0May 30, 2011
An assumption is something taken for granted; something you believe to be true often without any evidence.
Something came up in a discussion I had with a friend recently. She had assumed she knew what I felt; she did not actually know and was clearly struggling to fit the new information with the old assumption. Has that happened to you?
Assumptions are very handy. We use them all the time. They save us a lot of time and energy. We don’t have to think about everyday things, we just know that things are as they are. We can all have similar assumptions like; ‘all children like lollies’, ‘everyone starts work on Monday morning’, ‘if it’s dark outside its night time’.
We also have personal assumptions developed from our life experience, peer, family and cultural influences. Often these assumptions are embedded and we don’t know they are there until something happens to make us think about them.
What we do when we realise our assumption doesn’t fit any more is really important. We can ignore the evidence and go on as normal or we can have a look at our assumption and review it.
I have had my own assumptions challenged often over the last year. In fact just recently I made an assumption about a person – I thought I knew what it meant to be her in that circumstance and I was clearly wrong. I think of myself as a free thinker with an open, enquiring mind but that’s not always true. That same enquiring mind then went into over drive trying to figure out how I ended up with that conclusion!
Not looking at these assumptions, not thinking about the relevance of the assumption can stop us from exploring and growing, this can stand between us and new life experiences. My suggestion is to at least have a look at the value of your assumption and wonder what it is and is it of value to you now.
Take your assumption out, give it a shake and see what happens when you really look at it closely perhaps it needs adjusting or to be discarded to allow you to see things in a different more relevant way.
Janet Bromley
