Our brains are designed for efficiency, which sometimes expresses itself as laziness.

We may have hundreds of Facebook friends whose every move we follow, but with whom we never have a meaningful conversation. So many of our conversations are electronic that we’ve dulled some of those skills that are only useful in real life: timing, yielding, listening, and perceiving facial expressions and body language.

You’ll get the greatest compliance by maximizing frequency and minimizing intensity.

Consider what about you makes you valuable as a friend, and whenever you’re in a new social situation, think about which of your assets will most be appreciated by that group and work on conveying them. Do it early in the interaction and then move on to getting to know everyone else.

There are four main channels being communicated on at all times: content, meta, emotion, and status.

When telling a story, you should have three primary phases in order: the setup, the buildup, and the payoff.

You can do just about anything if you break it down into habits and execute on them. That’s not to say that it’s easy, only that it’s possible. The key is to be honest about what’s stopping you from success, take responsibility for it, and create new habits to correct.

New habits are things that you do, but old habits are things that you are.

Assuming that everything is your fault is a shortcut for finding those areas where you have control, and opening the door to exerting that control for positive change.

Mistakes will happen, but the most important thing is how you react to them.