The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Embrace the Shadow.
Your natural reaction in uncovering and facing
up to your dark side is to feel uncomfortable and maintain only a
surface awareness of it. Your goal here must be the opposite—not only
complete acceptance of the Shadow but the desire to integrate it into
your present personality.
From an early age Abraham Lincoln liked to analyze himself, and a
recurrent theme in his self-examinations was that he had a split
personality—on the one hand an ambitious almost cruel streak to his
nature, and on the other a sensitivity and softness that made him
frequently depressed. Both sides of his nature made him feel
uncomfortable and odd. On the rough side, for instance, he loved
boxing and thoroughly thrashing his opponent in the ring. In law and
politics he had a rather scathing sense of humor.
Once he wrote some anonymous letters to a newspaper, attacking a
politician he thought of as a buffoon. The letters were so effective that
the target went mad with rage. He found out that Lincoln was the
source of them and challenged him to a duel. This became the talk of
the town and proved quite embarrassing to Lincoln. He managed to get
out of the duel, but he vowed to never indulge his cruel streak again.
He recognized the trait in himself and would not deny it. Instead he
would pour his aggressive, competitive energy into winning debates
and elections.
On his soft side, he loved poetry, felt tremendous affection for
animals, and hated witnessing any kind of physical cruelty. He hated
drinking and what it did to people. At his worst, he was prone to fits of
deep melancholy and brooding over death. All in all, he felt himself to
be far too sensitive for the rough-and-tumble world of politics. Instead
of denying this side of himself, he channeled it into incredible empathy
for the public, for the average man and woman. Caring deeply about
the loss of lives in the war, he put all his efforts into ending it early. He
did not project evil onto the South but rather empathized with its
plight and planned on a peace that was not retributive.
He also incorporated it into a healthy sense of humor about himself,
making frequent jokes about his ugliness, high-pitched voice, and

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brooding nature. By embracing and integrating such opposing qualities
into his public persona, he gave the impression of tremendous
authenticity. People could identify with him in a way never seen before
with a political leader.