4 Ways To Deal With Enemies

Natural as it is, everyone makes enemies, it is a part of life. Our characters, beliefs and ideas clash with others. Hundreds of people cannot get along, all of them have different perceptions, different thinking of life and every single one of them has his or her experiences and yet, every experience inspires a different lesson to be learnt. This web continues to increase as we float through time.

 So you have enemies, good that means you stood up for something. --Winston Churchill

Though it is best to avoid them but sometime in life you'll eventually have to pull your socks up.

• All Hands on Deck

 The first thing you need to understand is statistics or simply put, consequences. You have to compute (not mathematically, mentally) all the possibilities that might be stimulated by other events. Delete yourself from the scene for a moment, focus on the opposition. Think how he may react to your moves, what he might do. Now put yourself back into the imagery, imagine how you will react to his moves, what will you do to dodge the incoming missiles. To give you more insight, we take help from a Roman historian, Xenophon, who wrote a book on the leadership skills of Cyrus The Great. In this book Xenophon points out 

Imagining disaster may save you from tragedy. --Xenophon

I know you'll probably understand this but I'll still give a brief description of it. Disaster as defined at dictionary.com is "a calamitous event, especially one occurring suddenly and causing great loss of life, damage, or hardship, as a flood, airplane crash, or business failure." Tragedy on the other hand is "a dramatic composition, often in verse, dealing with a serious or somber theme, typically that of a great person destined through a flaw of character or conflict with some overpowering force, as fate or society, to downfall or destruction."


Disaster points to physical damage but tragedy is something that effect's your inner systems. Physical damage always takes less time to restore than a mental one, where you have lost some control of your mind and body.

• Strengths and Weaknesses

Our characters are composed of these two parties, strengths which we use to manipulate others, and weaknesses which we try to hide so others are unable to manipulate us. It's more like a game of hide and seek, the weaknesses of others are always hiding, we have to find them before they find ours. But before we enjoin a journey to explore others weaknesses, it first must be us who work with ours.

Our strengths grow from our weaknesses. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Even great civilizations like the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Muslims, all used to attack the most weakest and most venerable part of the enemy. It's one of those maneuvers that every general must master. But the thing to be weary about is not to let your enemies catch hold of your weak spots.

 

• Getting Stronger

Not physically but psychologically. You need to send a vibe to your enemies that you have allies, start by creating a web of network with people. Find what is common between you two. Find the enemies of your enemies as the Arabic proverb goes

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Do not build a fortress to protect yourself- isolation is dangerous. --Robert Greene and Joost Elffers

Open up your circle of friends, because you don't know when anyone of them might help you. 

Let's take example of Constantinople's fall. For one thousand years the city of Constantinople wasn't conquered. They had huge walls, thick and strong. Their army shrunk gradually, as they relied too much of their defense on the walls. Soon the city was taken under siege by the Arabs, and they some how managed to make their way into the city. A siege is much worse, the food supply is blocked etc.


You have all the bad reasons of why building a fortress around you can eventually crack your defenses.

• Forgiveness

This might seem lame to you at first but it's a charm only if you know how to make it work for you. See, forgiveness to most of us clicks something about religion, so the most of us ignore it. Think of mastering the art of forgiveness as mastering the art of letting go. When you let go the harsh things your enemy has done to you, you're not really effected by it. An aggressive attack within a defensive one. As Oscar Wilde puts it

Always forgive your enemies- there is nothing more that annoys them more. --Oscar Wilde

It takes time in mastering these techniques, but you'll eventually get there. You will find others ways also but I can only tell you what I have learned or what I know. Also if you get angry when you see an enemy try these techniques on How To Control Anger.