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A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
You are your own worst enemy. You waste precious time dreaming of the future instead of engaging in the present.
Put yourself in situations where you have too much at stake to waste time or resources—if you cannot afford to lose, you won’t. Cut your ties to the past; enter unknown territory where you must depend on your wits and energy to see you through.
Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily.
Sometimes you have to become a little desperate to get anywhere.
Stake everything on a single throw.
Unlimited possibilities are not suited to man; if they existed, his life would only dissolve in the boundless. To become strong, a man’s life needs the limitations ordained by duty and voluntarily accepted. The individual attains significance as a free spirit only by surrounding himself with these limitations and by determining for himself what his duty is. THE I CHING, CHINA,
Act before you are ready.
Death is nothing, but to live defeated is to die every day. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE,
When danger is greatest.—It is rare to break one’s leg when in the course of life one is toiling upwards—it happens much more often when one starts to take things easy and to choose the easy paths. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE,
Enter new waters.
Leaving the past for unknown terrain is like a death—and feeling this finality will snap you back to life.
Make it “you against the world.
Keep yourself restless and unsatisfied.
In war it is not men, but the man, that counts. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE,
The truth is that everything starts from the top. What determines your failure or success is your style of leadership and the chain of command that you design.
Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups. —Friedrich Nietzsche
People in groups are political: they say and do things that they think will help their image within the group. They aim to please others, to promote themselves, rather than to see things dispassionately. Where an individual can be bold and creative, a group is often afraid of risk. The need to find a compromise among all the different egos kills creativity.
In creating this team, you are looking for people who make up for your deficiencies, who have the skills you lack.
When people seem to share your ideas exactly, be wary: they are probably mirroring them to charm you.
Elizabeth’s solution was to keep her opinions quiet; on any issue, no one outside her inner circle knew where she stood.
Better one bad general than two good ones. —Napoleon Bonaparte
If you are ever offered a position in which you will have to share command, turn it down, for the enterprise will fail and you will be held responsible. Better to take a lower position and let the other person have the job.
Step 1: Unite your troops around a cause. Make them fight for an idea.
The cause can be anything you wish, but you should represent it as progressive: it fits the times, it is on the side of the future, so it is destined to succeed.
It is best to have some kind of enemy to hate—an enemy can help a group to define itself in opposition.
Step 2: Keep their bellies full.
Step 3: Lead from the front.
Instead of trying to push them from behind, make them run to keep up with you.
Step 4: Concentrate their ch’i.
Idleness has a terrible effect on ch’i. When soldiers are not working, their spirits lower.
Aggressive action concentrates ch’i, and concentrated ch’i is full of latent force.
Step 5: Play to their emotions.
The best way to motivate people is not through reason but through emotion.
Step 6: Mix harshness and kindness.
Step 7: Build the group myth.
Step 8: Be ruthless with grumblers.
Save yourself unnecessary battles and live to fight another day.
Necessity has a powerful effect on their creativity.
Abundance makes us rich in dreams, for in dreams there are no limits. But it makes us poor in reality.
Their awareness that their days are numbered—that they could die at any time—grounds them in reality. There are things they can never do, talents they will never have, lofty goals they will never reach; that hardly bothers them. Warriors focus on what they do have, the strengths that they do possess and that they must use creatively. Knowing when to slow down, to renew, to retrench, they outlast their opponents. They play for the long term.
Even if you are wealthy, act poor. The poor are more inventive, and often have more fun,
The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one attains with it but in what one pays for it—what it costs us. —Friedrich Nietzsche
At times you seem vulnerable and defensive, getting your opponents to disregard you as a threat, to lower their guard. When the moment is right and you sense an opening, you switch to the attack.
However desperate the situation and circumstances, don’t despair. When there is everything to fear, be unafraid. When surrounded by dangers, fear none of them. When without resources, depend on resourcefulness. When surprised, take the enemy itself by surprise. —Sun-tzu, The Art of War
Aggression is deceptive: it inherently hides weakness. Aggressors cannot control their emotions.
In that first wave of aggression, they seem strong, but the longer their attack goes on, the clearer their underlying weakness and insecurity become.
Mirroring people—giving back to them just what they give you—is a powerful method of counterattack. In daily life, mirroring and passivity can charm people, flattering them into lowering their defenses and opening themselves to attack.
for many difficult people acting out is a strategy—a method of control. They give themselves the license to be impossible and neurotic. If you react by getting angry and trying to make them stop, you are doing just what they want: they are engaging your emotions and dominating your attention.
Whenever you find yourself on the defensive and in trouble, the greatest danger is the impulse to overreact. You will often exaggerate your enemy’s strength, seeing yourself as weaker than is actually the case.
