Vertex Views

Tag: self development

  • Never Appear Too Perfect

    Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.

    By appearing perfect — by appearing superfluous to mistakes and flaws, others may manifest envy.

    Only a minority can succeed at the game of life and that minority inevitably arouses the envy of those around them.

    You will be a fool to think that there are not people who envy you because of your success, because of the things you have attained and I would be a fool to think so as well.

    Some people find it hard to believe that the people closest to them could plot to see their demise.

    Reasons Not to Stir Up Envy

    1. Be careful not to affect a false modesty that people can easily see-through.
    2. Your humility, and your openness to those you have left behind, has to seem genuine
    3. Any hint of insincerity will only make your new status more oppressive.
    4. Do not alienate your former peers.
    5. Emphasize how lucky you have been.
    6. Make your happiness seem more attainable to other people, and the need for envy less acute.
    7. Display a weakness, a minor social indiscretion, a harmless vice.
    8. Give those who envy you something to feed on, distracting them from your more important sins.
    9. You may have to play games with appearances, but in the end, you will have what counts: true power.
    10. Do not try to help or do favours for those who envy you; they will think you are condescending to them.
    11. Consider showing your wealth only on the inside of your house.
    12. Apply this wisdom to your own character.

    “No matter how smart you are, you will NEVER have any success at all if you are not good at managing and leading people. Regardless of how much of an expert you are at something you need to be the kind of person that leaves people feeling whole and not full of holes. You need to be the kind of person that coaches people up and doesn’t talk down to people. How you make people feel is of the utmost importance.” – Clay Clark

  • Strike The Shepherd And The Sheep Will Be Scattered

    Trouble can often be traced to a single strong individual — the stirrer, the arrogant underling, the poisoner of goodwill. If you allow such people room to operate, others will succumb to their influence. Do not wait for the troubles they cause to multiply, do not try to negotiate with them — they are irredeemable. Neutralize their influence by isolating or banishing them. Strike at the source of the trouble and the sheep will scatter.

    “In sixth century BC, the city-state of Athens had begun to establish a democracy that lasted over a century, this democracy became the source of its power and its proudest achievement. But as democracy evolved, so did their problems. How do you deal with those, who do not concern themselves with the cohesion of a small city surrounded by enemies, who did not work for its greater glory but thought of only themselves and their own ambitions and petty interests?

    Violent punishment no longer suited a new civilized order that Athens had created. Instead, the citizens found another more satisfying and less brutal way to deal with the chronically selfish. Every year, they would gather in the marketplace and write on a piece of earthenware and ostracon, this name would signify an individual they wanted to see banished from the city for 10 years. If a particular name appeared on 6,000 ballots, a person would be instantly exiled. If no one receives 6,000 votes, the person with the most ostracon recording his name would suffer the 10-year ostracism.

    Time after time, these formidable powerful men; military leaders, political leaders, would be exiled largely as a result of their flamboyant arrogance.

    “Within any group, trouble can be most often traced to a single source. The unhappy, the chronically dissatisfied, one who will always stir up dissension and infect the group with his or her ill-ease. Before you know what hit you, the dissatisfaction spreads. Act before it becomes impossible to disentangle one strand of misery from another or to see how the whole thing started.
    First, recognize troublemakers by their overbearing presence or by their complaining nature. Once you spot them, do not try to reform them or appease them. That will only make things worse. Do not attack them, whether directly or indirectly for they are poisonous in nature and will work underground to destroy you.”

    How to Isolate

    • Render their actions visible and they lose their power to upset.
    • Separate your victims from their power base or their usual social context.
    • The result, though, is the same, for, in the game of power, isolation spells death.

    What Kind of Isolation

    • Physical (banishment or absence from the court).
    • Political (narrowing his base of support).
    • Psychological (alienating him from the group through slander and insinuation).

    WARNING

    If you act to isolate your enemy, make sure he lacks the means to repay the favour. If you apply this Law, in other words, apply it from a position of superiority, so that you have nothing to fear from his resentment.

  • 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.

  • Stir Up Waters To Catch Fish

    Anger and emotion are strategically counterproductive. You must always stay calm and objective. But if you can make your enemies angry while staying calm yourself you gain a decided advantage. Put your enemies’ off-balance: Find the chink in their vanity through which you can rattle them and you hold the strings.

    The crux of this law is represented by the metaphor of water symbolizing emotion. When the water is still your enemies and opponents have time to scheme and plan action. Stirring the waters draws the fish to the surface, getting them to act before they are ready. One of the best ways to do this is to play on a human being’s biggest weak points; they’re tendency to react with emotion. Pride, vanity, love, hate, elation, resentment are just a few emotions that drive people. The angrier someone becomes the more control they give up, eventually, they are caught up in a typhoon of emotion that either they have created themselves or you have orchestrated.

    In January of 1809, an agitated and anxious Napoleon hurried back to Paris from his Spanish wars. There was a rumour his foreign minister Talleyrand had conspired against him with Fouche, the minister of police. The shocked emperor summoned his ministers to the palace. He began pacing up and down and started rambling vaguely about plotters working against him.

    As Napoleon talked, Talleyrand leaned on the mantelpiece, looking completely indifferent. Napoleon announced, “for these ministers, treason has begun when they permit themselves to doubt.” At the word “treason” Napoleon expected his minister to be afraid. But Talleyrand only smiled, calm and bored.

    The sigh of a subordinate apparently serene in the face of charges that could get him hanged pushed Napoleon to the edge. There were ministers, he said, who wanted him dead, and he took a step closer to Talleyrand — who started back at him unfazed. Finally, Napoleon exploded. “You are a coward”, he screamed in Talleyrand’s face, “a man of no faith. Nothing is sacred to you. You would sell your own father. I have showered you with riches and yet there is nothing you would not do to hurt me.”

    The ministers looked at each other in disbelief — they had never seen this fearless general, the conqueror of most of Europe, so unhinged. After a few more insults, Napoleon walked away. Talleyrand slowly crossed the room, turned to his ministers and said, “What a pity, gentlemen, that so great a man should have such bad manners.”

    Napolean relieved him of his duties and banished him from the court, believing that for this man humiliation would be punishment enough. He did not realize that word had quickly spread of his tirade — of how the emperor had completely lost control of himself, and how Talleyrand had essentially humiliated him by maintaining composure and dignity. A page had been turned: For the first time, people had seen the great emperor lose his cool under fire. A feeling spread that he was on the way down.”

    When playing with people’s emotions you have to be careful. Study the enemy beforehand: Some fish are best left at the bottom of the pond.

    You can bait the powerful and get them to commit and divide their forces, but test the waters first. Find the gap in their strength. If there is no gap—if they are impossibly strong—you have nothing to gain and everything to lose by provoking them. Choose carefully whom you bait, and never stir up the sharks.

    Finally, there are times when a well-timed burst of anger can do you good, but your anger must be manufactured and under your control. Then you can determine exactly how and on whom it will fall. Never stir up reactions that will work against you in the long run. And use your thunder-bolts rarely, to make them the more intimidating and meaningful. Whether purposefully staged or not, if your outbursts come too often, they will lose their power.

  • Create Compelling Spectacles

    Striking imagery and grand symbolic gestures create the aura of power — everyone responds to them. Stage the spectacles for those around you, full of arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presence. Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing.

    In the 1780s word spread through Berlin of the strange and spectacular medical practice of a Dr Weisleder who performed miracles by curing people with the moon. He would expose his patients to the rays of the moon, they would eventually get better, word spread and he was dubbed “The Moon Doctor of Berlin” — the rich and poor all flocked to him.

    Weisleder may have understood very little about medicine, but he understood the psychology of people and human behaviour.

    He recognized people do not always want words, or rational explanations, or demonstrations of the powers of science they want an immediate appeal to their emotions.

    At the time there was no scientific evidence that could refute his methods. Instead, he conjured up a hypothesis that he knew wasn’t real, his patients simply did the rest by believing in his spectacles.

    Understand the Primacy of Sight among the Senses

    1. The visual has come to dominate the other senses and is the sense we most depend on and trust. As Gracian said, “The truth is generally seen, rarely heard.”
    2. Never neglect the way you arrange things visually. Factors like colour, for example, have enormous symbolic resonance.
    3. The visual contains great emotional power. Find and associate yourself with the images and symbols that will communicate in this immediate way today, and you will have untold power.
    4. Most effective of all is a new combination—a fusion of images and symbols that have not been seen together before, but that through their association clearly demonstrate your new idea, message or religion. The creation of new images and symbols out of old ones in this way has a poetic effect— viewers’ associations run rampant, giving them a sense of participation.

    Incorporate and organize your images and symbols into a show or performance that inspires awe and distracts people from their mundane lives. Always pay attention to how you arrange things visually — put the most important images at the centre; use colour as well. Create compelling spectacles and words won’t be necessary.