Chapter 1. Once
Chapter 2. Seduction and Desire
Chapter 3. The Art of Seduction
The third part is on persuasion and how to use power to achieve your goals.
Chapter 4. Influence and Power
Chapter 5. The Secrets of Persuasion
My goal in writing this book is to help you start to make a conscious change in your own life. I want to give you some basic principles and techniques that anyone can use to be persuasive. I want you to feel that this is not a book only for career or personal success but that it can help you in many areas of your life.
Read This Book, and Use It!
My purpose is to help you live life as your own true self, and to show you what can happen when you live your life in line with your deepest desires, wishes, and longings.
Why Should You Read This Book?
The truth of the matter is that most of us spend too much time on goals that simply don't matter. We work hard for little pay, we worry about bills and deadlines, and we neglect our deeper needs. Instead, what I'm going to show you in this book is a new way to approach your goals and dreams.
How to Get What You Want in This New Economy
One of the most fascinating things about our society is that more and more of us are actually becoming poor, even though we work much harder than ever before. Even those who are doing well financially are often working much longer hours, which make their work feel like a rat race. There is another way. You will learn how to put you at the center of your life, while increasing your capacity to enjoy things more.
You Don't Have to Get a "Real" Job or Work Long Hours
You don't have to look for a "real" job, but you need to find a way to make your time and energy count. I'll show you how to figure out how to use your time in the most efficient way to gain whatever it is you want out of life. You don't have to save up more money in order to pursue your dreams or do the things you love—you just have to start looking at your life differently, even if your main work is to take care of the needs of others.
The Power of Persuasion
The most effective way to get what you want is through persuasion. You can set the course of your life simply by deciding to act. Yet I've found that many people have lost this knowledge over time. For me, this has been one of the most important discoveries I've made. Once I began to master this, I realized that I could influence other people to accomplish the things I couldn't. It is this attitude that led me to write this book.
Persuasion comes naturally to some people. Persuasion doesn't matter much. We are all persuasive to some degree, but that doesn't mean we're all good at it. Often, we have been raised to accept the status quo without question. We believe in authority. We have been trained to see other people as more important than we are. This makes us lose confidence in ourselves and also in our ability to lead others.
You must decide whether you will trust yourself and put yourself in the center of your life. No matter what goals you are pursuing, you have to make a conscious decision to put yourself in the center of your own life and go forward. Most of us put too much importance on the opinion of other people, and don't really listen to our own inner voices. You have to listen, because the biggest voice in your life is the one inside you. It is that voice that has brought you here today. It is that voice that is telling you that you can be a different kind of person. There is nothing about you that is wrong or bad. You have been put on this earth as a unique individual, and only you can decide what you want to do with your life. That is, you decide what will help you become the best person you can possibly be. Your life can become more deeply rewarding when you bring your inner self out in the open, make your wishes clear, and start doing things that really matter to you. If you do this, you'll be surprised to find how much your life can change.
One of my favorite writers, Leo Buscaglia, said, "You can't have your heart in your mouth and keep it there at the same time."
I like this idea. Your heart is not supposed to be in your mouth. It's supposed to be in your heart, and from there it should radiate to your whole life.
To begin with, many of us don't really know what our heart is asking. A heart doesn't feel alone and small, because it has been given the greatest gift of all: the experience of love. Our hearts beat and beat because it is in love that we see our true selves. That is why our hearts must not be separated from our selves. Once we have found our authentic hearts and know they are loved, then we are ready to be honest with ourselves and with the world. Only then will our lives be complete. Only then will we find peace in our hearts, our minds, and our world.
Are you ready?
A Way to Freedom from Desire and Fear
Desire destroys us all. Desire does nothing but make us more and more dissatisfied, and the more we chase after it, the more it eludes us. Desire leads us to the most destructive and painful aspects of our lives, leading us to think, "How much more desire can I handle?" Desire makes us so afraid of what might happen that we turn away from life itself. In the end, desire is the master of your soul. Desire is the biggest enemy of your peace of mind.
If you want to master desire, you must master fear. The way to freedom from desire is to embrace uncertainty, to act in a way that brings you closer to uncertainty, and to live every day with the attitude, "I will never know this, I will never know that." The greatest adventure begins by trusting in your uncertainty. What else can you do, really?
In the book of Proverbs, King Solomon says, "The wise in heart are called discerning, and gracious words promote instruction. Understanding a proverb, and the interpretation of a parable, and the knowledge of the shewing of time, and a discretion of times—it is the way of life of the wise" (24:5–7).
A proverb is an expression that reminds us that a single act is like many other acts that we can observe. A parable is a story with a message. The shewing of time refers to predicting the future. This is done to help people make the most of their lives, but Solomon goes further: "It is the way of life of the wise." It is the life of the wise that is our key to being free from fear.
What Is Freedom?
To be free means to be able to stop worrying about your fears and desires, and instead to focus on your authentic life. It means that you will do what needs to be done in life without thinking too much about it. It is not about having the things you want, but knowing that the people you love are safe and secure. It means you will live with the attitude that you can create a meaningful life and that you are secure enough in yourself to be able to do it. There is nothing more joyful than doing work that you enjoy. Nothing is more worth living for.
It means living as the master of your own life.
Life is full of uncertainty, and we know that. You can never know whether you will succeed. You can never know what will happen tomorrow, next week, or even in a year. In fact, life itself is uncertain, but our desires and fears make it seem as if it is not. But you don't have to run away from this uncertainty, because in embracing it you make life work for you. This uncertainty frees you from the fear of failure. It will tell you that you can never know enough, that you can never have everything, that you are never ready. Instead, you will be ready in the sense of trusting that you can learn the lesson the life experience has to teach you. The important thing is that life will never be boring. In fact, the more you live, the more life will stay interesting.
In this sense you will feel free. You will know that your actions are leading you in the right direction. You will never know all the things you might have done in your life. You might have lost the life that you might have had, you might have found yourself in situations that you might never have thought of, and you might have found yourself in a place you never expected to find yourself. You will never know how many paths you have created. You might not know what choices you will make tomorrow, but you will know that you will make them.
You have all that you need to become who you are meant to be. The fact is, if you wanted to have a perfect life, you would be dead already. But the truth is, when you open your heart, you will be astonished at the ways in which your life goes beyond what you might have thought possible. You are already able to have a life that is rich and meaningful.
If you are trying to make a life that is better for others, a life that brings value to
