...or "How to become an effective Permission Structure"
Ask 2 Questions and Make 1 Validating Statement (then Rinse and Repeat)
So now you're on the fast-track to KLT... and getting into another person's "Secret Life"
AB: We're taught at the Agency that everybody has 3 lives. There's a public life, a private life, and a secret life.
The public life is the life that you're talking about right now. We emphasize our strengths, we obfuscate our weaknesses, our vulnerabilities, we try to make ourselves look stronger than we are, more courageous than we are, smarter than we are, so that we will be accepted. Because that's the Persona we want to project to others. It's something that we do unconsciously. It's something that we're conditioned to do from childhood. Because that's just the way human beings connect and collaborate, right? We want to look attractive to others.
RB: So that's all of our public life.
AB: Everybody who's a friend, everybody who's an associate, everybody who's a who's a professional connection, they're all part of your public life.
But then you have a private life, too. Now your private life is for a much smaller group of people, right? Intimate friends, intimate family. If in your public life people think that you're super smart, in your private life they know that your breath actually smells. They know that you're lactose intolerant, right? They know that you have a weird patch of hair that grows on your lower back, right? Your intimate family, your kids, your wife, your.. you know whatever, your parents, they know that about you. But that's okay, because they're part of your private life or they can see through the public life and know who you are, in private.
But then we still have a third life, a secret life. And inside that secret life, we may never let anyone in. We may only let one or two people in. In that secret life is where our shame lives. It's where our guilt lives. It's where those Secrets live and insecurities. The things that you and I have done, that we know we've done that we've never told anybody, ever. And there's many more of those Secrets than any of us have ever cared to remember. Even as we say this, if you tell somebody one of those Secrets, you're letting them into your secret life. Now, what CIA tells us is so powerful about this, is that once you let someone into your secret life, you never let them out. So you can move someone from public life into private life, and if they disappoint you, or let you down, or..., you can move them back to public life, right? They go back and forth. Well, when you move someone from private life to secret life, and you share that level of vulnerability with them, even if you're mad at them, disappointed by them, don't trust them, you never really let them out of your secret life.
So Espionage is a game of getting people to let you into their secret life. Because then you gain all the leverage. You gain all the power. You know that they've been cheating on their wife since they were married three years. You know that they have two illegitimate kids. You know that they're secretly addicted to cocaine. You know that they love child pornography. You know whatever it is. You know their secrets in their secret life, and they can't help but trust you because you are the only other person carrying the burden of those Secrets.
And when someone else carries the burden of your secrets, you're intrinsically connected to that.RB: And that's why you can't remove them.
AB: Because their loyalty to you is unending.
RB: And then once you have gained access to their secret life, you have the dirt on them, presumably. That's a very high Leverage, possession, or control mechanism.
AB: Right. We call it coercion, it's a tool called coercion.
Now coercion is the weakest of all tools to use, which is why when you get the dirt, the most valuable thing to understand is that you never want to exploit the dirt. What you always want to do is sell them the "hope behind the dirt", right? Like, "I know you've got a problem with opioids. I know you're addicted to opioid and I know you've been hiding it from the whole world, and one day, together, we're gonna get you past it. But today, you need to perform. And you need your opioid identity, right? So today, I need you to go and have this meeting, and get this secret, and come back and bring it to me so that we can change the world. And we're not going to do that if we start cleaning you up today."
RB: So is that part of the Espionage game then, it's to get into their secret world, know that weak point or point of high leverage, and then you just press that point to inspire the behaviors that suit your interest, or your boss's interest, I guess?
AB: That's not part of the game, that is the game. That is what makes a spy worth the $2.5 million dollars of training that they get. To learn how to do that systematically and predictably, with any culture, any gender, any age, any level of Education.
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RB: Are you then also trained, if you're trained to infiltrate the secret lives of others, are you also trained to prevent infiltration of your own secret life?
AB: Absolutely, the tool that we use for that is something called "Know, Like, Trust (KLT)".
So there's a process in which you meet somebody, right? When you don't know somebody, they're a stranger to you. You're, they're out. You never have to worry about that person gaining access to your secret life.
So, then you meet the person, now that's the "Know", the K in KLT, the Know in Know, Like, Trust. Now you know the person exists. But knowing the person exists doesn't necessarily mean you Like them. So, over time you realize you have things in common, you think the same way, you have, you know, similar ideals, you grew up in similar households, whatever else. Over time, you start to develop a liking for somebody. This is where things get dangerous because as you learn to like somebody you absolutely naturally, and unintentionally, slip into trusting them. Anybody who's ever been let down anybody, who's ever trusted somebody that didn't deserve their trust, knows exactly what I'm talking about. It's very easy to fall into a pattern of not knowing someone exists, and then you know them, and then you get along really great, and you like them. And before you know it, you act in ways where you trust them even though you have no reason to trust them.
That's Know, Like, Trust.
Well, what we're trained as CIA operatives is that when Know, Like, Trust happens quickly, that's a big red flag that you're dealing with somebody who's trained. Because a trained person can get you through KLT in an immense amount of time. The average time it takes for a CIA officer to get into the secret life of a Target is nine months. For especially hard targets, like the, the people who are, who inherently distrust Americans, or inherently distrust the United States, that process becomes more like 15 to 18 months. But that's our system. We know how frequently, how often, what to talk about, what to bring up things. Like what to bring up, what to push on so that we can get into a Target's secret life within nine months.
Most engagements last more than 12 months. Most dating relationships exceed two years, right? So, I mean, that's three years from meeting to marriage, on average. And people still aren't in each other's secret life.
RB: Wow, then are you, I guess you end up with this inner sanctum of Secret Life, as a trained covert operative, to just, it never, you'd never connect that, with anyone else in the world.
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