Do not be afraid to bring out the more sensitive or ambitious sides to your character. These repressed parts of you are yearning to be let out. In the theater of life, expand the roles that you play. Don’t worry about people’s reactions to any changes in you they sense. You are not so easy to categorize, which will fascinate them and give you the power to play with their perceptions of you, altering them at will.
Never ignore a detail or leave one to chance. Orchestrate them into a spectacle and no one will notice how manipulative you are being.
Be Frugal with Flattery. It may seem that your superiors cannot get enough flattery, but too much of even a good thing loses its value. It also stirs up suspicion among your peers.
What people say about themselves does not matter; people will say anything. Look at what they have done; deeds do not lie. You must also apply this logic to yourself. In looking back at a defeat, you must identify the things you could have done differently.
Aggression is deceptive: it inherently hides weakness. Aggressors cannot control their emotions.
Without enemies you will not know how or where to maneuver, and you will lose a sense of your limits, of how far you can go.
In social situations we all wear masks, and keep our defenses up. It is embarrassing, after all, to reveal one’s true feelings. As a seducer you must find a way to lower these resistances.
If you need inspiration, find the part of the target that most irritates you and use it as a springboard for some therapeutic conflict. The more real your cruelty, the more effective it is.
I do know, however, that men become bigger-hearted and better lovers once they get the suspicion that their mistresses care less about them. When a man believes himself to be the one and only lover in a woman’s life, he’ll whistle and go his way.
So often we think that power has changed people, when in fact it simply reveals more of who they are.
The Laws of Human Nature, 1: Master Your Emotional Self – The Law of Irrationality.
When I left him, I reasoned thus with myself: I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know. – Socrates.
Daily Law: Embrace your strangeness. Identify what makes you different. Fuse those things together and become an anomaly.
Daily Law: Think back on the moments when you felt deeply and personally connected to an activity. Think about the pleasure it brought you. In such activities are signs of your true purpose. Mastery, I: Discover Your Calling – The Life’s Task.
Immerse yourself in the world or the industry that you wish to master.
The leader who tries to change the group’s spirit directly – yelling, demanding, disciplining – actually plays into the teenage dynamic and reinforces the desire to rebel.
The world is ruled by necessity: People change their behavior only if they have to. They will feel urgency only if their lives depend on it.
Daily Law: No calling is superior to another. What matters is that it be tied to a personal need and inclination, and that your energy moves you toward improvement and continuous learning from experience. The Laws of Human Nature, 13: Advance with a Sense of Purpose – The Law of Aimlessness.
But it’s not what you have that brings you victory, it’s how you use it. When you have less, you are naturally more inventive.
What you need is a mental filtering system based on a scale of priorities and your long-term goals.