Again, the idea of reciprocity and the power of giving is more than you can imagine.

Of course, there are financial limits to this at every level, but here are 7 ideas to make reciprocity part of your everyday life:

1. Tip well.
2. Give your boss a Christmas gift.
3. Give your boss’s boss a Christmas gift.
4. Go out to dinner with your in-laws and pick-up the check.
5. Compliment your co-workers publicly.
6. Give away books you no longer want.
7. And compliment ALL women on their shoes, if the situation permits.

See, entire nations can even do seemingly senseless things in the face of a gift.

Reciprocity and the power of giving can make people act irrational. But this principle can be used to your advantage, if you think about it.

Be armed with this, but please be ethical.

What mountains are you about to move?

Understand: Gifts give you control..

One of the reasons reciprocation can be used so effectively as a device for gaining another’s compliance is its power. The rule possesses awesome strength, often producing a “yes” response to a request that, except for an existing feeling of indebtedness, would have surely been refused.

-Robert Cialdini, Influence (Amazon)

If you need a reciprocity example for more proof of how powerful this principle actually is. Here you go.

See, even when one is at their most venerable, a gift forces their hand.

Apparently this even holds between nations?

I’m sorry, this is just nuts.

But this reciprocity example beautifully illustrates an idea that most people never even take the time to see.

I know of no better illustration of how reciprocal obligations can reach long and powerfully into the future than the perplexing story of five thousand dollars of relief aid that was sent in 1985 between Mexico and the impoverished people of Ethiopia. In 1985 Ethiopia could justly lay claim to the greatest suffering and privation in the world. Its economy was in ruin. Its food supply had been ravaged by years of drought and internal war. Its inhabitants were dying by the thousands from disease and starvation. Under these circumstances, I would not have been surprised to learn of a five-thousand-dollar relief donation from Mexico to that wrenchingly needy country. I remember my chin hitting my chest, though, when a brief newspaper item I was reading insisted that the aid had gone in the opposite direction. Native officials of the Ethiopian Red Cross had decided to send the money to help the victims of that year’s earthquakes in Mexico City. It is both a personal bane and a professional blessing that whenever I am confused by some aspect of human behavior, I feel driven to investigate further. In this instance, I was able to track down a fuller account of the story. Fortunately a journalist who had been as bewildered as I was by the Ethiopians’ action had asked for an explanation. The answer he received offers eloquent validation of the reciprocity rule: Despite the enormous needs prevailing in Ethiopia, the money was being sent because Mexico had sent aid to Ethiopia in 1935, when it was invaded by Italy.

-Robert Cialdini, Influence (Amazon)