48 Laws of Power is a bestselling book and is intended for those who want power, watch power, or want to arm themselves against power. It focuses on three thousand years of the history of power into forty-eight well-explicated laws.

I read the book by Robert Greene back in 2008 and after reading Law 34 (Be Royal in your Own Fashion), I wanted to pass along this passage:

“As children, we start our lives with great exuberance, expecting and demanding everything in the world. This generally carries over into the first forays into society, as we begin our careers. But as we grow older the rebuffs and failures we experience set up boundaries that only get firmer with time. Coming to expect less from the world, we accept limitations that are really self-imposed. We start to bow and scrape and apologize for even the simplest of requests. The solution to such a shrinking of horizons is to deliberately force ourselves in the opposite direction—to downplay the failures and ignore the limitations, to make ourselves demand and expect as much as the child.”

The passage goes on to state that if we believe we are destined for great things, our belief will radiate outward and will infect the people around us, who will think there must be a reason why you’re so confident. Successful people believe so firmly in their own greatness that it becomes a reality. “The trick is simple: Be overcome by your self-belief. Even while you know you are practicing a kind of deception on yourself, act like a king. You are likely to be treated as one.”

Be bold, be different and separate yourself from people around you. And one way to be different is to have integrity no matter what. The bottom line is to believe in yourself and people will start to believe in you. Be confident, act like a king and get treated like one.

*Revised from a January, 9, 2008 blog post