If you’re even remotely nerdy like I am then you’ve imagined being able to control inanimate objects with your mind in some way. If you’ve never walked into a convenience store that has automatic sliding doors while waving a hand and humming the imperial march then you, sir or madam, are a liar. Being able to move cars out of the way in traffic with a wave of the hand would not only be awesome, it would be awfully convenient for getting through that morning rush hour traffic. A wonderful dream, yes.

So, what if I told you that there is a way to do that? No, you don’t have to jump into a vat of acid or be endowed with a mutant gene that got activates once your balls drop. It’s more of a manipulative trick. A somewhat good kind of manipulation. No, seriously, no one gets hurt (usually).

Earlier I spoke about understanding how others think and how making educated judgements on character will help you to gain information before even interacting with them. Well, that’s going to come into play here and in many topics that we’ll discuss.

Believe it or not, having an idea about how someone thinks can allow you to make them do what you want them to do. More specifically, you’ll be better able to control the situation and bend it in your favor.

One of my favorite examples of this, and something I’ve personally experienced a million times (give or take), is waving a driver along who crosses my path allowing me to continue to walk across the street, maintaining momentum. There’s a very good chance you’ve seen this happen before. A guy pulls up to stop sign at the same moment you’re about to cross the street. He does so quite abruptly, not giving you much time to react. In this short time-frame, however, there is a wealth of information you can collect.

Since they stopped so abruptly, it’s safe to assume they could be in a rush, generally have a lead foot or somehow didn’t see that you were about to cross in front of them. If you are like me, looking to maintain momentum, then this would be the ideal moment to just wave them along and cross behind their car. No need to further interact with a driver who is clearly in a rush for whatever reason. They could be an asshole, say something to you and attempt to ruin your day. By waving them along you’re helping their agenda as well. So, in a sense, you’re doing a good deed by waving them across. You both get to maintain momentum and everyone a little bit happier for it. It’s a bit of a win-win situation and we both move on with our day.

This equates to a situation in poker where you’re sitting with the nuts against an aggressive player who you know can’t resist the urge to bluff his way out of a pot. You check your way down each street and each time he fires another bullet in an effort to get you off of the hand. You know this because you’ve been paying attention to the way he’s been playing the entire time. The first time you check, you’re convincing him that you’re not very interested in the pot. For this example, we’ll assume that the aggressor has position on you, but the type of player that we’re discussing would probably lead out if he was the first to act. Since he’s an aggressive player the odds are pretty strong that he will see that as weakness and throw out a bet in an attempt to steal the pot. You’ve manipulated your opponent into doing what you’ve wanted him to do, in this case, give you money when you’ve got a sure win. At this point you may as well have reached over and grabbed those chips directly from his stack. Don’t actually do that. You’ll probably die.

Even though you’ve got the best possible hand in this situation, you still need to be able to evaluate the situation on every street. You may ask, why should I still care about which cards are coming out of the deck when I have the best possible hand? Just like the situation with crossing the road. It’s easy to assume that it’s a no-brainer situation but there can be new variables to consider each time. In most cases, the car will stop for you and you’ll be able to go anyway. So why bother gauging the situation and potentially going around the car? You’ve lost some momentum, could potentially increase your stress level and the stalemate could have slowed you down if you’re in a rush. Even though both outcomes end up with you crossing the road, you’re not getting the most value out of the situation by showing uncertainty. A clear course of action based on data gathered from the opposition will help you guide them to where you need them to go. Knowing your opponents intentions will help you extract the most value.

It absolutely pays to know if your opponent has a weak hand, so you can avoid showing too much strength and inducing a sense of regret or any sense that they are beaten. In turn, you need to assess their perception of you. Are you walking so aggressively that they’ll stop for you? or might they see you as timid and more likely to stop for them? Have you been playing aggressively all night or only showing strength when you have a hand. This perception is important. You want them to feel like they have the option of bluffing into you. So, on every street you need to able to look at that next card, evaluate and wonder “does that card improve his hand or will it scare him off?”

The point here is that by evaluating the situation, the opposition, their perception of you and the change in variables you can use that information to your advantage by manipulating their actions with your actions. In this case, he may have even looked the part of the aggressor before he even sat down at the table or pulled up to the stop sign and has lived up to your expectations. That information has given you a path to follow and is about to pay off in spades (womp womp).

A quick aside. I know it’s a bit taboo these days to pass judgement on someone so quickly and I don’t condone the notion of assuming their entire personality based on a stereotype. However, stereotypes exist for a reason. In most cases, very loosely, they are true when it comes to broader topics like assessing if someone is passive, loose, tight or aggressive. We only have our previous knowledge to go on, which is a very evolutionary behavior of ours. That guesswork is all you have until you gain more information, so run with it until new information presents itself.

Many situations in life and on the felt can be played out very differently based on the information that is laid out in front of you. For example, if you were the aggressor early in the hand then you may want to throw out a continuation bet after the flop since that is what is expected of most players. Checking when you’re expected to bet will arouse suspicion and set off an alarm in the other players’ head. In the car scenario, if you see that the driver looks less aggressive then you’re most likely to be able to walk in front of them and they’ll be more likely to wave you along and stop for you. You give a smile and wave to keep moving along. Waving them along wouldn’t be ideal as they would probably proceed cautiously or react if you started to walk in a way they weren’t expecing you to.

In summary, if you want someone to perform an instinctual action based on the information that you give them then that information needs to make sense to them in order for them to comply.  

So, how do we know what makes sense? The simplest answer would be by gaining knowledge of which situations make sense and which ones don’t. We can pick up this knowledge through books, watching documentaries on TV or reading articles on how to improve our general lives. However, there is no replacement for experimenting through experience. Every situation presents itself with an opportunity to learn something new. It’s up to you to accept that knowledge and utilize it in key situations. Every situation is a new opportunity to learn. You may even want to put yourself into those new situations on purpose in order to better prepare yourself for similar situations in the future and make certain everyday decisions that much easier to make.

The world and everything that happens in it is based on some very basic functions when you take a step back to think about it. There are triggers and there are actions. Triggers are what get things started and actions are what occurs when something is triggered. Newton’s third law states that for every action there is an equal or opposite reaction. In order to get that reaction we desire or in order to properly observe any action we need to think about what the trigger is. What caused this to happen? What action came about as a result? What are the repercussions or reactions of this action going to be? Are there multiple potential triggers or outcomes? Learning from new situations can be as simple as asking yourself these questions during even the most mundane of moments.

I’m a huge fan of trying new things not just because of some fascination to know and experience everything, which I guess is part of it, but it’s largely because we're all getting older with no rewind button. As we get older we start to get used to the things that we do every day. We get up, brush our teeth, go to work, blah blah blah. You can barely differentiate Tuesday from Thursday (I know the difference because I thoroughly enjoy tacos. Not my point). Our brains have to process less information on a daily basis and our days seem shorter because of it. The blah, blah, blah earlier in the paragraph? That's exactly what your brain does. It consolidates those other daily tasks into one variable. A "yeah, yeah, yeah I get it" sort of thing. Our brains are very efficient and will skip over what it already knows. Have you ever driving home from work and suddenly realize you don’t remember part of the commute? That’s your brain telling you that you don’t need that information. You were cognizant and aware during that time but you’re on autopilot at this point because you have been there before.

Time itself doesn't speed up, that would be silly, but the perception of time shortens because your brain is literally skipping over the things it's already done. By doing the same things every day you are basically tossing out duplicate information, tossing out chunks of time. Time might as well be speeding up. I know doing new things all the time is easier said than done. In fact, having a routine is good for productivity, but it doesn't need to be the same exact thing every day. Try a different item on the menu of a restaurant you like, or go to a different restaurant this time. Take a different route to work or listen to a new album or podcast in the car. Make different conversation then you normally would when you’re at the poker table or try a new home or casino. Try a different news source when you're having your coffee in the morning or try a different kind of coffee. Even sitting in a different seat can awaken a new perspective. It sounds silly, but try it. You owe it to yourself to be able to enjoy every single possible moment that you can, while you can and extend the perception of the time you have by stepping out of your comfort zone to make your brain process new things, experience more things and essentially extend your life.