331. Keep your Plans Secret

Whatever your plans and intentions be always too wise to even whisper them down a well.

330. Be Nice

Be nice to everybody. Be nice to the people in your business and in other people's businesses - especially the lowliest people for they often feel the most undervalued and will appreciate your goodness to them. They can all be of great help to you. You can learn a lot from them.

329. Handling Cash

When you start to do business with banks, make sure that you do not get into regular habits of lodging money that can be readily identified by criminals. Do not set up patterns that can be observed. Do not go at the same time each day, or the same day each week. Never use the same branch twice in a row. Never carry the cash for lodgment outside your clothing. Do not be obvious. Do not let people know what you are doing.

328. Testing Strength of Character

A good way to test someone's dtrength of character is to offer them something like a sweet or a drink. If they refuse politely, you can keep pressing them. The harder you have to press to get them to accept, the stronger the mind or character. (Keep count.) If they accept immediately or quickly, this means they are easily swayed. It is best to wait a little with someone you have just met before trying this technique on them.

327. Encryption

Develop an encryption system, one time pad for preference to protect your sensitive communications. Use invisible ink routinely and create a list of stock phrases for use in your clear text to alert readers in the know to the presence of hidden messages. As a matter of routine, record your telephone calls and conversations.

326. The Absolute Need for Secrecy

Do not trust the state. The state does not trust you, Machiavelli wrote that it is necessary for the state to deal in lies and half-truths because people are made up of lies and half-truths, even princes.

Never trust any one person 100%. Never reveal the whole truth to any one person or enough parts of the truth to many people for them to put it all together.

There is a fashion for openness and transparency in financial matters. This is perfectly fine. It is right that those who are accountable to you should be open about everything. You do not have to be bound by such quaint notions as these.

Do not reveal financial information to anyone unless it is absolutely necessary and even then make sure you swear them to secrecy. Be wise, keep your own counsel; do not tell everything even then.

Operate always on a need to know basis. Remember that people do not need to know every thing that is happening or going on.

If you give people (especially those working for the state) too much information about yourself and your affairs, it can be used in many ways against you. Your ideas can be stolen. Your customers can be stolen. The knowledge that you give others can be woven into "evidence" and used against you. The truths that you tell can be taken and twisted into a rope of lies to bind you.

When you begin to make your way in the world, lesser men will see your achievements and envy you. They will try to take your wealth away from you and injure your reputation, self esteem, and damage you physically. Do not give them any ammunition to use against you. Only give away as much information as people need to enable them to carry out your wishes.

Keep your systems secret. When you have devised a system for making money or re-investing it once it is made, keep quiet about it. You have no obligation to make things easier for your competition. NEVER disclose your key numbers, gross margins, fixed expenses, key performance indicators, turnover, number of customers etc.

Only the tax man has the legal (not moral) right to any information and you should only give that if absolutely necessary. No-one should EVER know the details of your business systems.

Never allow letters, contracts, contacts, faxes etc. fall into anyone else's hands. SHRED your waste paper.

Remember, the information that drips slowly into your enemy's hands can become dangerous power for them to wield over you.

On the other hand, always be alert for information on the oppoaition. When you are in idle moments, ring them up to find out what they are doing or go and visit them to do some recconaisance work.

When asked an impertinent question, i.e. a question asked out of nosiness, curiosity or as part of a blatant piece of interrogation, resist the temptation to tell them where to go but answer the question with another question e.g. "Why did you ask that?", "What do you mean, profit?", Who wants to know the answer to that?" etc. Don't give anything away and eventually they will get the message and give up.

When faced with this situation, note well who is asking what. Maintain files on these people and log this information in them and cross reference them with the files you keep on your own operations.

325. Know Thyself

Socrates quoted the Oracle at Delphi as saying "Know Thyself", but Sun Tzu said " If you know your enemy as well as you know yourself, you will be assured of victory in a hundred battles. If you do not know yourself or your enemy, you will be defeated in every battle.

324. Maintaining the Balance of Financial Power in your favour

Always encourage extravagance and indebtedness in others while observing the virtues of thrift austerity and frugality yourself thus maintaining the balance of power in your favour.

323. Contracts, Leases and Sets of Terms and Conditions

Contracts are a modern way of taking hostages.

Always have in your contracts, reasonable, legally binding and enforcible penalty clauses that work to your advantage. It is a useful idea to collect as many sets of Terms and Conditions, Leases and Contracts as you can.

322. Festine Lente (Make Haste Slowly)

The Poem of Harold the Hasty

In Search of gold
This Viking bold
He broke a beehive right in two
The bees they stung him black and blue
Oh Hasty Harold, don't aim your axe
Until you first have checked your facts.

Let's face it you wouldn'nt trust a doctor who prescribed before he diagnosed !

First know the problem, then with patience, you can find the solution.

321.Doing the Right Work

Make sure that for as long as you are working, you are doing the RIGHT work. This is the same as making sure that the ladder you are climbing is up against the right wall. Plam so that it is.

320. Development

Developing your life, relationships, businesses, etc is a never-ending process. It is a game, enquiry and evolution. Enjoy it !

319. End Points and Pausing

In every activity, there are natural stops or end points. Making a model airplane has a natural stop once the glueing has been finished you must stop until it has dried before starting to paint it up. These stops are very good times to fall still and let your mind come to rest in the peace of your own self and settle there for 2 minutes or so. These mini-meditations or pauses as they are called help to stop the build up of Rajas and prevent your mind from spinning out of control. When it is time for the next phase or activity, your mind will be rested clear and calm and your attention will be freely available to focus on the task at hand if you have paused. They help your being to accumulate sattva.

318. Being a Warrior

Warriors see everything as a challenge or an opportunity, ordinary men see things as a belling or a curse. Which view gives you more power ?

317. On Spending Money

"For every Euro you spend, remember this : You will only ever get one chance to spend it. Make sure that you use that one-tine-only chance wisely." -The Motley Fool

316. Time

"Time can be vicious if you take it for granted." -Bugsey Siegel

315. Detachment

Grow up knowing how not to be affected by the inevitable problems of life. Have a sense of inner peace to sustain you in difficult times. This can be achieved by meditation. Day by day as you meditate, you will strengthen that core of iner strength, serenity and calm. That place is your true self. It knows all, was never born, will never die, is not the effect of any external cause, is self-existent, imperishable, ancient; it lives in all hearts. That place is the one self of all beings. Self-realisation is the path to resting your mind there forever.

315. Being Upbeat

Always try to feel successful and significant regardless of what you do or what befalls you. Be positive about yourself and ablut life.

314. Permanence of Education

The only thing you can give to your children that the government cannot steal from them is their education. -Dr.J.O'Neill

313. Loss

Loss is imaginary. Nothing ever truly disappears in the Universe; things only change form. If the loss of something in the past still wounds you it is because of the meaning you have linked to it in your mind.

312. Learing from Others

It is always better to learn from the mistakes of others than from your own, and by extension, to make mistakes on someone else's time rather than your own.

311. Things that are not Imperfections

"Roughness and ambiguity are not imperfections, they are what make the world turn." -Ludwig Wittgenstein

310. Know Thine Enemy

A wise man knows his enemy. You must know not only who they are but also how they are likely to react to what you do say and write. Avoid nasty bitter twisted mean self-pitying and resentful people. They are miserable and drag your energies down to their own level. They are dangerous because they resent your happiness and seek to bring you down. If you cannot avoid them, make sure that you give their agression a good run for its money and that you emerge victorious ant they are left licking their wounds. Be always on the look out for their attempts to do you down. Many of these will masquerade as your friend. True friends do not act this way. Set tests and traps to find them out.

309. Living Patiently.

Learn to live with things. Make adjustments and constantly sort things out. Live patiently.Through patient attention everything can be achieved.

308. Realising the Universe

Think of the times you have procrastinated. NOW is the time to realise the Universe. Use your time well to advance your enlightenment and that of those around you. Use it now before it is gone and no longer in your power.

307. Refinement

Concentrate every day on refining your reason and your physical being through meditation, martial arts, yoga, tai chi and the reading of scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads and the Bible. If necessary rise an hour earlier to achieve this.

306. Taking Responsibility

Always take responsibility for your own actions. Before acting, consider and know the effects of your thoughts words and actions on yourself, on others and on the world. Always act for the best interest of the gratest number of people. Never act for purely selfish motives, but always ensure that you are included in the benefits.

305. Circumstances

Do not quarrel with your circumstances for this is to rebel against Nature and Nature includes your own Nature. So quarrelling with Nature leads you to self-hatred and ultimately, to your own destruction. If you do not like the circumstances you find yourself in, then study the causes and seek to change them. Then your circumstances will change. Your choices increase with learning. The causes of your circumstances are always within yourself. You must learn to BE the person who can DO the things that allow you to HAVE things the way you want them.