Vertex Views

Tag: infection

  • Assume Formlessness

    By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack. Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp keep yourself adaptable and on the move. Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed. The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.

    I want to discuss how the concept of ‘water’ applies to these laws. When we talk about water, we’re talking about the symbol for the idea of assuming formlessness.

    But what is formlessness?

    Formlessness is simply having no regular shape or form, constantly adapting, constantly changing, and that is one of the main characteristics of water. It is constantly changing and adapting to its circumstances. Whatever is in front of the water, it will find a way to move around it, whether that be the natural rock eroding from the seawater, or whether that be a tsunami wiping out an entire town. The Hoover Dam will one day collapse, whether that be 100 years, a thousand years, or a million years. Water will always find its way around the object in front of it.

    Water is such an incredible symbol for life. If you can assume formlessness, and if you can assume the characteristics of water — constantly adapting and changing, never taking one shape, never reacting, always responding, being methodical, the list goes on. If you want to be great, you have to be like water. If you want to be the strongest version of yourself, you have to be like water.

    Nothing is weaker than water, but when it attacks something hard Or resistant, then nothing withstands it, And nothing will alter its way.

    Formlessness makes your enemies hunt all over for you, scattering their own forces, mental as well as physical. When you play with formlessness, keep on top of the process, and keep your long-term strategy in mind. When you assume a form and go on the attack, use concentration, speed, and power.

    As a German Jew in the unfriendly culture of Paris, banker James Rothschild never took any attack personally, or showed frustration or hurt. By projecting a calm, unreadable demeanour, he successfully adapted and grew his business in the changing political climates of multiple monarchies. Rothschild knew how to assume formlessness.

    The Japanese accepted foreigners graciously for centuries, without harm to their culture. They appeared on the surface to adopt some foreign styles and customs, but underneath, their culture continued to thrive. Had they been rigid and tried to fight foreign influences, they would have suffered. But they adopted a kind of formlessness, appearing to accept other cultures, thus giving the foreigners nothing to fight. The Japanese also knew how to assume formlessness.

    When you’re unreadable and impossible to pin down, you keep initiative on your side while your opponent must constantly react to you.

  • Disarm And Infuriate With The Mirror Effect

    The mirror reflects reality, but it is also the perfect tool for deception: When you mirror your enemies, doing exactly as they do, they cannot figure out your strategy. The Mirror Effect mocks and humiliates them, making them overreact. By holding up a mirror to their psyches, you seduce them with the illusion that you share their values; by holding up a mirror to their actions, you teach them a lesson. Few can resist the power of the Mirror Effect.

    There are four main mirror effect in the realm of power.

    1. The Neutralizing Effect

    “In ancient Greek Mythology, the gorgon Medusa had serpents for hair, protruding tongue, massive teeth, and a face so ugly that anyone who gazed at her was turned into stone. But the hero Perseus managed to slay Medusa by polishing his bronze shield into a mirror, then using the reflection in the mirror to guide him as he crept up and cut off her head without looking at her directly. If the shield in this instance was a mirror, the mirror also was kind of a shield. Medusa could not see Perseus. She only saw her own reflected actions. And behind this screen, the hero stalled up and destroyed her.”

    “This the essence of the neutralizing effect. Do what your enemies do, following their actions as best you can, and they cannot see what you’re up to. They are blinded by your mirror. Their strategy for dealing with you depends on your reacting to them in a way characteristic of you. Neutralize it by playing a game of Mimicry with them. The tactic has a mocking even infuriating effect.

    Most of us remember the childhood experience of someone teasing us by repeating our words exactly. After while, we wanted to punch them in the face. Working more subtly as an adult, you can still unsettle your opponents this way. Shielding your own strategy with the mirror, you lay invisible traps or push your opponents into the trap they plan for you.”

    2. The Narcissus Effect

    “Gazing at an image in the waters of a pond, the Greek youth Narcissist fell in love with it. And when he found out that the image was his own reflection and that he therefore could not consummate his love, he despaired and drowned himself. All of us have a similar problem. Most of us are profoundly in love with ourselves. The Narcissus Effect plays on this universal narcissism. You look deep into the soul of others, fathom their innermost desires, their values, their tastes, their spirit, and you reflect it back to them. Making yourself into a kind of mirror image. Your ability to reflect their psyche gives you great power over them. This is simply the ability to mimic another person. Not physically but psychologically.”

    3. The Moral Effect

    You mirror what other people have done to you, and do so in a way that makes them realize you are doing to them exactly what they did to you. You make them feel that their behavior has been unpleasant, as opposed to hearing you complain and whine about it, which only gets their defenses up. They feel the result of their actions mirrored back at them, they realize in the profoundest sense how they hurt or punish others with their unsocial behavior.

    4. The Hallucinatory Effect

    This Effect comes from creating a perfect copy of an object, a place, a person. This copy acts as a kind of dummy—people take it for the real thing, because it has the physical appearance of the real thing. This is the preeminent technique of con artists, who strategically mimic the real world to deceive you.

  • Avoid Stepping Into A Great Man’s Shoe

    What happens first always appears better and more original than what comes after. If you succeed a great man or have a famous parent, you will have to accomplish double their achievements to outshine them. Do not get lost in their shadow, or stuck in a past, not of your own making: Establish your own name and identity by changing course. Slay the overbearing father, disparage his legacy, and gain power by shining in your own way.

    Alexander the Great had an intense dislike for his father, King Philip of Macedonia. He hated Philip’s cunning, cautious style of ruling, his bombastic speeches, his drinking, and whoring, and other wastes of time he had preoccupied himself with. Alexander knew that he had to make himself the very opposite of his domineering father. He would force himself to be bold and reckless. He would control his tongue and be a man of few words, and he would not lose precious time in pursuit of pleasures that brought no glory. Alexander also resented the fact that Philip had conquered most of Greece. “My father will go on conquering until there is nothing extraordinary left for me to do,” he once complained.

    While other sons of powerful men were content to inherit wealth and live a life of leisure, Alexander wanted only to outdo his father, to obliterate Philip’s name from history by surpassing his accomplishments. Over the years, Alexander’s defiance of his father grew bolder and bolder. One day, the two men held a heated argument before an entire court. Philip drew his sword as if to strike his son. Having drunk too much, though, the king stumbled. Alexander pointed at his father and jeered, “Men of Macedonia, see there the man who is preparing to pass from Europe to Asia. He cannot pass from one table to another without falling.”

    Philip’s previous advisors counselled Alexander, who is now the king, to proceed cautiously and do as Philip has done, conquer through cunning. But Alexander would do things his way. Alexander had reunited the Greek empire with brutal efficiency, and then he set his eyes on Persia, the prize that had eluded his father. If he defeated the Persians, Alexander would finally surpass Philip in his glory and fame.

    Alexander crossed into Asia with 35,000 men to face a Persian army numbering in over a million. Before engaging the Persians in battle, he passed through the town of Gordium. Here in this town, there stood an ancient chariot tied with cords made of the rind of a cornel tree. Legend had it that any man who could undo these cords, the Gordion knot would rule the world. Many had tried to untie the enormous and intricate knot but none had succeeded. Alexander, seeing he could not possibly untie the knot with his bare hands, took out his sword and with one slash cut it in half. This symbolic gesture showed the world that he would not do like others but would blaze his own path.

    Remember: You are your own father. Do not let yourself spend years creating yourself only to let your guard down and allow the ghost of the past—father, habit, history—to sneak back in.

    Burn the instruction manuals: When General Douglas MacArthur took charge of American forces in the Philippines in World War II, an aide gave him a book of instructions from predecessors. MacArthur told him to burn the manual and any copies; he would make his own decisions in his own way. Similarly, you should reject precedent, and learn to respond to circumstances, which will be different from those of the past.

  • Be Royal In Your Own Fashion: Act Like A King To Be Treated Like One

    Don’t be too humble. You will be treated the way you treat yourself. You will be thought of the way you think of yourself. Project confidence and a regal demeanor and others will respect you for it. If you act humbly, and only ask for just enough, and shuffle around quietly, you will be treated with little respect. This fits into other Laws Greene talks about such as “Play to People’s Fantasies.”

    The idea is: people will try to make sense of whatever you present to them. If you act very confidently, they will see this as a sign of deep inner confidence, either that or you are a mad man. People rarely see through the masks others wear, and so, if you think it’s a good idea to demote your personal status to accommodate the feelings of others, know that it can often backfire.

    Louis Phillipe’s life story serves as a cautionary tale. When it became his turn to become king, he assumed a very different attitude from his predecessors. He associated with the bankers and business people instead of the elites. He wore the same clothes, walked the same streets, and was interested in the same things as the bankers. He did this proudly. And perhaps, his aim was to make the people feel that they were equals – that the best politics of the day would be exemplified by a leader who could act as the man of the people, but none of this worked.

    Louis Phillipe’s attitude only projected weakness and this attracted resentment and anger. One time, he was late for a meeting, and was publicly berated by Rothschild. Resentment was being built up in the minds of his people, and they finally took to the streets. Feeling under pressure, Louis Philippe fired his Prime Minister and replaced him with a liberal, but this only highlighted how weak he was. He was eventually forced to resign along with his staff. They shamefully packed their bags, like a travelling circus, and left.

    The opposite of Louis Phillipe’s story is that of Christopher Columbus. Columbus did not have a royal background, but he acted like he did. His father was a humble businessman, but he told others that he came from a royal bloodline. He made bold and sometimes even outrageous claims, but in the company of royalty, he only made them feel comfortable. When he was about to embark on his voyage, he asked to be given grand titles, and inherit a certain percentage of the proceeds that would come out of the adventure, but while he wasn’t given all of his lofty demands, he wasn’t treated as a silly man either. He was seen as someone who knew his worth and carried himself well. He was respected.

    By asking for the moon, he had instantly raised his own status, for the king assumed that unless a man who set such a high price on himself were mad, which Columbus did not appear to be, he must somehow be worth it.

    A couple of years later Columbus moved to Spain, he maneuvered through the Spanish court repeating the request for the financing of his voyage. After many rejections Columbus would not back down. He then realized the only person that could meet his demands would be Queen Isabella. In 1487 he had managed a meeting with the Queen, he failed to convince her to finance his voyage, but he completely charmed her and became a frequent guest of the palace. After the wartime burden on her treasury lifted, Isabella decided she would adhere to his request, pay for three ships, equipment, and a modest salary for Columbus.

    Even though he had hired the best navigator he could find he was unable to find the passage to Asia. Yet even when Columbus proposed the queen finance a second more audacious voyage the following year, she agreed. She had come to see Columbus as destined for greatness…so what happened next? Well the rest is history, Christopher Columbus is now talked about in millions of schools around the world.

    It is up to you to set your own price. Ask for less and that is just what you will get. Ask for more, however, and you send a signal that you are worth a king’s ransom. Even those who turn you down respect you for your confidence, and that respect will eventually pay off in ways you cannot imagine.

  • Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability

    Because people crave predictability and a sense of control, you can throw others off balance and even terrify them by cultivating an air of unpredictability. While your opponents are stressing themselves out by trying the explain and anticipate what you’re doing, you can achieve your objectives almost unnoticed.

    Unpredictable, sudden events like tornadoes and flash floods terrify people, leaving them in fear of the next one, you can have a similar effect on people by cultivating an air of unpredictability.

    We want other people to be predictable, and we ourselves follow patterns and routines, out of laziness, a preference for comfort, or a desire to keep the peace. Animals follow patterns as well, which allows us to hunt them successfully.

    But unpredictability is an important tool for wielding power — by suddenly doing something no one expected you create fear and confusion, which keeps others off balance, allowing you room to manoeuvre. It may also prompt them to make mistakes.

    You can use this tactic effectively even if you are the underdog. For instance, during the Civil War General Stonewall Jackson confused and stymied the much larger Union forces that were marching on Richmond, by repeatedly moving north and then back south again. In response, Union General George McClellan slowed his forces, while trying to figure out what was going on, which gave the South time to reinforce Richmond.

    Understand: A person of power instils a kind of fear by deliberately unsettling those around him to keep the initiative on his side. You sometimes need to strike without warning to make others tremble when they least expect it.

    This reminds me of a story Tony Robins told in his book ‘Awaken The Giant Within’. Every time Tony would go on his walk he would give a particular homeless man some money. He decided to make this a habit. One instance when he went to reach for his wallet he found he didn’t have any cash on him. Tony apologized, but the homeless man became aggravated and upset. Tony had conditioned the homeless man to receive money every time he passed him. The one time the homeless man didn’t receive it, unstable emotion and a minor conflict resulted.

    If Tony had been more unpredictable with his actions and intermittently given money to the homeless man, than the above situation may have never occurred because he wouldn’t have known when to expect the stimuli. If the money was given sporadically then the habit is never created as your constantly left on edge not knowing when the next reward will come.

    Scrambling your patterns on a day-to-day basis will cause a stir around you and stimulate interest. People will talk about you, ascribe motives and explanations that have nothing to do with the truth, but that keeps you constantly in their minds. In the end, the more capricious you appear, the more respect you will garner. Only the terminally subordinate act in a predictable manner