“If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don’t tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don’t understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don’t have the courage to ask questions.”
– Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements
Recently I watched a cooking show about a baker who discovered kneading dough wasn’t necessary. He simply set aside the yeast, flour and water mixture to rise. Then he folded the risen dough three times and baked it. The finished loaf was crisp and fluffy. The host of the show, also a baker, said he’d never even considered the fact he didn’t have to knead the dough – that was how it had always been done and always should be done.
That cooking show reminded me of the Pot Roast Story: A young girl watched her mother cut off the ends of the roast, like she always did, before putting it into the oven. This time the young girl asked her mother why. Her mother said, “That’s the way my mother always did it.” The young girl called her grandmother and asked why she cut the ends off the pot roast before cooking it? The grandmother replied, “I didn’t have a pan big enough to fit the whole roast. So I had to cut the ends off.”
What assumptions do we make about ourselves and others without asking the right questions?
There’s a saying: When you assume you make an ass out of you and me: ASS-U-ME. An assumption is our minds version of something that’s accepted as true and certain to happen without any proof.
So from now on I’m going to give up assuming anything and everything. Instead, I’m going to embrace the other definition of the word “assume” by seizing control and taking responsibility for all my thoughts, moods, actions and inactions. And I’m going to find the courage to ask myself, and others, the tough questions in the hope that the answers will lead me to the best version of myself.
