe they’d had little developmental involvement – even though the final ad they saw was identical in all cases.” (204)
“The more the managers attributed the success of the project to themselves, the more they also attributed it to the ability of their employee.” (204)
“Providing advice puts a person in a merging state of mind, which stimulates a linking of one’s own identity with another party’s. Providing an opinion or expectation, on the other hand, puts a person in an introspective state of mind, which involves focusing on oneself.” (206)
“Background exposure to the American flag put participants in mind of Republican Party thinking; indeed, a pilot study done by the researchers showed that, in 2008 anyway, Americans reliably made that link between the flag and Republicanism.” (226)
“Our minds are built for stories. We crave them, and, when there aren’t ready ones available, we create them. Stories about our origins. Our purpose. The reasons the world is the way ti is. Human beings don’t like to exist in a state of uncertainty or ambiguity. When something doesn’t make sense, we want to supply the missing link. When we don’t understand what or why or how something happened, we want to find the explanation.” (6)
“Give us a compelling story, and we open up.” (7)
“As long as the desire for magic, for a reality that is somehow greater than our everyday existence, remains, the confidence game will thrive.” (8)
“Cons thrive in times of transition and fast change, when new things are happening and old ways of looking at the world no longer suffice.” (9)
“Technology doesn’t make us more worldly or knowledgeable. It doesn’t protect us. It’s just a change of venue for the same old principles of confidence. What are you confident in? The con artist will find those things where your belief is unshakeable and will build on that foundation to subtly change the world around you. But you will be so confident in the starting point that you won’t even notice what’s happened.” (10)
“The confidence game starts with basic human psychology. From the artist’s perspective, it’s a question of identifying the victim (the put-up): who is he, what does he want, and how can I play on that desire to achieve what I want? It requires the creation of empathy and rapport (the play): an emotional foundation must be laid before any scheme is proposed, any game set in motion. Only then does it move to logic and persuasion (the rope): the scheme (the tale), the evidence and the way it will work to your benefit (the convincer), the show of actual profits. And like a fly caught in a spider’s web, the more we struggle, the less able to extricate ourselves ew become (the breakdown). By the time things begin to look dicey, we tend to be so invested, emotionally and often physically, that we do most of the persuasion ourselves.” (12)
“When we see other people talking about their unbelieveable deal or crazy good fortune, we realize at once that they’ve been taken for a sucker. But when it happens to us, well, I am just lucky and deserving of a good turn.” (12)
“Genes load the gun; the environment pulls the trigger.” (27)
“The more adept a swimmer was at self-deception, the more likely she was to have made the cut.” (43)
“A victim isn’t necessarily foolish or greedy. A victim is simply more emotionally vulnerable at the exact moment the confidence artist approaches.” (48)
“Mere exposure has real evolutionary value. If we’ve seen something before, and it didn’t kill us, well, our chances are probably better than with something we can’t predict.” (68)
“The bad grammar and seemingly implausible notes: those aren’t from stupidity. They’re actually well thought out beforehand. Scammers have learned the hard way that notes that sound too legitimate hook too many fish, making the wedding-out process incredibly costly. Now only the true sucker falls for the pitch.” (77-78)
“The best confidence artist makes us feel not like we’re being taken for a ride but like we are genuinely wonderful human beings.” (102)
“So strong is narrative that it has been shown to be one of the few successful ways of getting someone to change her mind about important issues.” (103)
“Gripping narratives may often supersede any logic or more direct tactic: in some cases, it can be the only strategy for getting someone to agree with you or behave in a certain way, where any direct appeals would be met with resistance.” (103)
“French and Raven posited that there were five major bases from which power derives: reward power, or the belief that someone is able to reward you; coercive power, or the belief that someone is able to punish you somehow; legitimate power, or an actual basis of authority; referent power, or power derived from your affiliation with someone; and expert power, from someone’s expertise on a topic.” (149)
“It’s a phenomenon known as the illusion of truth: we are more likely to think something is true if it feels familiar.” (163)
“The call to “imagine the benefits” can come even before any concrete proposal. Just a seemingly throwaway remark, a casting of the rope, so to speak, before you even realize that anything is on offer. You’ve planted the suggestion and, when the time for the real proposal comes along, the mark is more likely to see it as coming from her own initiative.” (163-4)
“The whole secret to our success is being able to con ourselves into believing that we’re going to change the world – because statistically, we are unlikely to do it.” -Tom Peters
“One of our fundamental drives is the need for self-affirmation: we need to feel worthy, to feel needed, to feel like we matter.” (172)
“We hold an unwavering commitment to the notion that we are special – and not just special, but more special than most anyone else.” (175)
“The more exceptional we see ourselves, the easier we may be to con.” (179)
“Cons aren’t about money or about love. They are about our beliefs. We are savvy investors. We are discerning with our love interests. We have a stellar reputation. We are, fundamentally, people to whom good things happen with good reason. We live in a world full of wonder – not a world of uncertainty and negativity. We live in a world where good things happen to those who wait. The teller of the tale has us hooked.” (194)
“We are confident that we can judge how sound of character someone is. And the moment they prove us right, it will take a miracle for them to lose that trust.” (215)
“Once we’ve invested heavily in something, we no longer see it clearly, no matter the costs. Things that are red flags in retrospect are dismissed as irrelevant once we’ve already sunk sufficient resources – money, time, reputation – into an endeavor.” (266)
“We overestimate the extent to which we, personally, are the designers of our success, as opposed to it just happening all on its own. When something goes wrong, we’re only too eager to blame ill fortune. Not so when it goes right.” (276)
“Why is the illusion of control so persistent? Often, it can be quite beneficial for our health and success. It helps us deal with stress and keep going instead of giving up in frustration. Individuals who feel in control are more likely to recover quickly from illnesses and be healthier, both physically and mentally.” (278)
“But we are not statistics to ourselves. And our view of the world is so egocentric, so intimately tied to the notion that we are just as important to everyone else as we are to ourselves, that we cannot fathom that everybody isn’t caring nearly as much about our story as we ourselves do. So we cling to our reputation. We think everyone pays attention to the slightest thing we do, the slightest thing we say, the slightest deviation in our demeanor.” (301)
“We want to believe. Believe that things make sense. That an action leads to a result. That things don’t just happen willy-nilly no matter what we do, but rather for a reason. That what we do makes a difference, however small. That we ourselves matter. That there is a grand story, a higher method to the seeming madness. And in the heart of that desire, we easily become blind. The eternal lure of the con is the same reason religions arise spontaneously in most any human society. People always want something to believe in.” (307)
“Human nature is wired toward creating meaning out of meaninglessness.” (310)
“Religiosity is one of the few factors that consistently predicts susceptibility to fraud. It’s a thin line between belief in one miracle and belief in another.” (318)
“Despite the book sales and the fame, Bukowski was a loser. He knew it. And his success stemmed not from some determination to be a winner, but from the fact that he knew he was a loser, accepted it, and then wrote honestly about it. He never tried to be anything other than what he was. The genius in Bukowski’s work was not in overcoming unbelievable odds or developing himself into a shining literary light. It was the opposite. It was his simple ability to be completely, unflinchingly honest with himself – especially the worst parts of himself – and to share his failings without hesitation or doubt.” (3)
“Giving too many fucks is bad for your mental health. It causes you to become overly attached to the superficial and fake, to dedicate your life to chasing a mirage of happiness and satisfaction. The key to a good life is not giving a fuck about more; it’s giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important.” (5)
“Our crisis is no longer material; it’s existential, it’s spiritual. We have so much fuckign stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore.” (8)
“Because there’s an infinite amount of thigns we can now see or know, there are also an infinite number of ways we can discover that we don’t measure up, that we’re not good enough, that things aren’t as great as they could be.” (9)
“The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.” (9)
“The more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place.” (9)
“Most of us struggle throughout our lives by giving too many fucks in situations where fucks do not deserve to be given.” (12)
“Subtlety #1: Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different.” (14)
“No matter where you go, there’s a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that’s perfectly fine. The point isn’t to get away from the shit. THe point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.” (17)
“Subtlety #2: To not give a fuck about adversity, you must first give a fuck about something more important than adversity.” (17)
“There is a premise that underlies a lot of our assumptions and beliefs. The premise is that happiness is algorithmic, that it can be worked for and earned and achieved as if it were getting accepted to law school or building a really complicated Lego set. If I achieve X, then I can be happy. If I look like Y, then I can be happy. If I can be with a person like Z, then I can be happy. This premise, though, is the problem. Happiness is not a solvable equation. Dissatisfaction and unease are inherent parts of human nature and, as we’ll see, necessary components to creating consistent happiness.” (26)
“We suffer for the simple reason that suffering is biologically useful. It is nature’s preferred agent for inspiring change.” (27)
“Life is essentially an endless series of problems, Mark,” the Disappointment Panda told me. He sipped his drink and adjusted the little pink umbrella. “The solution to one problem is merely the creation of the next one… Don’t hope for a life without problems,” the panda said. “There’s no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problems.”” (30)
“Problems never stop; they merely get exchanged and/or upgraded. Happiness comes from solving problems.” (31)
“The secret sauce is in the solving of the problems, not in not having problems in the first place.” (31)
“To be happy we need something to solve. Happiness is therefore a form of action; it’s an activity, not something that is passively bestowed upon you.” (31)
“True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.” (32)
“Emotions are simply biological signal designed to nudge you in the direction of beneficial change.” (34)
“An obsession and overinvestment in emotion fails us for the simple reason that emotions never last.” (35)
“A more interesting question, a question that most people never consider, is, “What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?” Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.” (36)
“Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.” (40)
“The true measurement of self-worth is not how a person feels about her positive experiences, but rather how she feels about her negative experiences.” (46)
“Construing everything in life so as to make yourself out to be constantly victimized requires just as much selfishness as the opposite.” (56)
“Technology has solved old economic problems by giving us new psychological problems. The Internet has not just open-sourced information; it has also open-sourced insecurity, self-doubt, and shame.” (60)
“The rare people who do become truly exceptional at something do so not because they believe they’re exceptional. On the contrary, they become amazing because they’re obsessed with improvement. And that obsession with improvement stems from an unerring belief that they are, in fact, not that great at all. It’s anti-entitlement. People who become great at something become great because they understand that they’re not already great – they are mediocre, they are average – and that they could be so much better.” (61)
“The question is not whether we evaluate ourselves against others; rather, the question is by what standard do we measure ourselves?” (78)
“Self-improvement is really about prioritizing better values, choosing better things to give a fuck about. Because when you give better fucks, you get better problems. And when you get better problems, you get a better life.” (89)
“Often the only difference between a problem being painful or being powerful is a sense that we chose it, and that we are responsible for it.” (91)
“If you’re miserable in your current situation, chances are it’s because you feel like some part of it is outside your control – that there’s a problem you have no ability to solve, a problem that was somehow thrust upon you without your choosing.” (91)
“When we feel that we’re choosing our problems, we feel empowered. When we feel that our problems are being forced upon us against our will, we feel victimized and miserable.” (91)
“There is a simple realization form which all personal improvement and growth emerges. This is the realization that we, individually, are responsible for everything in our lives, no matter the external circumstances. We don’t always control what happens to use. But we always control how we interpret what happens to us, as well as how we respond.” (94)
“The more we choose to accept responsibility in our lives, the more power we will exercise over our lives.” (96)
“Nobody else is ever responsible for your situation but you. Many people may be to blame for your unhappiness, but nobody is ever responsible for your unhappiness but you.” (99)
“If the people in your relationships are selfish and doing hurtful things, it’s likely you are too, you just don’t realize it.” (101)
“You are already choosing, in every moment of every day, what to give a fuck about, so change is as simple as choosing to give a fuck about something else.” (113)
“Evil people never believe that they are evil; rather, they believe that everyone else is evil.” (133)
“My recommendation: don’t be special; don’t be unique. Redefine your metrics in mundane and broad ways. Choose to measure yourself not as a rising star or an undiscovered genius. Choose to measure yourself not as some horrible victim or dismal failure. Instead, measure yourself by more mundane identities: a student, a partner, a friend, a creator. The narrower and rarer the identity you choose for yourself, the more everything will seem to threaten you.” (140)
“If it feels like it’s you versus the world, chances are it’s really just you versus yourself.” (146)
“Improvement at anything is based on thousands of tiny failures, and the magnitude of your success is based on how many times you’ve failed at something. If someone is better than you at something, then it’s likely because she has failed at it more than you have. If someone is worse than you, it’s likely because he hasn’t been through all of the painful learning experiences you have.” (150)
“It’s growth that generates happiness, not a long list of arbitrary achievements.” (152)
“Just as one must suffer physical pain to build stronger bone and muscle, one must suffer emotional pain to develop greater emotional resilience, a stronger sence of self, increased compassion, and a generally happier life.” (154)
“Life is about not knowing and then doing something anyway. All of life is like this. It never changes. Even when you’re happy.” (158)
“Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it.” (160)
“Someone asked the novelist how he was able to write so consistently and remain inspired and motivated. He replied, “Two hundred crappy words per day, that’s it.” The idea was that if he forced himself to write two hundred crappy words, more often than not the act of writing would inspire him; and before he knew it, he’d have thousands of words down on the page.” (162)
“There’s a bluntness to Russian culture that generally rubs Westerners the wrong way. Gone are the fake niceties and verbal webs of politeness. You don’t smile at strangers or pretend to like anything you don’t. In Russia, if something is stupid, you say it’s stupid. If someone is being an asshole, you tell him he’s being an asshole. If you really like someone and are having a great time, you tell her that you like her and are having a great time. It doesn’t matter if this person is your friend, a stranger, or someone you met five minutes ago on the street.” (167)
“There is such pressure in the West to be likable that people often reconfigure their entire personality depending on the person they’re dealing with.” (170)
“Unhealthy love is based on two people trying to escape their problems through their emotions for each other – in other words, they’re using each other as an escape. Healthy love is based on two people acknowledging and addressing their own problems with each other’s support.” (175)
“The mark of an unhealthy relationship is two people who try to solve each other’s problems in order to feel good about themselves. Rather, a healthy relationship is when two people solve their own problems in order to feel good about each other.” (177)
“It’s not about giving a fuck about everything your partner gives a fuck about; it’s about giving a fuck about your partner regardless of the fucks he or she gives. That’s unconditional love, baby.” (181)
“When our highest priority is to always make ourselves feel good, or to always make our partner feel good, then nobody ends up feeling good. And our relationship falls apart without our even knowing it.” (182)
“Commitment makes decision-making easier and removes any fear of missing out; knowing that what you already have is good enough, why would you ever stress about chasing more, more, more again? Commitment allows you to focus intently on a few highly important goals and achieve a greater degree of success than you otherwise would.” (189)
“If there really is no reason to do anything, then there is also no reason to not do anything.” (194)
“Whether you’re listening to Aristotle or the psychologists at Harvard or Jesus Christ or the goddamn Beatles, they all say that happiness comes from the same thing: caring about something greater than yourself, believing that you are a contributing component in some much larger entity, that your life is but a mere side process of some great unintelligible production. This feeling is what people go to church for; it’s what they fight in wars for; it’s what they raise families and save pensions and build bridges and invent cell phones for: this fleeting sense of being part of something greater and more unknowable than themselves.” (206)
