Persuading With The Thirty Six Chinese Stratagem
Author: Kenrick Cleveland

"So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself,
you will win a hundred times in a hundred battles. If you only
know yourself, but not your opponent, you win one and lose the
next. If you do not know yourself or your enemy, you will always
lose." -Ancient Chinese Proverb

I love to learn. One of the fields of study I have most enjoyed
and which has brought a huge amount of insight and is entirely
relevant in relation to persuasion, are the ancient Chinese
proverbs known as the Thirty-Six Chinese Stratagem. Stratagem
are cunning and pervasive strategies. They are along the same
lines as The Art of War, but more subtle. These stratagem can be
easily applied to our daily lives. We see examples of them all
the time in politics, business, communications, negotiations,
sports, and even romance. The Thirty-Six Chinese Stratagem are
innately connected persuasion.

A stratagem is not a strategy. This is a common mistake.
Stratagem is more akin to a ruse, something that is done to
intentionally deceive. With the intention of deceiving, we can
see that these are not always nice. They are at their core
manipulations and psychological warfare. In the West we have our
own version of this as 'all's fair in love and war'. These
stratagems can be cold and cruel.

Having said all that, I want to stress the necessity of
integrity and honesty. Persuasion works best when we are true to
ourselves and act with total congruency with what is right. All
may or may not be fair in love and war, if we have the tools
that we need to really get to the bottom of human nature, we can
protect ourselves if or when others try to use intentional
deception against us. Moreover, we can find ways to use these
tools with honor and truth, in new ways that expand our
potential to persuade. From time to time, I intend to write on
these stratagem because their correspondence and relation to
persuasion is inseparable. I will be starting an even deeper
exploration of these stratagem because it is my feeling and
experience that they bring persuasion and influence and self
knowledge to an entirely new level, in magnitudes of
improvement, and once they become a part of your other than
conscious, you will begin to see clearly how these teachings
benefit all aspects of life.

The six categories that the stratagems are broken down into
correspond to six conditions or situations. They are as follows:
The Stratagems of Winning; The Stratagems of Defending; The
Stratagems of Attacking; The Stratagems of Scuffling; The
Stratagems of Merging; The Stratagems of Losing. I am confident
these lessons will benefit your persuasion. I figure if we can
understand exactly what they describe, we can reverse engineer
it, pull out the parts that work, and decide when and how others
are going to be able to use them against us, and decide when
it's ethical and honorable to use them on others.


About The Author: Kenrick Cleveland teaches techniques to earn
the business of affluent clients using
http://www.maxpersuasion.com persuasion. He runs public and
private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching
programs in http://www.maxpersuasion.com persuasion techniques.