If knowledge is power...

Knowledge is power, therefore he who controls knowledge controls power.

The above picture shows the many levels of knowledge. At each level, there is a fair amount of "misknowledge," that is, "what you think is true yet is NOT true."

Why would people think that something is true when it is not true?

That's because other people have agendas of their own, and want to control your mind and your decision-making process.

In a dictatorship or Communist state, force is the law. The state police can knock on your door in the middle of the night, and drag you out and bring you to prison without any explanation.

In our democratic society, no government can do that. However, the coercion or the oppression is subtler. Force may not be the law, but knowledge is.

Society (mass institutions, the ruling elite, etc.) controls your mind by using subtle levers buried deep inside your psyche. The system is so sophisticated and refined that most people don't even realize they are being manipulated on a daily basis.

The late John K. Galbraith, in his little book titled The Economics of Innocent Fraud, refers to this as "managed public response."

The only way for people to regain control of their mind and their thinking processes, is to critically re-examine HOW they are thinking and the very sources of information on which they rely.

The following are sources of "misinformation": job boards, the news media, magazines. They may have some good information, but it is the exception rather than the rule.

All information coming your way can be treated as a piece of "advice."

A general rule of thumb that I follow is to examine the "agenda" before I even consider the "advice."

If your parents are giving you advice, you can usually assume their agenda is the same as yours. They have your best interests and happiness at heart.

The next step is to rationally examine the validity and quality of their advice, keeping in mind that they grew up in a different time period and, therefore, things might have changed completely so that their advice might no longer be relevant.

In the end, if knowledge is power (and I believe so), then success comes when you develop a way to systematically VERIFY all the information that comes your way, whether from magazines, books, other people, TV, etc.

Most people don't verify the information that comes their way. It's not because they are lazy, it's only because nobody has ever taught them HOW to do a proper knowledge verification.

Billionaire Charlie Munger has created a powerful concept called "lattice of mental models," a sort of constellation of interlinked concepts that allows him to rigorously verify the validity of new information and to integrate new knowledge into his way of thinking.

Because most people lack this kind of rigorous system, they rely on emotion to make decisions. This is where people run into trouble. When fear and greed control the decision-making process, nothing good can come out of it.

The success secret is really to search for knowledge while developing a system to verify the information coming your way. The information that a person should look for is the kind that is important, and that can be known.

Indeed, there is a HUGE amount of information that is:

• important, but cannot be known (winning lottery numbers!)
• not important, but can be known (news from CNN, etc.)
• not important, and cannot be known (what will happen to you in three years -- don't listen to fortune tellers!)

The information that is IMPORTANT and CAN BE KNOWN usually comes from non-fiction books. Therefore, the "rate of empowerment" can be easily calculated from the number of non-fiction books that a person reads.

If Person A reads 3 books per week, and Person B reads 1 book every two weeks, then the rate of empowerment of Person A is 6 times that of Person B.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there, because Person B also reads fiction and lifestyle magazines and gossips quite a bit on the cell phone. In other words, a lot of misknowledge and deception gets into the mind of Person B.

What about Person A? Since she's keenly interested in personal development, it is likely that she's also going to workshops and getting involved in career activities or business associations to increase her knowledge. Therefore, her rate of empowerment is probably more than 6 times that of Person B.

In as little as six months, Person A can jump way ahead of Person B, and can have knowledge that allows her to make better and better decisions in her personal and professional lives.

Person B, unfortunately, is still struggling, trapped in a web of deception and misknowledge. As a result, her life doesn't seem to improve and she keeps making the same mistakes over and over again -- but in different areas of her life.

There are basically two steps if you want to engage on the path of knowledge.

First, you have to identify the BAD sources of information and kill them. You have to identify the BAD knowledge that you have in your head, and get rid of it. These are called bad "BRIQS" (as in bricks), and the acronym stands for Beliefs, References, Important Values, Questions and States. I will write more about them.

Second, you have to proactively and aggressively seek the GOOD information and knowledge in books, experts, coaches, trainers, associations, schools, etc.

The first step helps you to AVOID being a loser, whereas the second step helps you to BECOME a winner.