The Laws of Human Nature

You must learn how to exploit this. If you can somehow create the impression that others desire you or your work, you will pull people into your current without having to say a word or impose yourself. They will come to you. You must strive to surround yourself with this social aura, or at least create the illusion.

Or perhaps we fall in love with a person who is precisely the wrong type for us and we know it, but we cannot help ourselves.

In general, people will want to see more of you, want to see less of you, or be rather indifferent. They may fluctuate among the three states, but they will tend to veer toward one. They will reveal this in how quickly they respond to your emails or texts, their body language on first seeing you, and the overall tone they take in your presence.

We begin to assume we can handle new challenges well before we are read

The weakness stems from our natural tendency to overestimate our skills.

executive but rather a renaissance man.

He imagined he had the golden touch.

of rigorously focusing on the audience and how to entertain people, he started to increasingly focus on himself, believing in the myth of his greatness as promulgated by others.

He understood and exploited to the maximum his strengths—his ambitious and competitive nature, his intense work ethic, his keen sense for the entertainment tastes of the average American.

At the beginning of his career at ABC, young Eisner had a solid grasp on reality. He was fiercely practical.