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Greene states that the better you become at handing power, the better friend, lover, and person you will become. This is because you learn how to make others feel good about themselves, which makes them dependent on you as a source of great pleasure to be around.

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Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. Hide the extent of your own talents, as your masters may otherwise feel insecure. The better you make your master appear, the greater the level of power you will attain. Those above you want to feel secure and superior in their positions. This may involve making a few harmless mistakes so that you can ask your master for help.

Friends are more likely to betray you in haste as they are more prone to envy. However, if you hire a former enemy, they will prove themselves more trustworthy, as they have more to prove. Consequently, you have more to fear from friends than your enemies.

By cloaking your intentions, people will believe you to be friendly and honest. This will lead them further down the wrong path. Additionally, by being bland and inconspicuous, people are even less likely to doubt your intentions, as they trust the familiar.

Powerful people know how to impress others by saying less. The more you say, the more likely it is that you will end up saying something foolish. As people are constantly trying to work out what others appear to be thinking, silence makes them feel uncomfortable. By controlling what you reveal, you can wield great power. After all, they are likely to fill in the silences you leave, revealing more information about their own intentions and weaknesses.

Your reputation is the cornerstone of your power. You can use it to intimidate and win, but if it becomes tarnished, you open yourself up to being vulnerable to attack. Make your reputation impenetrable, and predict attacks before they occur. Aid yourself in this endeavor by destroying your enemies by exploiting holes in their reputations and letting the public destroy them.

Never do for yourself what the efforts of others can do for you. Use their wisdom and knowledge to further your own cause. In doing so, you will appear intimidatingly efficient and knowledgeable. Ultimately, those who worked for you will be forgotten, and you will be remembered.

However, your traps are only as good as the perceived attractiveness of your bait. If your bait is sweet enough, your opponent will become blinded to reality by their emotions, allowing you to gain the upper hand.

Any triumph you gain through argument will be short lived. Resentment will fester in your opponents instead of a genuine change of opinion. Instead, let your actions speak for you. If people agree with you through your actions instead of your words, you are more likely to sway lasting opinions. Words are a dime a dozen, and people will say anything to prove a point. Action is where you demonstrate your beliefs.

Emotional states can be as infectious as diseases. Occasionally, some unfortunate individuals bring their own misfortune upon themselves and can bring you down too if you get too close. Therefore, make sure to associate with the happy and the fortunate.

The incurably unhappy tend to portray themselves as victims, and before you realize they are the cause of their own misfortune, they have infected you with their misery. Who you decide to associate with is critical. Through associating with the miserable, you waste your valuable time and drain your potential power.

To maintain independence, you must make others need and want you. The more people rely on you, the more freedom you have. Yet, be wary to never teach those surrounding you with enough information that they can start doing things for themselves. This method is the best way to get people to do what you want without forcing them or inflicting pain on them. Once you have dependents, they are reliant on you, and you can subtly do with them as you wish.

A single honest gesture can help cover the traces of dozens of dishonest acts. By being generous, you can disarm even the most suspicious people. Once they are disarmed, you can manipulate them at will. The key to successful deception is distraction. An act of generosity distracts those you wish to deceive while turning them into docile children, delighted by the affectionate gesture.

If you must ask for help, make sure your request includes a benefit for your ally that you can exaggerate beyond proportion. When your ally sees that there is something in it for them, they are more likely to respond with enthusiasm. Self-interest is the greatest motivator for people. Once you master the art of working out what others want and using it to further your own plans, there will be no limits on what you can accomplish.

Knowledge about your rival is essential. By posing as a friend, you can ask indirect questions and gradually get your opponents to reveal their weaknesses and their intentions. Once you know this information, you can better predict how they are going to move next.

The more present you are, the more common you appear. Create an air of scarcity around yourself to increase your perceived value. If you currently exist within an established group, intermittently withdraw so that others talk about you and admire you more.

To do this effectively, you must learn when is the right time to withdraw. In doing so, you force their respect by inadvertently threatening your absence for good. Once you return from your absence, it will appear as if you have been resurrected, and people will be relieved to see you again.

Therefore, to become powerful, you must place yourself at the center of things. Activity should revolve around you. Resist the urge to retreat when things feel uncertain. Instead of turning inward, focus on seeking out old allies and forcing yourself into new social circles.

Choose your opponents wisely. There are some people that once defeated, will spend the rest of their lives seeking revenge. Consequently, it pays to not offend the wrong person. The skill of correctly measuring people is the most important with regard to getting and maintaining power. Be sure to know everything about a person before you work with them.

Make sure the only cause you commit to is yourself. Maintain your independence at all costs. This allows you to play people off against each other. When you hold back from joining a cause, you create a sense of respect because you appear untouchable. You gain a reputation for independence.

Further, do not commit to anyone. Stay out of petty fights and squabbles. Feign interest, but let others do the fighting while you watch and wait. Often, it can be a good tactic to stir up quarrels between two parties and then gain power by acting as the go-between.

No one enjoys feeling stupid. Consequently, a great trick is to make your opponents feel smarter than you. Once they believe themselves to be more intelligent, they will never suspect that you have any ulterior motives.

Surrender before you are about to be defeated. This buys you more time to plot your revenge, and to torment your conqueror. By surrendering, you deny them the satisfaction of destroying you. In doing so, you make the act of surrender a tool of power.

By yielding, you gain the upper hand because you lull your opponent into believing they have defeated you, even as you plot their downfall. This confuses your opponents and means they are unlikely to act aggressively against you.

Conserve your energies by focusing them all into a single source of power. When looking for such a source, identify a single spring that will sustain you for a long time to come. You gain more power by finding a singular rich source than by flitting between many more shallow sources of power.

Power exists in concentrated form. In any organization, power will emanate from a small group of people who are holding all the strings. Consequently, power is like oil, you only need to strike it once to assure yourself a lifetime of wealth and power.

The courtier wields power through discrete avenues. By flattering and yielding to their superiors and only enforcing their power through charm and grace, they gradually accumulate an ever-increasing amount of power. There are several steps one can take to become the perfect courtier, and they involve the following:

Do not accept the role that society has given you. Forge your own identity, one that commands attention. Master your image rather than letting others dictate it for you. Remake yourself into a figure of power as if molding yourself from clay.

To do this, you must first be self-aware, and you must learn to master your emotions. Then, you must create a memorable character. From here, you can learn to play many roles to adapt to what any given situation requires of you. However, remember that overacting can be counterproductive.

You must maintain a spotless appearance. You should never be associated with nasty deeds. To do this, employ the use of scapegoats to disguise your involvement. Your reputation depends more on what you conceal than what you reveal. You should always have a convenient scapegoat on hand for when needing to conceal your more dubious activities.

People want to believe in something. By inventing yourself as this cult-like entity, they will follow you and give you untold amounts of power. To become such a figure, you need to follow these steps:

Always plan until the end. This means thinking through every possibility that could prevent you from reaching your end goal. Thus, you will be able to accommodate for any surprises along the way and secure your future.

Make your success seem easy. Conceal all the toil and tricks you used to attain it, as it otherwise arouses too much curiosity in others. Never reveal how you reached your position of power to anyone, or they may use it against you. There are great advantages to remaining silent. The more mysterious your actions appear, the greater your power appears to be. It will make it seem as if you have an exclusive gift that no one can replicate and that knows no limits. 041b061a72