The Flashlight<ul><li>Where you focus to, that point become clearer. Other than that point, become suppressed. Like a flashlight</li><li>Called orienting system</li></ul>The Floodlight<ul><li>Opposite of flashlight, this subsystem is broad and open. Your attention is ready for any input within your vision</li><li>Called alerting system</li></ul>The Juggler <ul><li>To direct, oversee, and manage what we’re doing, moment to moment, as well as ensure that our actions are aligned with what we’re aiming to do </li><li>This is the overseer that makes sure we stay on track</li><li>Called central executive</li></ul>

3 Brain Subsystems 

(3) Roll with it—keep going, keep moving, get curious about what the next moment will bring.

Decenter - Skills To Control Your Emotion

6. Repeat. Each time you notice yourself mind-wandering, tag the content of your mind-wandering (as thought, emotion, or sensation) and then come back to your breath.

CORE PRACTICE BOOSTER: WATCH YOUR WHITEBOARD

Get ready . . . This time, stand up! You can always sit if you prefer, in the same way as with the previous practices. But I usually recommend doing this practice in what is commonly known as Mountain Pose. Stand comfortably, your feet shoulder-distance apart. Let your arms relax at your sides, palms out. Close your eyes or lower your gaze.

CORE PRACTICE: RIVER OF THOUGHT (1)

8. Throughout this practice, notice when your mind wanders away from the chosen focus, and gently guide your attention back.

CORE PRACTICE: CONNECTION PRACTICE

<ul><li>attention biases brain activity. It gives a competitive advantage to the information it selects. Whatever it is you pay attention to will have more neural activity associated with it. Your attention, quite literally, alters the functioning of your brain at the cellular level. It truly is a superpower.</li></ul>

(continue)

5. Move on. Come back to the present moment, back to your breath, after every instance of labeling. If it’s a strong experience, it might pop up repeatedly—then just label it again.

(2) Drop the story—your assessment of this situation is merely one story. Not the only one.

Decenter - Skills To Control Your Emotions

Your attention determines:<ul><li>what you perceive, learn, and remember;</li><li>how steady or how reactive you feel;</li><li>which decisions you make and actions you take;</li><li>how you interact with others</li><li>your sense of fulfillment and accomplishment. </li></ul>No matter how much I tell you about how attention works and why, and no matter how motivated you are, the way your brain pays attention cannot be fundamentally altered by sheer force of will

Introduction

your memory for experiences, involves selective encoding of only those aspects of experience that were most attended to and held in working memory. Translation: you’ll only remember what you focused on and “wrote” on your whiteboard—not everything that occurred. And further, your episodic memory doesn’t merely involve the external aspects of events (who, what, where, and so forth) but is deeply wrapped up in your autobiographical take on what you experienced. So—was the experience happy? Sad? Interesting? Tense? Your emotional experience will influence what you focus on.

Episodic Memory

4. Next, while allowing this sense of yourself to recede from your focus, call to mind someone who has been very good to you in this life, very kind and supportive, someone you might describe as a benefactor. Silently repeat the phrases below, offering them to this person: May you be happyMay you be healthyMay you be safeMay you live with ease

your general world knowledge, for facts, ideas, concepts—is similarly selective. What you remember is based on what else you’ve previously learned.

Semantic Memory

9. When you’re ready, spend a few moments anchoring on your breath to end the practice.

<ol><li>Get ready, sit in an upright alerted posture, shoulder back chest open and be comfortable.</li><li>Tune in to the breath related sensation, imagine the air entering your lung as you breathe in slowly, and exit your lung as you breathe out</li><li>Notice when your mind wander and focus back to the breathing exercises. It's normal to wander and always use constructive words when trying to refocus</li></ol>

Core Practice: Find Your Focus

Troubleshooting. If you have difficulty letting things pass you by, come back to your breath. Imagine your breath sensations as a boulder in the middle of all that flowing water. Rest your attention on that stable, steady object; when you feel ready, broaden your attention again and go back to monitoring.

CORE PRACTICE: RIVER OF THOUGHT (5)

<ul><li>Attention never vanishes, even though it might feel as if it does when you’re struggling to focus and simply can’t</li><li>The amount of attention you have remains constant. It just gets used differently, and maybe not how you want it to be used</li><li>You always use 100 percent of your attention. Attention always goes somewhere. So the question becomes: Where?</li></ul>

Load Theory: Attention Is Not A Gas Tank

Go! Now broaden your awareness so that you are not selecting any target object. Instead, use the metaphor of your mind being like a river. You’re standing on the riverbank, watching the water flow by. Imagine your thoughts, memories, sensations, emotions—whatever arises—as if they are flowing past you. Notice what appears there, but don’t engage with it. Don’t fish it up, chase it, or elaborate on it. Just let it flow by.

CORE PRACTICE: RIVER OF THOUGHT (3)

Working memory is the essential partner to attention: it’s what allows you to actually do something with the information your flashlight focuses on. But if attention keeps piping in salient and distracting content, that will become a big problem for goal maintenance, let alone goal accomplishment. Why? Because you only have so much space to work with. Just like a real-life whiteboard, your working memory has limits

Continue

6. As a sense of this person recedes from your focus, next bring to mind an image of someone with whom things are challenging at this time in your life. This is often called a “difficult person” . Remember, you are not endorsing their view and are not necessarily even forgiving their actions in the past. You are simply offering kindness to them as a practice aimed at strengthening your ability to take another’s perspective, realizing that—like you—they too wish for happiness, health, safety, and ease. With this in mind, mentally offer them the phrases.

3. Silently repeat the following phrases to offer yourself well-wishes (three min). Remember: the point is to offer yourself well-wishes, not make requests or demands for them. Saying these phrases supports that: May I be happyMay I be healthyMay I be safeMay I live with easeThe phrases and their order are not important. Some people may say, May I be free from suffering instead of May I be safe. Others may wish to say, May I find peace instead of May I live with ease. The important thing is that you choose phrases that resonate with you and that convey a feeling of goodwill to the recipient.

<ol><li>Begin this practice as you have the others, sitting comfortably yet alert. Anchor on your breath and focus on breath-related sensations.</li><li>Now shift to bringing a sense of yourself into your mind, at this very moment in your life.</li></ol>

1. Repeat the previous steps. We begin the same way we did with the basic Find Your Flashlight (find where your thoughts focus on), by sitting in a chair, comfortable but upright, resting your hands in your lap, and closing or lowering your eyes (to limit visual distraction). Again, select prominent breath-related sensations. Remember the metaphor of your attention as a flashlight, the beam pointing toward your selected breath-related body sensation. When your flashlight drifts to something else . . .

2. Notice where it goes. This is a new step! In the first exercise, I asked you to notice if attention wandered away, and if so to immediately move your flashlight back to your breath. This time, I want you to pause for a moment and observe where the flashlight is now directed.

4. Make this a quick process. Notice if you begin going down a rabbit hole of elaborating on the distraction, or asking why you are thinking about this particular topic, or defaulting to unsupportive habits like chastising yourself for getting distracted in the first place. It is not your job right now to answer these questions or reprimand yourself. Now is actually the time to notice what is on your whiteboard but not to engage with it. Just label the contents as best you can from these three categories: thought, emotion, sensation. And then . . .

7. Now move on to everyone in your home, community, state or province, and country, and continue to expand outward until you include all beings everywhere. Spend a few moments visualizing each place (your home, your community), and then offer the phrases to everyone there.

<ul><li>Attention simultaneously highlights what’s important and dims distractions so we can think deeply, problem-solve, plan, prioritize, and innovate</li><li>It threads together the moment-by-moment colors, flavors, textures, insights, memories, emotions, decisions, and actions that create the fabric of our lives</li><li>What you pay attention to is your life</li></ul>

Attention Is Your Superpower

<ul><li>Working memory is where you hold the micro-intentions and deliberate aim of having a desired outcome for each and every task you engage in</li><li>All the decisions, planning, thinking, actions, and behaviors you do over the course of a day: anything you set out to do</li><li>You lean on your working memory to maintain your goals and subgoals, update them, and scrap them for a different goal, on a continuous, moment-by-moment, task-by-task basis.</li><li>Hold a goal in mind, and then take action based on that goal. That’s how working memory works, and also why it impacts you so profoundly</li></ul>

Working Memory

Keep going. You’re not going to be actively “labeling” the stuff that you notice on your whiteboard, nor returning to your breath once you do. Your job right now is not to be making distinctions between which content is useful or relevant, and what’s mind wandering. You’re not even going to try to stop your mind from wandering. The river will keep flowing—there isn’t anything you can or need to do about that. This is the key to open monitoring: you allow your mind to do what it will do. Your job is simply to observe that flow, at a distance, without engagement or participation.

CORE PRACTICE: RIVER OF THOUGHT (4)

5. Now, letting your sense of this person recede, bring to mind the image of someone with whom you have no real connection and for whom your feelings are neutral. It could be someone you see now and again but don’t have strong feelings for, one way or another. Perhaps it’s a neighbor you pass while walking your dog, a parking lot attendant you see daily, or a grocery store clerk. Mentally offer them the phrases.

During a difficult interaction, take a moment to pause. It can be the length of one breath. Or, before a difficult interaction, take a moment and picture this person. Then, remind yourself: “This person has experienced pain, just like me. This person has experienced loss, just like me. Joy, just like me. Was born from a mother, just like me; will die someday, just like me.” If these phrases don’t resonate with you, feel free to substitute with other phrases that emphasize the common humanity we share with others.

On-Demand Practice: “Just Like Me”

To get a sense of what this means for your cognition, imagine a studio apartment. There is only one room. Every time you want to use the room, you have to completely change out the furniture. Want to sleep? Set up a bed and nightstand. Want to host a party? Take down the bedroom and set up couches and coffee tables. Need to cook? Drag that all away and set up a stove, counter, and cooking supplies. Sound exhausting? It is! And it’s the same for your cognition, when you switch from task to task.

Multitasking Metaphor

The floodlight gains access to the whiteboard to accomplish an urgent goal. Under acute threat or stress, your alerting system temporarily blocks access to working memory to ensure that your brain’s action systems prioritize basic survival behaviors (fight, flight, freeze) over any other goals or plans. — Key vulnerability: Road BlockThe alerting system can be set off by feelings of threat, even when there is no real danger. This temporarily cuts off access to working memory and impairs any functions that rely on it (like long-term memory, social connection, and emotion regulation).

The Floodlight

The juggler keeps your current goals active on the whiteboard, and updates these goals as circumstances change. — Key vulnerability: Ball DropOverload, blanking, and distraction in working memory all derail the central executive’s juggler, leading to lost goals and misguided behaviors. The juggler drops the ball.

The Juggler

Get set . . . Find your flashlight and direct it toward prominent breath-related sensations for several breaths. This is always where we’ll start with any practice. And at any point in this exercise if you feel yourself getting drawn away (for example, getting caught in a ruminative loop), you can always anchor back on the breath. Flashlight on the breath is your home base—return to it whenever necessary, and reset.

CORE PRACTICE: RIVER OF THOUGHT (2)

The flashlight encodes information and maintains it in working memory, “retracing” it on the whiteboard to keep it there for longer. — Key vulnerability: Bait and SwitchWhen your attention is automatically “captured” or yanked by something salient, this more exciting (to your attention) content overwrites what was being maintained. Voluntary attention then starts retracing this new content. The prior information is lost forever, gone without a trace.

The Flashlight

Certain things may become “sticky” on our whiteboards because of generalization. We can make generalizations about the behavior and intentions of others (“She never supports me”) or regarding ourselves (“I will never amount to anything”). An incident where you made a mistake becomes “I always get this stuff wrong—I’m such an idiot!” It’s not the incident itself that takes center stage on your whiteboard: it’s the generalization you derived from it. The oversimplified packaging allows it to remain in working memory with minimal effort: it’s short, it’s clear, and it probably isn’t accurate.

3. Give it a label. Identify what type of distraction has appeared on your whiteboard. Is it a thought, an emotion, or a sensation? A thought could be a worry, a reminder, a memory, an idea, an item on your to-do list. An emotion could be a feeling of frustration, an urge to stop doing the practice and do something else, a twinge of happiness, a swell of stress. A sensation is something in your physical body: An itch. A sore muscle. Noticing that your back hurts from sitting there, or noticing something you heard, smelled, touched, or saw (such as a door slamming, food cooking, cat jumping).

<ul><li>When we try to do two things at once that both require our attention, it’s really hard to do either of them well</li><li>Think of it this way: You only have one flashlight. Not two. Not three. And your one flashlight can only ever be shining at one thing at a time</li><li>When you’re trying to accomplish multiple tasks at once that require your focused attention, what you’re actually doing is moving your flashlight from one thing, then to the next, then back to the first</li></ul>

Don't Multitask

Do these three critical things:1. Rehearsalwhen you studied with flashcards, that was rehearsal2. Elaborationrelating new experiences or facts to knowledge or memories you already have3. ConsolidationThis is what happens as you’re performing the above two functions, and it ultimately leads to the memory being stored. As the brain replays information, it’s laying down new neural pathways and then going over them, strengthening those new connections

How To Make Memory

(1) Stop the inner war against the actual circumstances—just accept them. It is what it is. Let me be clear: this does not mean that you are “all good” with the situation. It has nothing to do with your judgement about the actual event. It just means that you are accepting the actuality of what has occurred.

Any tasks you do over a period of time:<ul><li>Performance declines</li><li>Errors goes up</li><li>Response becomes slower and more variable</li></ul>

The Vigilance Decrement

How to train your attention and be more productive

STOP FOR A MOMENT. Are you here right now? Is your focus on this page? Or is it roaming elsewhere, to the past or future, to a worry, to your to-do list, or to your phone? Whether you’re simply browsing, talking to friends, or trying to stay focused in an important meeting, you can’t seem to manage to hang on to your attention. No matter how hard you try, you’re somewhere else. The consequence is that you miss out on 50 percent of your life—including the most important moments. The good news: There’s nothing wrong with you—your brain isn’t broken. The human brain was built to be distractible. The even better news: You can train your brain to pay attention more effectively. Stay with me a little longer and soon you will be able to: Focus without all the struggle. Take back your attention from the pull of distraction. And function at your peak, for all that truly matters in your life.

productivity

Productivity

exerciseandfitness

Exercise & Fitness

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

***NATIONAL BESTSELLER***STOP FOR A MOMENT. Are you here right now? Is your focus on this page? Or is it roaming elsewhere, to the past or future, to a worry, to your to-do list, or to your phone?Whether you’re simply browsing, talking to friends, or trying to stay focused in an important meeting, you can’t seem to manage to hang on to your attention. No matter how hard you try, you’re somewhere else. The consequence is that you miss out on 50 percent of your life—including the most important moments.The good news: There’s nothing wrong with you—your brain isn’t broken. The human brain was built to be distractible.The even better news: You can train your brain to pay attention more effectively.Stay with me a little longer and soon you will be able to: <ul><li>Focus without all the struggle.</li><li>Take back your attention from the pull of distraction.</li><li>And function at your peak, for all that truly matters in your life.</li></ul>

Amishi P. Jha

Peak Mind

<ul>
<li>You must work to establish a reputation for one outstanding quality, whether generosity or honesty or cunning</li>
<li>If your reputation is stained, it is wise to associate with someone whose image is counteract with your own</li>
</ul>

Law #5 – So Much Depends on Reputation, Guard it with Your Life

Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter<ul><li>Do not waste your time lashing out in all directions at what seems to be a many-headed enemy. Find the one head that matters</li><li>Stirrers thrive by hiding in the group, disguising their actions among the reactions of others. Render their actions visible and they lose their power to upset</li></ul>

Law #42

Play the perfect courtier<ul><li>Never seem to be working too hard. Your talent must appear to flow naturally, with an ease that makes people take you for a genius rather than a workaholic</li><li>Most important: Do not ask for favors on another person's behalf, least of all a friend's</li><li>Do not overstep your bounds. Do what you are assigned to do, to the best of your abilities, and never do more</li></ul>

Law #24

Play on people need to believe to create a cult like following<ul><li>Always in a rush to believe in something, we will manufacture saints and faiths out of nothing</li></ul>

Law #27

Do not build fortress to protect yourself, isolation is dangerous<ul><li>Because humans are social creatures by nature, power depends on social interaction and circulation. To make yourself powerful you must place yourself at the center of things</li></ul>

Law #18

Be royal in your own fashion: act like a king to be treated like one<ul><li>Never lose your self-respect, nor be too familiar with yourself when you are alone</li><li>It is within your power to set your own price. How you carry yourself reflects what you think of yourself</li><li>Never make the mistake of thinking that you elevate yourself by humiliating people</li></ul>

Law #34

Play to people's fantasies<ul><li>People rarely believe that their problems arise from their own misdeeds and stupidity</li><li>Change is slow and gradual. It requires hard work, a bit of luck, a fair amount of self-sacrifice, and a lot of patience.</li><li>Truth is cold, sober fact, not so comfortable to absorb. A lie is more palatable. The most detested person in the world is the one who always tells the truth, who never romances</li></ul>

Law #32

Never appear too perfect<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Only a minority can succeed at the game of life, and that minority inevitably arouses the envy of those around them</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Once success happens your way, the people to fear the most are those in your own circle. Feeling of inferiority gnaw at them; the thought of your success only heightens their feelings of stagnation</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Never be so foolish as to believe that you are stirring up admiration by flaunting the qualities that raise you above others</li></ul>

Law #46

Use absence to increase respect and honor<ul><li>Familiarity in this existence makes all things tame</li><li>Absence diminishes minor passions and inflames great ones, as the wind douses a candle and fans afire</li></ul>But <ul><li>The need to withdraw only comes after you have established your presence; leave too early and you do not increase your respect, you are simply forgotten</li></ul>

Law #16

Assume formlessness<ul><li>Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed</li><li>Learn to move fast and adapt or you will be eaten.</li><li>Formlessness is a tool. Never confuse it with a go-with-the-flow style, or with a religious resignation to the twists of fortune</li></ul>

Law #48

Despise the free lunch<ul><li>By paying your own way you stay clear of gratitude, guilt, and deceit</li><li>Powerful people judge everything by what it costs, not just in money but in time, dignity, and peace of mind</li></ul>

Law #40

Infection: avoid the unhappy and unlucky<ul><li>Recognize the fortunate so that you may choose their company, and the unfortunate so that you may avoid them</li><li>Those misfortunates among us who were brought down by circumstances beyond their control deserve all the help and sympathy we can give them</li><li>But there are others who are not born to misfortune or unhappiness, but who draw it upon themselves by their destructive actions and unsettling effect on others. Avoid this kind of person immediately</li></ul>

Law #10

Make other come to you use bait if neccessary<ul><li>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</li><li>You yourself must learn to master your emotions, and never to be influenced by anger; meanwhile, however, you must play on people's natural tendency to react angrily when pushed and baited</li></ul>

Law #8

Play a sucker to catch a sucker. Seem dumber than your mark<ul><li>The feeling that someone else is more intelligent than we are is almost intolerable</li><li>We usually try to justify it in different ways: “He only has book knowledge, whereas I have real knowledge.” “Her parents paid for her to get a good education. If my parents had had as much money, if I had been as privileged.. . .” “He's not as smart as he thinks.” Last but not least: “She may know her narrow little field better than I do, but beyond that she's really not smart at all.</li><li>never inadvertently insult or impugn a person's brain power</li></ul>

Law #21

Do not commit to anyone<ul><li>Desire is like a virus: If we see that someone is desired by other people, we tend to find this person desirable too</li><li>Alcibiades tactic: Put yourself in the middle between competing powers. Lure one side with the promise of your help; the other side, always wanting to outdo its enemy, will pursue you as well. As each side vies for your attention, you will immediately seem a person of great influence and desirability</li></ul>

Law #20

<ul>
<li>At the beginning of your rise to the top, then, spend all your energy on attracting attention. Most important: The quality of the attention is irrelevant</li>
<li>Court controversy, even scandal. It is better to be attacked, even slandered, than ignored</li>
<li>BUT Never appear overly greedy for attention, for it signals insecurity, and insecurity drives power away</li>
</ul>

Law #6 – Court Attention at all Costs

Stir up water to catch fish<ul><li>To show your frustration is to show that you have lost your power to shape events; it is the helpless action of the child who resorts to a hysterical fit to get his way</li><li>Tantrums neither intimidate nor inspire loyalty</li><li>We have to realize that nothing in the social realm, and in the game of power, is personal</li><li>When the waters are still, your opponents have the time and space to plot actions that they will initiate and control. So stir the waters, force the fish to the surface, get them to act before they are ready, steal the initiative</li></ul>

Law #39

Recreate yourself<ul><li>The world wants to assign you a role in life. And once you accept that role, you are doomed</li><li>Adopt the plasticity of the actor, who can mold his or her face to the emotion required.</li></ul>

Law #25

Plan all the way to the end<ul><li>Most men are ruled by the heart, not the head. Their plans are vague, and when they meet obstacles they improvise</li><li>But improvisation 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.</li><li>Experience shows that, if one foresees from far away the designs to be undertaken, one can act with speed when the moment comes to execute them</li></ul>

Law #29

Preach the need for change but never reform too much at once<ul><li>Because the world is and always has been full of insecurity and threat, we latch on to familiar faces and create habits and rituals to make the world more comfortable</li><li>Just as you cannot make people see the world your way, you cannot wrench them into die future with painful changes</li></ul>

Law #45

Know who you're dealing with. Do not offend the wrong person<ul><li>Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are</li><li>We forget a lot in our lives, but we rarely forget an insult</li><li>Swallow the impulse to offend, even if the other person seems weak. The satisfaction is meager compared to the danger that someday he or she will be in a position to hurt you</li></ul>

Law #19

A master who cannot bestow on you the gifts of his experience may direct rancor and ill will at you instead.

Law #1 – Never Outshine the Master

<ul><li>In pursuit of power, you must change who you are</li><li>Mediocrity doesn't attract power</li><li>Patience is key</li><li>Control your emotions</li><li>Be aware of your actions</li></ul>

My takes from this book

Work on the hearts and minds of others<ul><li>it is so infuriating to meet with a person who makes no effort to seduce you or attempt to persuade you, even if only for the purpose of deception</li><li>The men who have changed the universe have never gotten there by working on leaders, but rather by moving the masses. Working on leaders is the method of intrigue and only leads to secondary results. Working on the masses, however, is the stroke of genius that changes the face of the world</li></ul>

Law #43

When asking for help, appeal to people's self-interest, never to their mercy or gratitude<ul><li>If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to remind him of your past assistance and good deeds</li><li>Every person you deal with is like another culture, an alien land with a past that has nothing to do with yours. Yet you can bypass the differences between you and him by appealing to his self-interest</li><li>At each step on the way to acquiring power, you must train yourself to think your way inside the other person's mind</li></ul>

Law #13

Learn to keep people dependant on you<ul><li>Such is the fate of those who do not make others dependent on them. Sooner or later someone come along who can do the job as well as them; someone younger, fresher, less expensive, less threatening</li><li>Be the only one who can do what you do, and make the fate of those who hire you so entwined with yours that they cannot get rid of you</li><li>Better make others depends on you out of fear of consequences of losing you than out of love of your company</li></ul>

Law #11

Disdain things you cannot have: ignoring them is the best revenge<ul><li>You choose to let things bother you. You can just as easily choose not to notice the irritating offender, to consider the matter trivial and unworthy of your interest</li><li>By acknowledging other people, even if only to fight with them, you open yourself to their influence</li><li>Uncontrollable desire makes you seem weak, unworthy, pathetic</li></ul>

Law #36

Create compelling spectacles<ul><li>Find an image or symbol from the past that will neatly fit your situation, and put it on your shoulders like a cape. It will make you seem larger than life</li><li>Visual is the sense we most depend on and trust</li></ul>

Law #37

Win through your actions, never through argument<ul><li>Each man believes that he is right, and words will rarely convince him otherwise</li><li>Demonstrate, do not explicate</li></ul>

Law #9

Disarm and infuriate with the mirror effect<ul><li>Do what your enemies do, following their actions as best you can, and they cannot see what you are up to, they are blinded by your mirror</li><li>The secret to gaining ascendancy over large numbers, he came to believe, was not to impose his colors but to absorb the colors of those around him</li></ul>

Law #44

Do not go past the mark you aim for, In victory learn when to stop<ul><li>In the realm of power, you must be guided by reason. To let a momentary thrill or an emotional victory influence or guide your moves will prove fatal</li><li>Mistakes are always made when people get to the easy places</li><li>Success plays strange tricks on the mind. It makes you feel invulnerable, while also making you more hostile and emotional when people challenge your power</li></ul>

Law #47

Master the art of timing<ul><li>steady continuous effort is irresistible, for this is the way in which Time captures and subdues the greatest powers on earth</li><li>Without patience as your sword and shield, your timing will fail and you will inevitably find yourself a loser</li></ul>

Law #35

<ul>
<li>Kissinger played the game expertly: He took credit for the work of those below him while graciously giving credit for his own labors to those above</li>
<li>Never do yourself what others can do for you</li>
</ul>

Law #7 – Get others to do the Work for you, but Always Take the Credit

Think as you like but behave like others<ul><li>Disagreement is regarded as offensive because it is a condemnation of the views of others</li><li>there is no point in making a display of your dangerous ideas if diey only bring you suffering and persecution</li></ul>

Law #38

Enter action with boldness<ul><li>Hesitation puts obstacles in your path, boldness eliminates them</li><li>If boldness is not natural, neither is timidity. It is an acquired habit, picked up out of a desire to avoid conflict. If timidity has taken hold of you, then, root it out. Your fears of the consequences of a bold action are way out of proportion to reality, and in fact the consequences of timidity are worse</li></ul>

Law #28

Keep others in suspended terror: cultivate an air of unpredictability<ul><li>A person of power instills a kind of fear by deliberately unsettling those around him to keep the initiative on his side</li><li>Scrambling your patterns on a day-to-day basis will cause a stir around you and stimulate interest</li></ul>But <ul><li>Too much unpredictability will be seen as a sign of indecisiveness, or even some more serious psychic problems. Patterns are powerful, and you can terrify people by disrupting them. Such power should only be used judiciously</li></ul>

Law #17

Discover each man's thumbscrew<ul><li>If you sense that a man has a need to be loved, openly flatter him</li><li>People who thump their chests are often big cowards, you will often find people's weaknesses in the opposite of the qualities they reveal to you</li><li>All you have to do is find ways to make people feel better about their taste, their social standing, their intelligence</li></ul>

Law #33

<ul>
<li>Friends are easily aroused to envy</li>
<li>Without enemies around us, we grow lazy. An enemy at our heels sharpens our wits, keeping us focused and alert. It is sometimes better</li>
<li>Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure</li>
<li>Work with enemies because the relationship is based on mutual self-interest, and not be contaminated by personal feelings</li>
</ul>

Law #2 – Never put too Much Trust in Friends, Learn how to use Enemies

<ul>
<li>By telling your plan and being honest about it makes you predictable</li>
<li>Bland facial expression is the simplest smoke screen to hide your thoughts</li>
<li>Another effective smoke screen is the pattern, the establishment of a series of actions that seduce the victim into believing you will continue in the same way. The pattern plays on the psychology of anticipation: Our behavior conforms to patterns, or so we like to think.</li>
</ul>

Law #3 – Conceal your Intentions

Make your accomplishments seem effortless<ul><li>Keep your effort and your tricks to yourself and you seem to have the grace and ease of a god</li><li>What is understandable is not awe-inspiring, we tell ourselves we could do as well if we had the money and time</li></ul>

Law #30

Control the options: get others to play with the cards you deal<ul><li>unlimited options would actually paralyze us and cloud our ability to choose. Our limited range of choices comforts us</li><li>Push them to “choose” what you want them to do by appearing to advocate the opposite.</li></ul>

Law #31

Pose as a friend, work as a spy<ul><li>If you have reason to suspect that a person is telling you a lie, look as though you believed every word he said. This will give him courage to go on; he will become more vehement in his assertions, and in the end betray himself. Again, if you perceive that a person is trying to conceal something from you, but with only partial success, look as though you did not believe him. The opposition on your part will provoke him into leading out his reserve of truth and bringing the whole force of it to bear upon your incredulity.</li></ul>

Law #14

Crush your enemy totally<ul><li>Those who seek to achieve things should show no mercy</li><li>In your struggle for power you will stir up rivalries and create enemies. There will be people you cannot win over, who will remain your enemies no matter what. But whatever wound you inflicted on them, deliberately or not, do not take their hatred personally. Just recognize that there is no possibility of peace between you, especially as long as you stay in power</li></ul>

Law #15

Concentrate your forces<ul><li>Beware of dissipating your powers; strive constantly to concentrate them</li><li>Prize intensity more than extensity. Perfection resides in quality, not quantity</li></ul>

Law #23

Keep your hands clean<ul><li>By apologizing you open up all sorts of doubts about your competence, your intentions, any other mistakes you may not have confessed</li><li>Power depends on appearances, and those in power must seem never to make mistakes</li><li>All men make mistakes, but the wise conceal the blunders they have made, while fools make them public</li></ul>

Law #26

Avoid stepping into a great man's shoes<ul><li>Power depends on appearing larger than other people, and when you are lost in the shadow of the father, the king, the great predecessor, you cannot possibly project such a presence</li><li>If you have the kind of intelligence and instinct that will point you in the right direction, playing the rebel will not be dangerous. But if you are mediocre, as Joseph II was in comparison to his mother, you are better off learning from your predecessor's knowledge and experience, which are based on something real.</li></ul>

Law #41

Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim<ul><li>Give before you take</li><li>A gift brings out the child in us, instantly lowering our defenses</li><li>Selective kindness will often break down even the most stubborn foe: Aiming right for the heart, it corrodes the will to fight back</li><li>As with any emotional approach, the tactic must be practiced with caution: If people see through it, their disappointed feelings of gratitude and warmth will become the most violent hatred and distrust</li></ul>

Law #12

Use the surrender tactic: turn weakness into power<ul><li>Surrender conceals great power: Lulling the enemy into complacency, it gives you time to recoup, time to undermine, time for revenge</li><li>You have to remember that you only appear to surrender, like the animal that plays dead to save its hide</li></ul>

Law #22

<ul>
<li>The more you say, the more common you appear</li>
<li>"Human tongue is a beast that few can master"</li>
<li>Once the words are out, you cannot take them back. Keep them under control. Be particularly careful with sarcasm: The momentary satisfaction you gain with your biting words will be outweighed by the price you pay</li>
</ul>

Law #4 – Always Say Less Than Necessary

Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum. Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

Understand yourself and those around you.

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Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum.   Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

Robert Greene is an American author of books on strategy, power, and seduction. He has written six international bestsellers, including The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law, Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature.

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The 48 Laws of Power

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