The invisible underworld that is running your life, unbeknown to you.

The invisible underworld, undertow of rules... Or if you prefer, the invisible strings that move the puppet...

What they talk about when they say "there are known knowns... etc."

Donald Rumsfeld stated:
Reports that say that something hasn"t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don"t know we don"t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

He definitely said that differently than how we mean it, and yet it is worded in a way that makes sense to most people, so I am quoting him.
So what unknown unknowns are we talking about?

Imagine living a thousand years ago, when everyone in the Western world thought that the world was flat... In other cultures they thought that the world was sitting on the back of a giant turtle.

Both world views said: there is an edge from which you can fall into the void.

So unless you stayed away from the edge... you risked falling into the abyss.

Hear the rule? Unless you do this... you will get that.
There are a few rules that we have unearthed that we can track the formulation of the rule. this is one...
IFTTT

If this then that...

The important thing is to get the formula.

And then find the individual application.

For example: if I am not independent then I am going to be abused, or let down, or left in a lurch, or taken advantage of... lots of bad consequences...

Some of my students have:

if I am not arguing then I am going to be crushed... or something like that.
If I am not right then I am nothing
If I am not smart then I should not do anything because I will fail anyway
If I am afraid then I should... this one has a lot of rules.
If I can think it, then it should happen right away without effort
If I do something, I should do it with effort, or it won"t count

Most or maybe even all of these rules were invented in childhood, in response to some adversity, trauma, parent"s treatment of you, etc.
One of these rules is so strong, it is an anchor. To misery. It can be pulled like an attachment.
I pulled mine... and it seems to be completely gone, I can"t even remember what it was, but I have changed.

A leash will allow you some freedom, but not much. And without freedom you are not able to grow. Without freedom you will never feel like you can be happy.

So ferreting out these rules, one by one, and devising ways to neutralize them, through words, is your number one job if you want to grow.

Why use words to neutralize the rules? Because you created the rules with words... so words are the most useful and effective weapons against it.

They say: don"t bring a knife to a gun fight!

It is not easy to find the rules,
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