Why Hard Leverage Matters Most in Choosing Your Target

What matters most when choosing a target?
It's the hard lever, not the soft one.

What do I mean by a soft lever?
He brought you flowers today. He remembered your birthday. That's a soft lever. Maybe he brought the flowers because he wants something from you. Maybe he remembered your birthday for the same reason.

When someone has an agenda, every quality they show is soft.
You go to a store, and the clerk is incredibly attentive. But if you visit ten or eight times and never buy anything, try that—see how attentive they still are.
That attitude after repeated visits is their true nature. Everything before that was just a soft, superficial illusion.

So if you want to evaluate a guy's character, don't look at how he treats you—look at how he treats people who have no connection to him.
For example, how he treats waitstaff, how he handles traffic jams, his mood in those moments. These details reveal whether someone is genuinely gentle or secretly volatile.
Of course, keep in mind this isn't saying gentleness alone is enough, or that a temperamental person is automatically bad. It's just one dimension.