INTENTIONS

SNEAK ACROSS THE OCEAN INBOARD DAYLIGHT

Most people are open books. They say what they feel, blurt out their opinions at every opportunity and constantly reveal their plans and intentions. They do this for several reasons. First, it is easy and natural to always want to talk about others feelings and plans for the future. It takes effort to control your tongue and monitor what you reveal. Secondly, many believe that by being honest and open they are winning peoples heart and showing their good nature. They are deluded. Honesty is actually a blunt instrument, which bloodies more than it cuts. Your honesty is likely to offend people, it is much more prudent to tailor your words, telling people what they want to hear rather than the coarse and ugly truth of what you feel or think. More important, by being unabashedly open you make yourself so predictable and familiar that it is almost impossible to respect or fear you and power will not accrue to the person who cannot inspire such emotions.

If you yearn for power, quickly lay honesty aside, and train yourself in the art of concealing one's intentions. Master the art and you will always have the upper hand. Basic to an ability to conceal one's intentions is a simple truth about human nature. Our first instinct is to always trust appearances. We cannot go around doubting the reality of what we see and hear constantly imagining that appearance concealed something else would exhaust and terrify us. This fact makes it relatively easy to conceal one's intention. Simply dangle an object you seem to desire, a goal you seem to aim for in front of people's eye and that will take the appearance for reality.

If you believe that deceivers are colourful folk who mislead with elaborate lies and tell tales, you are greatly mistaken. The best deceivers utilize a bland and inconspicuous front that calls no attention to themselves. They know that extravagant words and gestures immediately raise suspicion. Instead, they envelop their targets in the familiar, the banal, the harmless.

Once you have lulled people's attention with the familiar, they will not notice the deception being perpetrated behind their backs. The greyer and more uniform the smoke in your smokescreen, better it conceals your intentions.

The simplest form of smokescreen is a facial expression. Behind a bland, unreadable exterior, all sorts of mayhem can be planned, without detection. This is a weapon that the most powerful men in history have learned to perfect. It was said that no one could read Franklin D. Roosevelt's face. Baron James Rothschild made a lifelong practice of disguising his real thoughts behind bland smiles and nondescript looks

It takes patience and humility to dull your brilliant colour, to put on the mask of the inconspicuous. Do not despair at having to wear such a bland mask - it is often your unreadability that draws people to you and makes you appear a person of power.