Vertex Views

Tag: self development

  • Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm Your Victim

    You can use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim and distract others from your schemes. It works because even the most suspicious people respond emotionally, as a child, to acts of kindness.

    Deception and distraction go hand in hand. Distracting people gives you time to set up your trap or scheme to deceive them without its being noticed. This is how you use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim.

    One of the most effective methods of distraction is to surprise them with honesty or generosity. This approach disarms people by allaying suspicions and bringing out their inner child — they respond with eager, childlike gratitude.

    The Chinese called this practice “giving before you take” — the gift distracts your victim while you do the taking. The gift can be anything including a physical gift, an act of kindness, a favor, or a seemingly honest admission.

    It can be used to create an immediate distraction from what you’re doing or to soften someone up for future actions or requests.

    Selective honesty is best employed on your first encounter with someone. We are all creatures of habit, and our first impressions last a long time. If someone believes you are honest at the start of your relationship it takes a lot to convince them otherwise. This gives you room to maneuver.

    Everybody talks about how first impressions are important — agreed, it does take a lot to rid the first impression and change it. Knowing that it’s only wise to use that to your advantage and use selective honesty to create a stable trusting relationship from the beginning. Averting social behavioral risks the first time you meet someone may prove wise to avoid having your authenticity and honesty questioned.

    A single act of honesty is often not enough. What is required is a reputation for honesty, built on a series of acts — but these can be quite inconsequential. Once this reputation is established, as with first impressions, it is hard to shake.

    Honesty can be used as a weapon in the realm of deception. This will especially work against the most suspicious people, for they will never see honesty coming.

  • Win Through Actions Never Through Argument

    The Arguer does not understand that words are never neutral and that by arguing with a superior he impugns the intelligence of one more powerful than he.

    He also has no awareness of the person he is dealing with. Since each man believes that he is right, and words will rarely convince him otherwise, the arguer’s reasoning falls on deaf ears. When cornered, he only argues more, digging his own grave. Once he has made the other person feel insecure and inferior in his beliefs, the eloquence of Socrates could not save the situation.

    Even the best argument has no solid foundation, for we have all come to distrust the slippery nature of words. And days after agreeing with someone, we often revert to our old opinion out of sheer habit.

    Any momentary triumph you think you have gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory: The resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion. It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate.

    Take the engineer in Athens receiving orders from his commander Mucianus to send the largest ship’s mast to be used to help in the siege of the town of Pergumus. The engineer argued that what the commander needed was not the larger mast, but the smaller which would be better suited for the task. Mucianus was infuriated and sent for the engineer who continued to try to explain his reasoning for sending the smaller mast. For his disobedience, he was flogged and scourged with rods until he died.

    The engineer’s argument went on deaf ears. Nobody cared whether or not it was more prudent to use the smaller mast. The fact of the matter was that a superior gave a command and he decided that by insulting the intelligence of his master by arguing was more important.

    Unlike Michelangelo, the engineer did not exercise the correctness of his ideas indirectly. When Florence’s mayor, Piero Sorderini told Michelangelo that the nose on his sculpture that he had been commissioned to do of a young David with a sling in hand was too big, he did not argue that the nose was just right, Michelangelo merely took the mayor onto the scaffolding and gave the appearance of changing the nose. Sorderini was pleased and no one was offended.

    Two Long-Term Effects of Your Words

    1. Resentment: When people agree with you politely but are really thinking something totally different.

    2. Offended: You said something inadvertently but according to the other person’s mood was misinterpreted.

    When you win through your actions, never through argument, you don’t make your opponents defensive, and they’re more open to seeing what you want them to see, and thus to agreeing with you.

  • Get Others To Do The Work For You But Always Take The Credit

    The world of power has the dynamics of the jungle: There are those who live by hunting and killing, and there are also vast numbers of creatures (hyenas, vultures) who live off the hunting of others. These latter, less imaginative types are often incapable of doing the work that is essential for the creation of power.

    They understand early on, though, that if they wait long enough, they can always find another animal to do the work for them. Do not be naive: At this very moment, while you are slaving away on some project, there are vultures circling above trying to figure out a way to survive and even thrive off your creativity. It is useless to complain about this, or to wear yourself ragged with bitterness, as Tesla did. Better to protect yourself and join the game. Once you have established a power base, become a vulture yourself, and save yourself a lot of time and energy.

    People do this every single day, people will take a video or article, copy it onto their site, re-post it, and find ways to monetize it to make money from it. In certain situations, it could be perceived as immoral or even illegal. Regardless this reality is being lived every single day.

    Francisco Pizarro exemplified the first method of taking from others after they’ve done the work. He was a soldier in the army of the explorer Balboa, who discovered the Incan empire in Peru. After Balboa spent many years searching for it and finally found it, Pizarro turned on Balboa and helped get him executed for treason so he could take the riches and credit for himself.

    The artist Peter Paul Rubens used the second method of getting others to do the work for you: actively enlisting others to do your work. When he received more requests for paintings than he could fulfill, he hired many skilled painters with various specialties and set up a production line, in which multiple paintings could be worked on at the same time. Clients were impressed that he could do so many paintings in a short time.

    When you take credit for a large amount of work by others, people think you have amazing ability. By contrast, if you try to do all the work yourself, you won’t accomplish much, or others will take advantage of your efforts. Be a user of others’ efforts instead. Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit.

  • Court Attention At All Cost

    Part I: Surround Your Name With The Sensational And Scandalous

    The court of the Louis the XIV was filled with many talented creatives, beautiful women and people of nobility.

    But there was no one more talked about than the Duc de Lauzun. For comparison, this Duke represented the personality type many know as Tyrion Lanistor, of the HBO series Game Of Thrones. The Duke was dwarfish, he slept with the king’s mistress, openly insulted not only other courtiers, but the King himself — very similar to how Tyrion behaved.

    Louis, however, was so beguiled (enchanted) by the duke’s eccentricities that he could not bare his absences from the court. It was so simple. The strangeness of the Duke’s character attracted attention. Once people were enthralled by him, they wanted him around, at any cost.
    “Society craves larger-than-life figures, people who stand above the general mediocrity. Never be afraid, then, of the qualities that set you apart and draw attention to you. Court controversy, even scandal. It is better to be attacked, even slandered, than ignored.”

    Thomas Edison would create dazzling experiments to display his discoveries within electricity and boast about future inventions that seemed amazingly breakthrough for the time.

    He would talk loudly about all these future inventions which drew the public’s attention as Edison become a frequent topic of conversation. He did everything he could to make sure he received more attention than his rival Nikola Tesla, who arguably may have been more brilliant and talented than Edison, although far less known.

    In 1915 it was rumored that Edison and Tesla would be joint recipients of the years Nobel prize in physics. However, the prize wasn’t given to either of them in the end. It was later discovered the committee had actually approached Edison on a joint Nobel prize, but he had turned them down refusing to share the prize with Tesla. By that time Edison’s fame was much more secure than Tesla’s, thus he thought it was smarter to refuse the honor than allow his rival the attention that would’ve come from sharing the prize.

    If you find yourself in a lowly position that offers little opportunity for you to draw attention, an effective trick is to attack the most visible, most famous, most powerful person you can find.

    When Pietro Aretino, a young Roman servant boy of the early sixteenth century, wanted to get attention as a writer of verses, he decided to publish a series of satirical poems ridiculing the pope and his affection for a pet elephant. The attack put Aretino in the public eye immediately. A slanderous attack on a person in a position of power would have a similar effect. Remember, however, to use such tactics sparingly after you have the public’s attention, then the act can wear thin.

    Part II: Create An Air Of Mystery

    In the past, the world was filled with the terrifying and unknowable—diseases, disasters, capricious despots, the mystery of death itself. What we could not understand we re-imagined as myths and spirits. Over the centuries, though, we have managed, through science and reason, to illuminate the darkness; what was mysterious and forbidding has grown familiar and comfortable. Yet this light has a price: in a world that is ever more banal, that has had its mystery and myth squeezed out of it, we secretly crave enigmas, people or things that cannot be instantly interpreted, seized, and consumed.

    That is the power of the mysterious: It invites layers of interpretation, excites our imagination, seduces us into believing that it conceals something marvellous. The world has become so familiar and its inhabitants so predictable that what wraps itself in mystery will almost always draw the limelight to it and make us watch it.

    Do not imagine that to create an air of mystery you have to be grand and awe-inspiring. Mystery that is woven into your day-to-day demeanor, and is subtle, has that much more power to fascinate and attract attention. Remember: Most people are upfront, can be read like an open book, take little care to control their words or image, and are hopelessly predictable. By simply holding back, keeping silent, occasionally uttering ambiguous phrases, deliberately appearing inconsistent, and acting odd in the subtlest of ways, you will emanate an aura of mystery. The people around you will then magnify that aura by constantly trying to interpret you.

    Both artists and con artists understand the vital link between being mysterious and attracting interest. Count Victor Lustig, the aristocrat of swindlers, played the game to perfection. He was always doing things that were different, or seemed to make no sense. He would show up at the best hotels in a limo driven by a Japanese chauffeur; no one had ever seen a Japanese chauffeur before, so this seemed exotic and strange. Lustig would dress in the most expensive clothing, but always with something—a medal, a flower, an armband—out of place, at least in conventional terms. This was seen not as tasteless but as odd and intriguing. In hotels he would be seen receiving telegrams at all hours, one after the other, brought to him by his Japanese chauffeur—telegrams he would tear up with utter nonchalance. (In fact they were fakes, completely blank.) He would sit alone in the dining room, reading a large and impressive-looking book, smiling at people yet remaining aloof. Within a few days, of course, the entire hotel would be abuzz with interest in this strange man.

    All this attention allowed Lustig to lure suckers in with ease. They would beg for his confidence and his company. Everyone wanted to be seen with this mysterious aristocrat. And in the presence of this distracting enigma, they wouldn’t even notice that they were being robbed blind.

    An air of mystery can make the mediocre appear intelligent and profound. It made Mata Hari, a woman of average appearance and intelligence, seem like a goddess, and her dancing divinely inspired. An air of mystery about an artist makes his or her artwork immediately more intriguing, a trick Marcel Duchamp played to great effect. It is all very easy to do—say little about your work, tease and titillate with alluring, even contradictory comments, then stand back and let others try to make sense of it all.

  • So Much Depends On Reputation Guard It With Your Life

    The people around us, even our closest friends, will always to some extent remain mysterious and unfathomable. Their characters have secret recesses that they never reveal. The unknowableness of other people could prove disturbing if we thought about it long enough since it would make it impossible for us really to judge other people. So we prefer to ignore this fact and to judge people on their appearances, on what is most visible to our eyes—clothes, gestures, words, actions. In the social realm, appearances are the barometer of almost all of our judgements, and you must never be misled into believing otherwise. One false slip, one awkward or sudden change in your appearance, can prove disastrous.

    This is the reason for the supreme importance of making and maintaining a reputation that is of your own creation.

    That reputation will protect you in the dangerous game of appearances, distracting the probing eyes of others from knowing what you are really like, and giving you a degree of control over how the world judges you—a powerful position to be in. Reputation has a power like magic: With one stroke of its wand, it can double your strength. It can also send people scurrying away from you. Whether the exact same deeds appear brilliant or dreadful can depend entirely on the reputation of the doer.

    In the ancient Chinese court of the Wei kingdom, there was a man named Mi Tzu-Hsia who had a reputation for supreme civility and graciousness. He became the ruler’s favourite. It was a law in Wei that “whoever rides secretly in the ruler’s coach shall have his feet cut off,” but when Mi Tzu-hsia’s mother fell ill, he used the royal coach to visit her, pretending that the ruler had given him permission. When the ruler found out, he said, “How dutiful is Mi Tzu-Hsia! For his mother’s sake, he even forgot that he was committing a crime making him liable to lose his feet!”

    Another time the two of them took a stroll in an orchard. Mi Tzu-Hsia began eating a peach that he could not finish, and he gave the ruler the other half to eat. The ruler remarked, “You love me so much that you would even forget your own saliva taste and let me eat the rest of the peach!”

    Later, however, envious fellow courtiers, spreading the word that Mi Tzu-Hsia was actually devious and arrogant, succeeded in damaging his reputation; the ruler came to see his actions in a new light. “This fellow once rode in my coach under the pretence of my order,” he told the courtiers angrily, “and another time he gave me a half-eaten peach.” For the same actions that had charmed the ruler when he was the favourite, Mi Tzu-Hsia now had to suffer the penalties. The fate of his feet depended solely on the strength of his reputation.

    In the beginning, you must work to establish a reputation for one outstanding quality, whether generosity or honesty or cunning. This quality sets you apart and gets other people to talk about you. You then make your reputation known to as many people as possible (subtly, though; take care to build slowly, and with a firm foundation), and watch as it spreads like wildfire.

    A solid reputation increases your presence and exaggerates your strengths without your having to spend much energy. It can also create an aura around you that will instil respect, even fear. In the fighting in the North African desert during World War II, the German general Erwin Rommel had a reputation for cunning and for deceptive manoeuvring that struck terror into everyone who faced him. Even when his forces were depleted, and when British tanks outnumbered his by five to one, entire cities would be evacuated at the news of his approach.

    As they say, your reputation inevitably precedes you, and if it inspires respect, a lot of your work is done for you before you arrive on the scene, or utter a single word.