This week’s focus:
Don’t make assumptions!
Sometimes I think we make more assumptions each day than, perhaps, we make money! Almost every sentence we use, has at least one assumption in it, and often disguised as fact.
In my practice, I am often reminded of just how many of us take things personally. Well, here’s the thing: every time we have taken something personally, we have made an assumption. For example, “He doesn’t like me!” “She thinks I can’t do this job.”
Of course, it’s one thing to make the assumptions. It’s another that we seldom check our assumptions. I mean, in the two examples above, is it necessarily so that the other person doesn’t like me, or thinks I can’t do the job. Isn’t it more likely, or possible, that they are frustrated with me regarding the thing we are talking about, or that she thinks I might not be getting what she is trying to show me, or anything else for that matter, apart from what I am assuming. Put another way, isn’t it more likely that this is my stuff – not theirs; it’s about how I see the world, not them.
So, this week, make a point of checking your assumptions, not only when you take things personally, but in everything you say or think. Is it necessarily as you see it? Have the courage to get your assumptions wrong.
Monday Morning Perspective: “What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.” – George Bernard Shaw
