Success does not lie in sticking to things. It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quitting the rest. - Annie Duke

Over time, those world-class poker players taught me to understand what a bet really is: a decision about an uncertain future. The implications of treating decisions as bets made it possible for me to find learning opportunities in uncertain environments. Treating decisions as bets, I discovered, helped me avoid common decision traps, learn from results in a more rational way, and keep emotions out of the process as much as possible.

It turns out the better you are with numbers, the better you are at spinning those numbers to conform to and support your beliefs.

Gabriele Oettingen, professor of psychology at NYU and author of Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation, has conducted over twenty years of research, consistently finding that people who imagine obstacles in the way of reaching their goals are more likely to achieve success, a process she has called "mental contrasting." Her first study, of women enrolled in a weight-loss program, found that subjects "who had strong positive fantasies about slimming down . . . lost twenty-four pounds less than those who pictured themselves more negatively."