What You Know Won’t Help You.

Imagine:  You’re an extraterrestrial explorer speeding though an unknown galaxy. Your spacecraft malfunctions: you’re forced to make an emergency landing on a little blue planet. You survive the landing with a crippled craft. You’re stranded. You call the Galactic AAA. It’ll be awhile before they get there, so you begin to explore.

You step out of your craft, and the first thing you see is a shiny, metallic object.  What is this thing?

It has windows; how do you get in?  You touch it, pressing, pulling, lifting.  You lift a lever, a door opens. You’ve figured it out:  It’s a kind of shelter. But as you sit inside, you realize it’s much more than that. It’s some kind of machine. It has levers and knobs that don’t work. You keep pushing, pulling, turning. You turn something, an engine starts.  You’ve figured it out: it’s a shelter with temperature control and pleasing musical sounds.

But what is this big round thing in front? There must be something else. You push, pull press a button, pull a lever, and it begins to move. You’ve figured it out; it’s a method of transport. You take it for a spin, and soon you’re having fun. It’s slow and bumpy. Still, even though it’s primitive, it’s kind of cool.

Galactic AAA finally shows up.You show them your discovery. They say “We’re familiar with this machine, called a motor vehicle. However, you’ve missed two important things: These are tires and they need air. This is the brake, and it must be released. Like this. Now, try it over there on that black ribbony thing called the highway.”

You do. And your experience is transformed. The ride is smooth and fast. In space you don’t feel speed, but here, in this marvelous machine, it’s exhilarating. You thought you’d figured it out, you thought it was good. But a little knowledge gave you a completely different experience and a major realization: you were missing a big piece of the puzzle that you didn’t even know existed.  You begin to consider: the purpose of this vehicle might just be freedom and joy.

What if life is like that? What if, given just the right piece of knowledge, whatever happiness, health or success you’re experiencing could be so much better?  Maybe even better than you can imagine? Maybe ten times, a hundred times better. It’s possible isn’t it?

Let’s talk about knowledge. Think of everything that can be known. What percentage of this do we know? Not much, but we know we know it. What’s left? What we know we don’t know.  However, there is another area of knowledge: what you don’t know, you don’t know.

Name something you don’t know you don’t know. Can’t do it. We have no access to what we don’t know we don’t know. If you want to have a much more profound experience of life than you do now, what you know now will not help you. (Einstein said you can’t solve a problem with the same mindset that created it.)

So, we spend a lot of time trying to learn what we know we don’t know. And that can be helpful. But let me suggest that the greatest Aha! moments in your life, the greatest leaps you will make in your own personal evolution, will come from getting access to what you don’t know you don’t know.

There’s a couple of ways you can do that.

One, it may be given to you. You may be sitting in traffic and some huge insight may be given to you by the cosmos that will transform your experience of life. It could happen. I wouldn’t wait for that, though.

The other way to get access to what you don’t know you don’t know is to search for it. The problem is, you won’t know what you’re looking for, because it’s what you don’t know you don’t know. You need to start from the premise that your experience of life is only a very small part of what it can be and that it can be more, and that you want it to be more.  I call this the journey of transformation. Some people call it personal development (but that’s boring.)

 What does this have to do with hypnotherapy? Hypnotherapy is a tool that can help you change what you don’t know you don’t know into something you know you don’t know. Because then, you can start working on knowing it.

Here is an example from my life: someone told me years ago that because I thought I was so smart I didn’t know how to let anyone contribute to me. I had to admit that was true, but it never occurred to me because I simply wasn’t aware that I came across like a know-it-all. Like our extraterrestrial explorer, this was a big piece of the puzzle I didn’t know existed. Suddenly, what I didn’t know I didn’t know had become something I knew I didn’t know. I could begin to work on allowing people in, by shutting my mouth and listening. Think that did something for my relationships? You betcha.

I’m going to give you a small little exercise. If you do this exercise, you might get something.  I did, and I got something. Chances are that you won’t do it, though.

Find someone you trust who knows you, someone who will tell it to you straight. Tell them to be completely honest with you. Do this face to face in person, not over the phone. Ask them the following three questions: 1. How do I occur to you? 2. What’s great about me? 3. What’s not so great about me? After each question, shut up and listen. Then thank them. I can almost guarantee you that if you do this with three people you will have a revelation that might change your life. Good luck.

Let me leave you with this: most people are motivated by avoiding how bad it can get. I invite you to be inspired by how good it can be. How good can it be…?

To Listen to a podcast of this blog, go to www.TedinYourHead.com episode 98

Ted