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Tag: Enemies

  • Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew

    Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usually insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure. Either way, once found it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage.

    This principle applies directly to sport; some of the greatest athletes of all time have used variations of this law to achieve triumph over their opponents. Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan were both known for there astute observations of their opponents. They would study the weaknesses of their rivals and exploit them once given the opportunity.

    Pay Attention To Gestures & Unconscious Signals

    “He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.” — Sigmund Freud

    An individual’s weakness can be revealed in the most unimportant of gestures and passing words. Everyday conversations supply the richest mine of weaknesses. Practice conversational and behavioural awareness not only of your own habits but of those around you. You will slowly discover thing’s you hadn’t seen before. By expressing genuine curiosity in people you spur people to talk, who doesn’t like a sympathetic ear that’s willing to listen more than they talk?

    A trick used by French Statesmen Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord was to appear like he was opening up to the other political leaders by sharing faux secrets with them. This would usually elicit an honest genuine response in the person he was conversing with. Of course, you don’t have to tell ‘white lies’ to get people to open up if you’re willing to be vulnerable, sharing real hidden truths can work well in getting someone your communicating with to share their own vulnerability.

    Pay attention to details — what a person laughs at, how they respond to a waiter, what their clothes say about them. Focus on unconscious behaviour.

    Find out what they like most, and are always looking to get. Indulge their desires or tastes.

    Tap into the inner child. Needs and weaknesses develop in childhood as a result of how we were treated, whether we were indulged or neglected, and whether emotional needs were met. These needs follow us into adulthood, although they may be buried, developing into weaknesses you can exploit. One clue that you’ve hit on something is when the person’s response is childlike. If you identify something missing from a person’s childhood, such as approval, provide a substitute. You can often discover each man’s thumbscrew in their childhood.

    Feed on Uncontrollable Emotions The uncontrollable emotion can be a paranoid fear. 1) Fear disproportionate to the situation. 2) Or any base motive such as lust, greed, vanity, or hatred. People in the grip of these emotions often cannot control themselves, and you can do the controlling for them.

  • Make Your Accomplishments Seem Effortless

    Make difficult feats seem effortless and you’ll inspire awe in others and seem powerful. Conceal the work behind your accomplishments — if you brag about it, you’ll ruin the effect.

    Natural phenomena such as volcanoes and tornadoes, which are demonstrations of power, seem effortless and leave people awestruck.

    If you make your accomplishments seem effortless, you can generate awe in others and seem powerful. People admire those who perform seemingly impossible feats, especially when they make it look easy.

    The best courtiers prided themselves in their ability to make the difficult seem easy. Great Renaissance artists kept their studios closed and their works in progress under wraps, revealing only the final masterpiece. No one knew the effort that went into it, which would have ruined the magical effect. By contrast, performers who try too hard make us uncomfortable; graceful performers create a pleasing illusion by making their labor look natural.

    Power works the same way; your public performances should be appealing, entertaining, and create a sense of anticipation — but most of all, they should be awe-inspiring. They can’t be if you reveal the work behind them; people will tell themselves they could have done just as well or better. For the same reason, don’t try to show how clever you are by revealing your tricks

    The effortlessness of Houdini’s escapes led many to believe he used cult forces and even magic. Although we do not know for certain how Houdini accomplished many of his most ingenious escapes, one thing is clear: it was not the occult or any kind of magic, that give him his powers, but hard work and endless practice, all of which he carefully concealed from the world. Houdini never left anything to chance — day and night he studied the workings of locks, researched centuries-old sleight-of-hand tricks, pored over books on mechanics, whatever he could use. Every moment not spent researching he spent working his body, keeping himself exceptionally limber, and learning how to control his muscles and breathing.

    As a person of power, you must research and practice endlessly before appearing in public, onstage or anywhere else. Never expose the sweat and labor behind your poise. Some think such exposure will demonstrate their diligence and honesty, but it actually just makes them look weaker — as if they weren’t really up the job. Keep your effort and your tricks to yourself and you seem to have the grace and ease of a god. One never see’s the source of a god’s power revealed; one only see’s it’s effects.

    Houdini was a performer, so he needed to make his actions seem effortless; it was one of the most important factors to his critical acclaim.

    There are also times when revealing the inner workings of your projects can prove worthwhile. It all depends on your audience’s taste, and on the times in which you operate.As long as the partial disclosure of tricks and techniques is carefully planned, rather than the result of an uncontrollable need to blab, it is the ultimate in cleverness. It gives the audience the illusion of being superior and involved, even while much of what you do remains concealed from them.

  • Enter Action With Boldness

    If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honours the timid.

    When you enter with boldness you are going on the aggressive. You’re playing offence instead of defence. This may be one of the most important laws for young men and women of our generation because a lot of them are soft, entitled and undisciplined. Most of us who have grown up in the “western world” have been extremely privileged with the abundance of resources we have free easy access to. The majority of us have not experienced any wars, economic collapses or extreme suffering. I reflect on my younger self with disappointment at how soft I was. Only for the last couple of years have I been actively attempting to mitigate this tendency. Hopefully, this piece can assist you in that process as well.

    Consistently backing down and retreating in the face of confrontation or challenge gives the aggressor autonomy and power over you. Recognize if you possess the habit of retreating and compromising as other’s walk all over you. You can learn the hard way as I did, or you can embody the lesson contained here and start living it.

    Think of an athlete you admire, if they enter that game with anything less than total confidence in themselves and their team, than they’ve already given their opponent the advantage. You can see it in a person’s eyes and body language.

    We live in a time right now where it’s never been easier to run and create your own business and lead the life of an entrepreneur, the following quote applies to that life.

    “Great enterprises are only achieved by adventurous spirits, they who calculate with too great nicety every difficulty and obstacle which is likely to lie in their way, lose that time in hesitation which the more daring seize and render available to the loftiest purposes.”

    Boldness Strikes Fear; Fear Creates Authority

    1. The bold move makes you seem larger and more powerful than you are. If it comes suddenly, with the stealth and swiftness of a snake, it inspires that much more fear.
    2. By intimidating with a bold move, you establish a precedent: in every subsequent encounter, people will be on the defensive, in terror of your next strike.

    Going Halfway with Half a Heart Digs the Deeper Grave

    1. If you enter action with less than total confidence, you set up obstacles in your own path.
    2. When a problem arises you will grow confused, seeing options where there are none and inadvertently creating more problems still.
    3. Retreating from the hunter, the timid hare scurries more easily into his snares.

    Audacity Separates You from the Herd.

    1. Boldness gives you presence and makes you seem larger than life.
    2. The timid fade into the wallpaper, the bold draw attention, and what draws attention draws power.
    3. We cannot keep our eyes off the audacious—we cannot wait to see their next bold move.

  • Crush Your Enemy Totally

    All great leaders since Moses have known that a feared enemy must be crushed completely. (Sometimes they have learned this the hard way.) If one ember is left alight, no matter how dimly it smolders, a fire will eventually break out. More is lost through stopping halfway than through total annihilation: The enemy will recover, and will seek revenge. Crush him, not only in body but in spirit.

    “The remnants of an enemy can become active like those of a disease or fire. Hence, these should be exterminated completely. One should never ignore an enemy, knowing him to be weak. He becomes dangerous in due course, like the spark of fire in a haystack.” — Kautilya, Indian Philosopher, Third Centuryb. BC.

    Chinese history contains many examples of enemies that have been left alive only to end up returning for revengeful chaos. As a result, a moral within Chinese culture became ‘crush the enemy’.

    Some may think this is a very aggressive and extreme approach.

    So how might we apply this to our life?

    You may think …

    Crush my enemy?

    I don’t want to kill anybody. I’m not a Chinese leader.

    I’m not about to take over a country.

    If we look beyond the surface level there are many practical applications to this law. Example: What’s a competitive environment you see yourself in that may require you to defeat and crush your opponent?

    How about sports?

    It’s fair to say a large portion of the population have played some type of competitive sport. We often see teams come back from large deficits in the last portion of games because possessing a lead gives us a certain psychological comfort and complacency. This can be seen frequently within basketball. You can’t afford to take your foot off the pedal. You must crush your enemy totally with a relentlessness alike to Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

    Sometimes It Is Better To Let Your Enemies Destroy Themselves

    Leave your enemy an escape route. A retreat is the ultimate demoralizing defeat.Let them be the agents of their own destruction. The result will be the same.
    The risk of crushing an enemy is you embitter them so much so that they spend years and years plotting revenge. Do not let your guard down, but simply crush them again.