Key points

People-pleasers tend to use expensive mental tricks to live up to others' expectations of them.

Athletes may create enemies for motivation, while others may use worst-case scenarios to optimally perform.

Cynicism is the foundation of people-pleasing, contributing to decisions solely based on survival.

We use mental tricks to survive. Those who struggle with time management frequently trick themselves by setting reminders to arrive earlier than they need to so they won’t be late. Athletes, especially when exhausted, motivate themselves by “finding” reasons to hate their opponents; Michael Jordan notoriously did this, especially late into a season. And some engage in defensive pessimism , telling themselves that some endeavor is going to go poorly as a way to motivate them

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