Loss Aversion The reasons you won't make a deal are typically more important than the reasons you will make a deal. There's Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economics theory that says that people will put a value of losses on at least twice what an equivalent gain is. So losing $5 stings at least twice as much as gaining $5. Losing $5 feels like losing $10 or even $35 - it's just a ridiculous skewing in our brains over loss.

Understand and be nice to people and they'll be nice to you I remember one time I was on the phone with a customer service airlines person, and that's gotta be a tough job because those people get yelled at all day long every day. Nobody calls customer service unless they're unhappy.

And this woman was one of those women that clearly been yelled at 50 times during the day, and she was not interested in staying on the phone with me a moment longer than she had to. And I remember when I was off the phone and she had me on hold, I remember saying, "You know, I guarantee you this woman right now is thinking, she's saying to her colleagues, 'You know, this guy's lucky I'm talking to him on a phone at all!'"

So I was thinking about the negative of that, and then I was about the flip side. Well in her view, if she thinks I'm lucky to be talking to her on the phone, then the flip side of that is she's actually being generous in her mind and her world. She came back on the phone and I said to her, "You know what? I really appreciate how generous you've been with your time." And I could tell immediately her frame of mind changed. She put me back on hold for about a minute and a half after that. And when she came back on the phone, she'd given me a full refund on my ticket.

Most people, if you're nice to them, can help you by doing a little bit if you give them a chance. If you're just nice to people, it's amazing what they'll do for you.