Rituals force the mind to focus on the next play, not the last one.

While we can only guess why other people do what they do in poker or any other situation, our biggest blind spot tends to be knowing our own weaknesses. There’s a famous quote from Richard Feynman: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”

The real test of a person is the degree to which they are willing to nonconform to do the right thing.

Avoiding conflict is comfortable and easy. The longer we avoid the conflict, however, the more necessary it becomes to continue avoiding it. What starts out as avoiding a small but difficult conversation quickly grows into avoiding a large and seemingly impossible one. The weight of what we avoid eventually affects our relationship.

One reason we resist change is that keeping things the way they are requires almost no effort. This helps explain why we get complacent. It takes a lot of effort to build momentum but far less to maintain it. Once something becomes “good enough,” we can stop the effort and still get decent results. The inertia default leverages our desire to stay

The social rewards for going with the crowd are felt long before the benefits of going against it are gained.

Our ego tempts us into thinking we’re more than we are. Left unchecked, it can turn confidence into overconfidence or even arrogance.

Warren Buffett similarly highlighted the effects of the social default in his 1984 letter to Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders: Most managers have very little incentive to make the intelligent-but-with-some-chance-of-looking-like-an-idiot decision. Their personal gain/loss ratio is all too obvious: if an unconventional decision works out well, they

The good news is that the same biological tendencies that make us react without reasoning can be reprogrammed into forces for good.