Vertex Views

Tag: Win

  • Deep Connection With Others Makes You Grow As A Person

    My soul needs to connect with those who are also awake. I do not understand how people can exist each day without a true connection. No, I do not want to talk about illness or money. I want to talk about love, passion, and spiritual things.

    Soul connections are not often found and are worth every bit of fight left in you to keep.

    Deep connection with others makes you grow as a person. And then when you have taken the lessons you can leave each other with LOVE and GRATITUDE.

    We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honour the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.

    Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.

    Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged and healed.

    ‘Soulmate’ is an overused term, but a true soul connection is very rare and very real.

  • 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.

  • Work On The Heart And Mind Of Others

    Coercion creates a reaction that will eventually work against you. You must seduce others into wanting to move in your direction. A person you have seduced becomes your loyal pawn. And the way to seduce others is to operate on their individual psychologies and weaknesses. Soften up the resistant by working on their emotions, playing on what they hold dear and what they fear. Ignore the hearts and minds of others and they will grow to hate you.

    “When Louis XV’s grandson and chose a successor, Louis XVI married the 15-year-old daughter of the Empress of Austria, the French caught a glimpse of the future that seemed hopeful. Marie Antoinette was her name. She was beautiful and full of life. See, the French had grown disgusted with the series of mistresses who had dominated Louis XV and they looked forward to serving a new queen. Marie Antoinette publicly rode through the streets of Paris for the first time greeted with applauding crowd swarming her carriage. “How fortunate,” she wrote to her mother, “to be in a position in which one can gain widespread affection at so little cost.

    In 1774, Louis XV died and Louis XVI took the throne. As soon as Maria Antoinette became Queen, she abandoned herself to the pleasures she loved the most, ordering, wearing the most expensive gowns and jewellery in the realm, sporting the most elaborate hair in history. Her sculpted coif is rising as much as three feet above her head, drawing a constant succession of mass balls and fetes, all of these whims, she paid for on credit never concerning herself with the cost of who paid the bills. Marie Antoinette’s greatest pleasure was the creation and designing of a private garden of Eden, a chateau on the grounds of the sailors with its own woods.

    With each new whim, the cost of maintaining these garden soared. Meanwhile, France itself was deteriorating. There were famine and widespread discontent. Even the socially insulated courtiers cede with resentment. The Queen treated them like children. Only her favourites matter and these were becoming fewer and fewer, but Marie Antoinette did not concern herself with this. Not once throughout her reign did she read a minister’s report. Not once did she tour with the provinces and rally the people to her side. Not once did she mingle among the pageants or receive a delegation from her. She did none of these things because as Queen, she felt the people owed her their affection and she was not required to love in return.” This was one of her biggest mistakes.

    “In 1784, the Queen became embroidered in a scandal as part of an elaborate swindle. The most expensive diamond necklace in Europe had been purchased under her name and during the swindler’s trial, her lavish lifestyle became public. She’d become the focus of the people’s growing resentment. Five years later in 1789, an unprecedented event took place, the beginning of the French Revolution but the Queen did not worry but the people have their little rebellion, she seemed to think. That year, the people marched on Versailles forcing the Royal family to quit the palace and take residence in Paris. This offered the Queen an opportunity to heal the wounds she had opened and established contact with the people, establish respect but the Queen had not learned her lesson. Not once would she leave the palace during her stay in Paris as subjects could rot in hell for all she cared?

    Three years later, the Royal Couple was moved from the palace to prison as a revolution officially declared the end of the monarchy. Louis XVI was then tried, found guilty and guillotined. As Marie Antoinette awaited the same fate, hardly a soul came to her defence. Not one of her former friends in the court, not even one of Europe’s other monarchs who were family to her came to her side. Not even her own brother who had now taken the throne. In October of 1793, she finally knelt at the guillotine unrepentant and defiant to the bitter end.

    Making people do what you want by force may work in the short term, but it isn’t a sustainable long-term strategy because it generates resistance. Working on the hearts and minds of others — so they bend to your will voluntarily — is more effective and less costly.

    The key to working on the hearts and minds of others is to use people’s emotions and weaknesses. Understand their individual psychology and their emotional responses. Target strong emotions such as hate, envy, and love. Play on what they’re afraid of and what’s dear to them. When you connect with their emotions, they’re more susceptible to your control.

    Win others’ hearts and minds, and you’ll have them eating out of your hand. Play on their emotions and weaknesses appeal to their self-interest and they’ll willingly do what you want. Build broad support — someday you’ll need it. Neglect this at your peril.

  • 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.

  • Plan All The Way To The End

    The ending is everything. Plan all the way to it, taking into account all the possible consequences, obstacles, and twists of fortune that might reverse your hard work and give the glory to others. By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop. Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead.

    In the 1500s there was a noble bold young Spaniard named Vasco Núñez de Balboa. Balboa was one of the first adventures to come in search of Columbus’s land of gold, he had decided he would be the one to find it. Balboa was in search of immense riches and went to the ends of the Earth to acquire it.

    Gold was his dream and El Dorado, ‘the golden empire’, was his desire. Hundreds died through Balboa’s expeditions and by the end of it, his head fell into a basket.

    While the entire story is just too long to cover in this written summary the principles are not. Balboa was blinded by his fantasy for gold and couldn’t see the people planning his demise next to him. He was known for acting out of rash emotion instead of methodically planning ahead. This is not unlike today — many of us are on our own search for metaphorical gold and physical riches. Through that process, many become hyper-focused on the end goal missing everything that’s happening around them as Balboa did.

    Most men are ruled by the heart, not the head. Their plans are vague, and when they meet obstacles they improvise. But improvisations will only bring you as far as the next crisis and is never a substitute for thinking several steps ahead and planning to the end […] But Balboa was locked in the moment, always reacting emotionally, never thinking ahead. What good is it to have the greatest dream in the world if others reap the benefits and the glory? Never lose your head over a vague, open-ended dream —plan to the end.

    In the mid-1800s Prussian leader, Otto von Bismarck had a goal of creating a united Germany ruled by Prussia. With this ending always in mind, he planned specific steps for getting there and wasn’t sidetracked by temptations to grab more territory or glory.

    His steps were:

    1. Incite war with Denmark, not to add territory but to stir up Prussian nationalism and unite the country.
    2. Incite war with Austria to gain Prussian independence (he refused the temptation to grab Austrian territory).
    3. Incite war with France to unite the German kingdoms against a common enemy, and prepare for the formation of a united, secure Germany.

    Once this was achieved he stopped, although his generals wanted to take more land. Although other European leaders expected him to continue his aggression, he worked thereafter to avoid war. He wanted unity and security, not more land, and achieving that goal was his last move. Bismarck knew how to plan all the way to the end.

    When you see several steps ahead and plan your moves all the way to the end, you will no longer be tempted by emotion or by the desire to improvise. Your clarity will rid you of the anxiety and vagueness that are the primary reasons why so many fail to conclude their actions successfully. You see the ending and you tolerate no deviation.