Sublime

As my mentor Robert Greene put it, “It starts by wanting to create a classic.” Phil Libin, the cofounder of Evernote, has a quote I like to share with clients: “People [who are] thinking about things other than making the best product never make the best product.”

An understanding of people’s hidden motives is the single greatest piece of knowledge you can have in acquiring power.

To some people the notion of consciously playing power games—no matter how indirect—seems evil, asocial, a relic of the past. They believe they can opt out of the game by behaving in ways that have nothing to do with power. You must beware of such people, for while they express such opinions outwardly, they are often among the most adept players at

Mysterious people put others in a kind of inferior position—that of trying to figure them out. To degrees that they can control, they also elicit the fear surrounding anything uncertain or unknown.

Like Velazquez, you must demand for yourself the power to determine your position