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June 2 - June 13, 2021
While writing about the various power players in history, I developed the theory that the source of their success could almost always be traced to one single skill or unique quality that separated them from others. For Napoleon, it was his remarkable ability to absorb a massive amount of detail and organize it in his mind.
your fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.
Fear is the oldest and strongest emotion known to man, something deeply inscribed in our nervous system and subconscious.
In the evolution of fear, a decisive moment occurred in the nineteenth century when people in advertising and journalism discovered that if they framed their stories and appeals with fear, they could capture our attention.
“So, first of all,” he told the audience, “let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
fears.
Fear and apocalyptic crisid is the driver of the new lrft
What separates those who go under and those who rise above adversity is the strength of their will and their hunger for power.
Napoleon Bonaparte represents a classic fearless type. He began his career in the military just as the French Revolution exploded. At this critical moment in his life, he had to experience one of the most chaotic and terrifying periods in history.
THE GREATEST FEAR PEOPLE HAVE IS THAT OF BEING THEMSELVES. THEY WANT TO BE 50 CENT OR SOMEONE ELSE. THEY DO WHAT EVERYONE ELSE DOES EVEN IF IT DOESN’T FIT WHERE AND WHO THEY ARE. BUT YOU GET NOWHERE THAT WAY; YOUR ENERGY IS WEAK AND NO ONE PAYS ATTENTION TO YOU. YOU’RE RUNNING AWAY FROM THE ONE THING THAT YOU OWN—WHAT MAKES YOU DIFFERENT. I LOST THAT FEAR. AND ONCE I FELT THE POWER THAT I HAD BY SHOWING THE WORLD I DIDN’T CARE ABOUT BEING LIKE OTHER PEOPLE, I COULD NEVER GO BACK. —50 Cent
The key to possessing this supreme power is to assume the active mode in dealing with your fears. This means entering the very arenas you normally shy away from: making the very hard decisions you have been avoiding, confronting the people who are playing power games with you, thinking of yourself and what you need instead of pleasing others, making yourself change the direction of your life even though such change is the very thing you dread.
THE FIRMER YOUR GRASP ON REALITY, THE MORE POWER YOU WILL HAVE TO ALTER IT FOR YOUR PURPOSES.
As a boy, Curtis Jackson (aka 50 Cent) had one dominant drive—ambition. He wanted more than anything the very things that it seemed he could never have—money, freedom, and power.
REALITY IS MY DRUG. THE MORE I HAVE OF IT, THE MORE POWER I GET AND THE HIGHER I FEEL. —50 Cent
KNOW THE OTHER, KNOW YOURSELF, AND THE VICTORY WILL NOT BE AT RISK; KNOW THE GROUND, KNOW THE NATURAL CONDITIONS, AND THE VICTORY WILL BE TOTAL. —Sun Tzu
America was once a country of great realists and pragmatists. This came from the harshness of the environment, the many dangers of frontier life. We had to become keen observers of everything going on around us to survive.
When you do not get to the root of a problem, you cannot solve it in any meaningful manner. People
Always question why this particular event has happened, what the motives of the various actors are, who really is in control, who benefits by this action.
PEOPLE WHO CLING TO THEIR DELUSIONS FIND IT DIFFICULT, IF NOT IMPOSSIBLE, TO LEARN ANYTHING WORTH LEARNING: A PEOPLE UNDER THE NECESSITY OF CREATING THEMSELVES MUST EXAMINE EVERYTHING, AND SOAK UP LEARNING THE WAY THE ROOTS OF A TREE SOAK UP WATER. —James Baldwin
WHEN YOU WORK FOR OTHERS, YOU ARE AT THEIR MERCY.
IF ONE IS CONTINUALLY SURVIVING THE WORST THAT LIFE CAN BRING, ONE EVENTUALLY CEASES TO BE CONTROLLED BY A FEAR OF WHAT LIFE CAN BRING.
Even the worst shit that happens to you can be converted into gold if you are clever enough.
Most people in life are rigid and predictable; that makes them easy targets. Your fluid, unpredictable strategies will drive them insane. They cannot foresee your next move or figure you out. That is often enough to make them give way or fall apart.
Early in his career, the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman used this more tyrannical approach in dealing with his actors, but he began to be dissatisfied with its results and so decided to experiment with something different.
Having grown weary over the heated rivalries and violence of the past eight years, the hustlers had settled into a system where each would have his own corner or two; the drug fiends would come to them for quick transactions.
What Wright had discovered was simple: when you submit in spirit to aggressors or to an unjust and impossible situation, you do not buy yourself any real peace.
be read in your manner without you having to speak a word. By a paradoxical law of human nature, trying to please people less will make them more likely in the long run to respect and treat you better.
For Machiavelli, the problem wasn’t a leader adjusting his morality to the circumstance—everyone does that. It was that he did not do it well.
FDR had understood the basic principle in squaring off against aggressors who are direct and relentless. If you meet them head on, you are forced to fight on their terms. Unless you happen to be an aggressive type, you are generally at a disadvantage against those who have simple ideas and fierce energy. It is best to fight them in an indirect manner,
The only way to treat these types is to take bold, uncompromising action that either discourages further nonsense or sends them running away.
Lincoln was the consummate realist—if your goal is to end an injustice, you have to aim for results, and that requires being strategic and even deceptive. To end slavery he would be willing to do almost anything.
People have problems and traumas that they carry with them from their childhood on. Most often when they do something to harm or block us, it really is not directed at us personally. It comes from some unfinished business from the past, or deep insecurities. We happen to cross their path at the wrong moment.
IN THE RING, OUR OPPONENTS CAN GOUGE US WITH THEIR NAILS OR BUTT US WITH THEIR HEADS AND LEAVE A BRUISE, BUT WE DON’T DENOUNCE THEM FOR IT OR GET UPSET WITH THEM OR REGARD THEM FROM THEN ON AS VIOLENT TYPES. WE JUST KEEP AN EYE ON THEM . . . NOT OUT OF HATRED OR SUSPICION. JUST KEEPING A FRIENDLY DISTANCE. WE NEED TO DO THAT IN OTHER AREAS. WE NEED TO EXCUSE WHAT OUR SPARRING PARTNERS DO, AND JUST KEEP OUR DISTANCE—WITHOUT SUSPICION OR HATRED. —Marcus Aurelius
The greatest leaders in history all inevitably learned by experience the following lesson: it is much better to be feared and respected than to be loved. As a prime example, look at the film director John Ford, the man behind some of the greatest films in Hollywood history. The task of film directors can be particularly difficult.
Understand: a group of any size must have goals and long-term objectives to function properly. But human nature serves as a great impediment to this. We are naturally consumed by immediate battles and problems; we find it very difficult, if not unnatural, to focus with any depth on the future.
You must play this visionary role with some dramatic flair, like Edison who was a consummate performer and promoter. He would give dazzling presentations of his ideas, and stage events to get on the front page of newspapers.
Your own level of excitement and self-belief will convince people that you know where you are going and should be followed.
Understand: the natural dynamic of any group is to splinter into factions. People want to protect and promote their narrow interests, so they form political alliances from within. If you force them to unite under your leadership, stamping out their factions, you may take control but it will come with great resentment—they will naturally suspect you are increasing your power at their expense.
Operating with a mission statement is an effective way of softening your image and disguising the extent of your power. You are seen as more than just a leader; you are a role model, instructing, energizing, and inspiring your lieutenants.
The word “authority” comes from the Latin root autore, meaning author—a person who creates something new.
When we are confronted with people or individuals who have different values and belief systems, we feel threatened. Our first move is not to understand them but to demonize them—that shadowy Other. Alternatively, we may choose to look at them through the prism of our own values and assume they share them.
Know your base and work to reconnect with it. Keep your associations with it alive, intense, and present. Return to your origins—the source of all inspiration and power.
Too often our concept of learning is to absorb ideas from books, to do what others tell us to, and perhaps to do some controlled exercises. But this is an incomplete and fearful concept of learning—cut off from practical experience.
Demosthenes—one of the greatest political figures in ancient Athens—followed such a path, determined to overcome his intense fear of public speaking.
What Marshall (who would later become the first African American appointed to the Supreme Court) had learned by immersing himself in the white-controlled justice system of his time is that the social process is just as important as the legal or technical one. This was not something taught in law school and yet learning it was the key to his ability to function within the system and advance the cause for which he was fighting.
You are like my pack of wolves, he explained, but none of this will happen if the alpha wolf is killed. What he asked for was their help—in providing security, in keeping him in touch with what was happening on the streets, and in doing some of the legwork for the promotion and distribution of his mix-tapes. He needed followers and he had chosen them.
Reinventing himself in this way would be the ultimate reversal of the fate that seemed to await him after the death of his mother.
It is always easy to rationalize your own doubts and conservative instincts, particularly when times are tough.
These are all signs of a weak ego. As an egotist of the strong variety, you trumpet your individuality and take great pride in your accomplishments. If others cannot accept that, or judge you as arrogant, that is their problem, not yours.
This third, fearless way of approaching death originated in the ancient world, in the philosophy known as Stoicism. The core of Stoicism is learning the art of how to die, which paradoxically teaches you how to live. And perhaps the greatest Stoic writer in the ancient world was Seneca the Younger, born around 4 B.C.
