The General Who Won by Looking Crazy
The safe move is sometimes the trap. The crazy move is sometimes the answer.
228 AD. Western China.
Zhuge Liang — the most brilliant military strategist of his era — had made a catastrophic mistake. He’d sent his main forces away. Now, an enemy army of 150,000 soldiers was marching toward his position. He had 2,500 men.
No reinforcements coming. No time to retreat.
His officers begged him to run.
He refused.
Not because he was stubborn. Not because he needed to look tough. But because running would guarantee their deaths. And he understood something about power that his advisors didn’t.
What He Did Instead
He ordered his soldiers to hide.
He commanded his musicians to climb the walls and play loud, celebratory music.
He had servants sweep the streets in plain view.
Then he opened the fortress gates — all of them — climbed to the top of the wall, lit incense, and started playing his lute.
Calmly. Casually. As if he had all the time in the world.
The enemy general, Sima Yi, arrived with his 150,000 troops. He saw the open gates. The music. The lone figure on the wall, playing an instrument like nothing was happening.
And he froze.
Zhuge Liang had a reputation for elaborate traps. He never did anything without a reason. This
had to be a trap.
Sima Yi ordered his entire army to retreat.
Zhuge Liang won without fighting. Without weapons. Without a single strategic advantage except one: he understood that power isn’t about what you have.
It’s about what people believe you have.
Why This Matters Now
You’re probably not facing an army. But you might be facing something that feels just as overwhelming.
The client who’s demanding you justify yourself. The boss who’s questioning your judgment. The market that seems to be turning against you. The committee, the board, the algorithm, the investors, the critics.
And in those moments, everyone around you has advice.
Apologize. Explain yourself. Walk it back. Play it safe. Don’t make waves.
And sometimes that’s the right move.
But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes the “safe” move is actually the one that guarantees you lose.
Zhuge Liang’s officers wanted him to retreat because retreat felt safer. But he knew: if they ran, they’d be hunted down and slaughtered. The “safe” option was a death sentence disguised as caution.
The crazy option — the one that made no logical sense — was the only one that could work.
The Geometry
There’s a shape to this kind of power.
Most people operate on a flat plane. Pressure comes in, reaction goes out. Someone attacks, you defend. Someone questions, you justify. Someone pushes, you push back — or you collapse.
It’s all on the same level. It’s all predictable.
What Zhuge Liang did was move to a different dimension entirely. He didn’t engage on the plane where the battle was happening. He created a new plane — one where the rules were his.
On the original plane: he was weak, outnumbered, doomed.
On the plane he created: he was so confident it had to mean something. So calm it had to be a trap.
The enemy couldn’t beat him because they couldn’t even locate him. He wasn’t playing their game anymore.
The Modern Version
I’ve watched this play out in boardrooms, on Zoom calls, in Slack threads, and in my own career more times than I can count.
The campaign that’s underperforming and everyone wants you to panic and make reactive changes — when the actual move is to hold steady, analyze the data, and wait for the pattern to emerge.
The meeting where someone challenges your strategy and expects you to defend yourself — when the actual move is to STAY CURIOUS and ask them a question instead.
The negotiation where the other side expects you to blink — when the actual move is to get quieter, slower, more still. 🐅
The client who’s threatening to walk — when the actual move is to let them walk.
The industry that says you need to do it this way — when the actual move is to do something so different they don’t know what to make of it.
None of this is about bravado. None of this is about ego. Zhuge Liang wasn’t trying to look tough. He wasn’t proving anything to anyone. He was solving a problem that couldn’t be solved on the terms everyone expected.
What This Requires
Two things.
First: you have to stop internalizing other people’s panic. When everyone around you is screaming that the sky is falling, you need the ability to observe their fear without absorbing it. Their urgency is not your emergency. Their timeline is not your timeline. Their definition of the problem is not necessarily accurate.
Zhuge Liang’s officers were terrified. He registered their fear. He didn’t let it infect his thinking.
Second: you have to know what you’re actually protecting. Zhuge Liang didn’t care about looking brave. He didn’t care about his reputation in that moment. He cared about one thing: keeping his people alive. That clarity let him do something that looked insane because he wasn’t trying to manage perception. He was trying to solve the actual problem.
When you’re clear on what you’re actually protecting — your mission, your people, your vision, your standards — you stop wasting energy on the things that don’t matter. You can afford to look crazy. You can afford to be misunderstood. You can afford to let people question your judgment.
Because you’re not playing for applause. You’re playing to win.
The Trap of “Looking Reasonable”
Here’s what nobody tells you: sometimes the “reasonable” path is the coward’s path in disguise.
Retreat sounds reasonable. Apologizing sounds reasonable. Lowering your price sounds reasonable. Walking back your position sounds reasonable. Being “flexible” sounds reasonable.
But sometimes reasonable is just a story we tell ourselves so we don’t have to hold our ground when it’s uncomfortable.
I’m not talking about stubbornness. I’m not talking about refusing to admit when you’re wrong. That’s ego, and ego will kill you just as fast as cowardice.
I’m talking about the moments when you know — in your gut, in your bones — that everyone else is wrong. That the “obvious” move is actually the trap. That the path everyone thinks is safe is the one that leads off the cliff.
In those moments, you have a choice.
You can do what looks right. Or you can do what is right.
The Invitation
Where in your life right now are you being pressured to retreat?
Where are you shrinking to make other people comfortable?
Where are you about to make the “safe” choice — not because it’s actually safe, but because you’re tired of holding your ground?
And what would it look like — just for a moment — to consider the counterintuitive path?
Not the reckless path. Not the ego path. Not the path that proves something.
The path that solves the actual problem. Even if it looks crazy to everyone else.
Zhuge Liang sat on that wall with his lute because he understood something fundamental:
Power is not loud. Power is not reactive. Power is not the thing that looks powerful.
Power is the ability to stay calm when everyone expects you to panic.
That’s the geometry of this chapter.
And maybe, the geometry of whatever you’re facing next.
You just read 1,500 words about not flinching.
🐅So don’t flinch now.🐅
Subscribe if you want more of this.
Share if someone you know is about to make the “safe” choice that isn’t.
Save for the day you need to remember what calm under pressure actually looks like.
Reply with one word: what are you protecting?