The Greatest Negotiation Tactic From Ancient Korea
Forget fairness and learn the secret of the stoic warrior
There is a Korean proverb that goes…
“살고자 하면 죽을 것이요, 죽고자 하면 살 것이다” - Sun-sin Yi
or in English,
“If you want to live, you will die; if you want to die, you will live.”
I’ve heard this phrase over bottles of soju and pork belly dinners a few times during my last twelve years living in Seoul, but until this week I didn’t comprehend the essence of its true meaning, or the absolute super power it gives you during crucial negotiations.
The origin of the phrase likely stems from ancient war time, where the best soldiers were those void of fear. Without the fear of death, their focus was centered on killing the man in front of them rather than running mental scenarios on how they might become injured or killed themselves.
Considering the meaning this way, we could put it in different words:
“The less you’re afraid to die, the more probability you’ll live.”
We might call this a stoic philosophy, where a person is motivated to calmly and rationally align their consciousness to the moment, giving all capacity of thought over to the truly important elements of their…
