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Too long for my liking. But great strategies to gain power.

Making a show of one's weakness is actually a very effective strategy, subtle and deceptive, in the game of power. The use of honesty is indeed a power strategy, intended to convince people of one's noble, good hearted, selfless character. It is a form of persuasion, even a subtle form of coercion. We humans have two contrary selves within us - a lower and a higher. The lower tends to be stronger. It impulses pull us down into emotional reactions and defensive postures, making us feel self righteous and superior to others. It makes us grab for immediate pleasures and distractions, always taking the path of least resistance. It induces us to adapt what other people are thinking, losing ourselves in the group.

We feel the impulses of the higher self when we are drawn out of ourselves, wanting to connect more deeply with others, to absorb our minds in our work, to think instead of react, to follow our own path in life and to discover what makes us unique. The lower is the more animal and reactive side of our nature, and one that we easily slip into. The higher is the more truly human side of our nature, the side that makes us thoughtful and self-aware. Because the higher impulse is weaker, connecting to it requires effect and insight.

Most people are open books. They say what they feel, say out their opinions at every opportunity and constantly reveal their plans and intentions.
1) It is easy and natural to always want to talk about one's feelings and plans for the future. It takes effort to control your tongue and monitor what you reveal.
2) Many believe that by being honest and open they are winning people's hearts and showing their good nature.
By being unabashedly open you make yourself so predictable and familiar that it is almost impossible to respect or fear you and power will not accrue to a person who cannot inspire such emotions. The pattern is powerful in that it deceives the other person into expecting the opposite of what you are really doing. People feel superior to the person whose actions they can predict. If you show them who is in control by playing against their expectations, you both gain their respect and tighten your hold on their fleeting attention.

An air of mystery can make the mediocre appear intelligent and profound. If you find yourself trapped, cornered and on the defensive on some situation, try a simple experiment: do something that cannot be easily explained or interpreted. Choose a simple action, but carry it out in a way that unsettles your opponent, a way with many possible interpretation making your intentions obscure. Do not let your air of mystery be slowly transformed into a reputation of deceit. Learn to use the knowledge of the past and you will look like a genius, even when you are really just a clever borrower. The essence of power is the ability to keep the initiative, to get others to react to your moves, to keep your opponent and those around you on the defensive.

Two things must happen to place you in this position: you yourself must learn to master your emotions and never to influenced by anger; meanwhile however you must play on people's natural tendency to react angrily when pushed and baited. In the long run, the ability to make others come to you is a weapon far more powerful than any tool of aggression. When you suspect you are in the presence of an inferior, don't argue, don't try to help, don't pass the person on to your friends or you will become enmeshed. Flee the inferior's presence or suffer the consequences. Never associate with those who share your defects - they will reinforce everything that holds you back. Only create associations with positive affinities.

The ultimate power is the power to get people to do as you wish. The ultimate power is the power to do as you wish. When you can do this without having to force people or hurt them, when they willingly grant you what you desire, then your power is untouchable. The best way to achieve this position is to create a relationship of dependence. Do not be one of the many who mistakenly believe that the ultimate form of power is independence. Self interest is the lever that will move people. Once you make them see how you can in some way meet their needs or advance their cause, their resistance to your requests for help will magically fall away.

At each step on the way to acquire power, you must train yourself to think your way inside the other person's mind to see their needs and interests, to get rid of the screen of your feelings that obscure the truth. Master this act and there will be no limits to what you can accomplish. Everything in the world depends on absence and presence. A strong presence will draw power and attention to you - you shine more brightly than those around you. But a point is inevitably reached where too much presence creates the opposite effect: the more you are seen and heard from the more your value degrades. You become a habit. No matter how hard you try to be different, subtly without your knowing why, people respect you less and less. At the right moment you must learn to withdraw yourself before they unconsciously push you away. It is a game of hide and seek.

The ability to measure people and to know who you're dealing with is the most important skill of all in gathering and conserving power. Without it you are blind: not only you will offend the wrong people, you will choose the wrong types to work on and will think you are flattering people when are actually insulting them. Power greatly depends on appearances, so you must learn the tricks that will enhance your image. Refusing to commit to a person or group is one of these. When you hold yourself back, you incur not anger but a kind of respect. This aura of power only grows with time: as your reputation for independence grows, more and more people will come to desire you, wanting to be the one who gets you to commit.

If there is something unpleasant or unpopular that needs to be done, it is far too risky for you to do the work yourself. You need a cat's paw - someone who does the dirty and dangerous work for you. The cat's paw grabs what you need, hurts whom you need hurt, and keeps people from noticing that you are the one responsible. Let someone be the executioner, or the bearer of bad news while you bring only joy and glad tidings. Truly powerful people keep their hands clean. Only good things surround them and the only announcements they make are of glorious achievements. People are not interested in the truth about change. They do not want to hear that it has come from hard work, or from anything as banal as exhaustion, boredom or depression, they are dying to believe in something romantic, otherworldly.

The want to hear of angels and out of body experiences. Indulge them. Hint at the mystical source of some personal change, wrap it up in ethereal colors and a cultlike following will form around you. Boldness should never be the strategy behind all your actions. It is a tactical instrument to be used at the right movement. Plan and think ahead and make the final element the bold move that will bring you success. 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 makes them look weaker - as if anyone who practiced and worked for it could do what they had done or as if they weren't really up to the job.

Keep your effort and your tricks to yourself and you seem to have the grace and ease of God. Leaders who try to dissolve that distance through a false chumminess gradually lose the ability to inspire loyalty, fear or love. When you force the pace out of fear and impatience, you create a nest of problems that require fixing and you end up taking much longer than if you had taken your time. Sour grapes approach - if there is something you want but that you realize you cannot have, the worst thing you can do is draw attention to your disappointment by complaining about it. An infinitely more powerful tactic is to act as if it never really interested you in the first place.

When you are attacked by an inferior, deflect people's attention by making it clear that the attack was never registered. Look away or answer sweetly, showing how little the attack concerns you. Similarly, when you yourself have committed a blunder, the best response is often to make less of your mistake by treating it lightly. Never show that something has affected you, or that you are offended - that only shows you have acknowledged a problem. Your search for power depends on shortcuts. You must always circumvent people's suspicions, their perverse desire to resist your will. To show your frustration is to show that you have lost your power to shape events; the powerful never reveal this kind of weakness.

Powerful people judge everything by what it costs not just in money but in time, dignity and peace of mind. Money has to circulate to bring power. To give a gift is to imply that you and recipients are equal at the very least or that you are the recipient's superior. The mirror reflects reality but it is also the perfect tool for deception: when you mirror your enemies, doing as they do, they cannot figure our 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. In the moral effect, you mirror what other 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. The fact that the past is dead and buried gives you the freedom to reinterpret it. To support your cause, tinker with the facts. The past is a test in which you can safely insert your own lines.

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