Understand: “A person of power instills a kind of fear by deliberately unsettling those around him to keep the initiative on his side. You sometimes need to strike without warning to make others tremble when they least expect it.”
“People are always trying to read the motives behind your actions and to use your predictability against you. Throw in a completely inexplicable move and you put them on the defensive.”
Example, let’s say you’ve maintained a habit within your relationship where the two of you have habituated yourselves to doing the same thing every week — you’ve become predictable.
By “throwing in a completely inexplicable move” you can create spontaneity, excitement, and passion by stepping away from the same old habit and doing something you’ve never done before. This is how I interpret, “keep others in a suspended state of terror” — it can be a positive terror that can elicit excitement. Yet another reason how cultivating an air of unpredictability can work in so many varying ways.
“The habit of assuming that a person’s behavior will fit its previous patterns is so strong that not even Ali’s announcement of a strategy change was enough to upset it. Foreman walked into a trap — the trap he had been told to expect.”
Though there is another side of unpredictability:
“Too much unpredictability will be seen as a sign of indecisiveness, or even of some more serious psychic problem. Patterns are powerful, and you can terrify people by disrupting them. Such power should only be used judiciously.”
To reiterate, this cannot only be used to “terrify” but it can be used for positive things like creating energy, excitement, and passion by doing things you’ve never done before.