You know your four letters, your number and your style. Each was interesting to learn. You can describe yourself in three systems now, and on Thursday you did the same thing you always do. I keep looking for the right combination of things that will finally open me up.
This page makes no claim about any particular test. It only says that the nine rules do a different job.
01
What a test does
A test asks about you in general. Do you prefer this or that. Do you tend one way or the other. It adds up the answers and places you in a category, and everyone who takes it gets one.
That can be useful for some purposes. It is not what happens here.
02
Four differences
It starts from a moment and not from a self-description. The question is what happened last Tuesday, and not what you are usually like.
It offers at least two candidates and never one. A single statement about a person can be easy to agree with and hard to check.
It works by removing. Candidates are set against scenes, and against each other with fixed questions, and the ones that don't account for what happened come off.
And it can come back empty. Two rules may be running together. None of the nine may fit. Not enough to tell yet is a result. A method that always produces an answer is telling you something about the method.
03
One example
A quiz item asks whether you find it hard to say no. You agree strongly.
Agreeing there fits at least four rules. Under Peace the fear is that someone's disappointment means you did something wrong. Under Needed it is that without your usefulness there is no reason for you. Under Chosen it is that if you are not selected, you were not enough to select. Under Approval it is that without their verdict you don't know what you are worth.
A score can't separate these. A scene sometimes can, with a question such as this. Would you rather be loved and unnecessary, or necessary and taken for granted? Loved is the Chosen answer. Necessary is the Needed answer. That question sorts only those two, and the others have their own.
Finding it hard to say no may also be none of them. Some people are generous. Some are in a job where no is not on offer.
04
What that means for these pages
No page in this library will tell you that you have a rule, or which one. The pages are built to help you set some aside.
That is subtraction: fewer explanations at the end than at the start, and sometimes none.
How the nine are meant to be used is on The Nine Rules as a Map, Not a Menu.