In the 12th chapter of the 33 Strategies of War - Lose Battles But Win The War, Grand Strategy - Robert Greene discusses the importance of visualization.
"To become a grand strategist in life, you must follow the path of Alexander. First, clarify your life - decipher your own personal riddle - by determining what it is you are destined to achieve, the direction in which your skills seem to push you. Visualize yourself fulfilling this destiny in glorious detail. As Aristotle advised, work to master your emotions and train yourself to think ahead: 'This action will advance me toward my goal, this one will lead me nowhere.' Guided by these standards, you will be able to stay on course."
Ignore the conventional wisdom about what you should or should not be doing. It may make sense for some, but that does not mean it bears any relation to your own goals and destiny. You need to be patient enough to plot several steps ahead - to wage a campaign instead of fighting battles. The path to your goal may be indirect, your actions may be strange to other people, but so much the better: the less they understand you, the easier they are to deceive, manipulate, and seduce. Following this path, you will gain the calm, Olympian perspective that will separate you from other mortals, whether dreamers who get nothing done or prosaic, practical people who accomplish only small things."
"Never strike a King unless you're certain you can kill him." - Ancient Chinese adage, quoted on page 163 of Dr. HAHA Lung's Mind-Sword, Mastering the Asian Arts of Mind Manipulation.
"The spirit of this truth is echoed in Machiavelli's warning: Upon this, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge." Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter 3.
In the first video clip on this page, Robert Greene described Machiavelli's The Prince as the inspiration for The 48 Laws of Power.
In the interview above, Greene terms Machiavelli as a "low-level diplomat" for the city of Florence, Italy, and states that Machiavelli "never had much power." However, he goes on to wisely note that, due to Machiavelli's influence, his power "far out-stripped that of any King in the scope of world history."
Lol...
Depending on how deeply you want to look into what Robert is saying here, when he references how Machiavelli wrote The Prince to ingratiate himself into the circle of the powerful...
And then... he unleashes The 48 Laws of Power on the Universe...
And then you have most of the top artists in hip hop references his book, all the way up to 50 Cent writing a book with him...
It's a very subtle, nuanced, yet clear
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