Nothing gets my goat more than someone becoming unreasonably upset;
Everyone seems to overreact to everything and my patience is limited.
I find no use in calming people and telling them not to fret.
They are all completely full of shit, in the end, and that's what you
Need to remember about them, because after all, nobody is looking
Out for you (they are all really mean jerks) so you should do.
Now that we have that little poem out of the way – it came to me as I was tending to the vegetable garden this morning, just a brisk stroke of literary, emotionally in-depth brilliance, and it would go really nicely with a good guitar riff, now that I think about it – it's time to focus on self-improvement, and more specifically, direct and measurable results from your efforts. You want results! You want action; you want change; you want hope; you want reform. You don't just want these things. You need them.
The first thing to always keep in mind is that the negative opinions of other people are irrelevant. Self-empowerment mandates that you ignore the criticisms of your friends and foes alike, who almost never have your best interests at heart. Through dedication and practice, you can succeed at whatever you want, and the detractions of others are entirely meaningless. As long as you believe in yourself, you will see results. Dedicated readers will appreciate that this has already been demonstrated thoroughly by a friend of mine named Rodney, whose emotionally independent self-empowerment techniques have allowed him to discard the insulting views of everyone around him, including those of law enforcement. “The law is just their opinion,” Rodney tells me.
People appreciate confidence. Even if they continue to insult you, mock you, and generally treat you poorly, when you exert confidence in all of your encounters they will eventually respect you. You can always gain someone's respect by being better than them. Always be the bigger man. You are what you act, and in the end, everyone is really acting, so act to be the best you can be. Of course, you need to practice. For example: you want to ask out someone on a date. The age-old advice of self-help gurus to “bang a bunch of other people with whom you feel no emotional attachment to instead to gear up your confidence” is still useful today. If someone rejects your offer, ignore their rejection through persistence (people appreciate persistence). If they do not find you attractive, they are lying to themselves; make sure they are aware of the truth.
Another key component in self-empowerment is to constantly try new things. Test your limits: date people twice your age; quadruple the number of days you wear underwear without washing it; eat cat food for lunch on a gloomy Wednesday; seek out to actually be informed before voting, etc. People will appreciate your open mindedness and ability to immerse yourself in different hobbies and cultures with a practiced sense of comfort. Most importantly, they will envy you, which will in turn possess them to attempt to seek a closer line of dialogue with you. If they are worth their salt, you can continue to keep the relationship going.
It is vital that you are conscious at all times of your status with other people, particularly those you value, but also others who you may need to use as pawns ('pawns' being those who one vaguely knows, enough to invite to a party, but not to stop and say hello on the street in daylight), so that you may manipulate the living shit out of people to suit your own needs. Tricking the masses is easy; spread hatred and/or misinformation, engaging in smear tactics (a lie need only repeated so many times to become truth, and sometimes insinuations are just as effective as outright lies, since they can be harder to deny). Lyndon B. Johnson once spread a rumor at the very end of a notorious congressional campaign that his primary opponent was sexually active with livestock, and the conversation with the adviser goes roughly like this: “We can't say that, there isn't even an ounce of evidence.” “Yes, but let's make the fucker deny it.” This is the sort of thing we are talking about (Johnson won the election, incidentally, and not without the help of some friendly county commissioners), or perhaps getting the many branches of the gigantic conglomeration of media outlets that you own to repeatedly report an otherwise barely existent flurry of controversy among the climatology community regarding the validity of modern climate change theory.
It is also possible to manipulate people individually. Let us suppose that you are hoping to forge a positive relationship, or enhance an existing one, with someone who seems to at first be non responsive. It is thus essential to create an aura of indispensability to surround your character. Slowly, as you become more and more essential to the daily function of the other person's life, they will be left no choice but to do exactly what you want them to do. If they show resistance of any kind, delay plans to increase the assertion of your authority until you can lull them back into a false sense of security. More about this fascinating topic, and just what how you can get exactly what you want, all of the time, is available whenever you come to my conferences, where I give you lectures accompanied with PowerPoint presentations. You will be absolutely blown away by the barrels of knowledge you will abandon the snazzy hotel function room keeping all for yourself. Now is the time to make the move, and treat yourself right – after all, who else is looking out for number one?
