Assumptions

Here’s a door, it’s a front door and it’s the front door of my house. Take a look at it and what do you see? Go on, give me the details? I suspect you’re going through the physical features. It’s a grey door with chrome fittings. You may notice an outside light, a lock but no keyhole, a door bell and a house number. You may even see a red car in the reflection and a mobile phone.

Given that I’ve said it’s my house and if you’ve seen my car you’ll know it’s red - it would be a reasonable assumption to say that it’s my car and my phone taking the photo.

Now look more closely. What assumptions do you make about how the door opens? I don’t mean how the smart lock works, though that is very cool. I mean, which side opens. I can almost see your furrowed eyebrows as you start to question whether I have completely lost it! Isn’t that an obvious answer?

Let me explain through a story. Some time ago, an experiment was conducted. An internal type of door, the sort with just a button handle where you just push the door, was put in a frame. A group of people were asked to open the door and walk through it. Without fail they all first pushed the handle and then tried to pull it. They all failed to open the door and assumed that it was somehow locked. The door was not locked. The group of people had been stopped in their tracks by their own assumptions. They assumed that the side that opened was the side with the handle and that the hinges were on the opposite side to the handle. In this case they were wrong. The handle had been put on the SAME side as the hinges. All they had to do to open the door was to push on the side opposite to the handle.

We make thousand of assumptions like this each day, we have to in order to survive. Can you imagine how hard life would be if we had to learn everything every time. I doubt you’d get as far as leaving your bedroom, let alone your house. So these type of assumptions are useful.

Are all your assumptions helpful or do some of them limit your choices?

What assumptions do you make about what is possible for you or for others? Do these assumptions limit your possibilities? Are they limiting beliefs?

What assumptions do you make about what other people think?

Why not spend the next week being more consciously aware of the assumptions that you make and whether you actually have facts to back them up. When you notice assumptions that aren’t supported by facts or where you might not have sufficient experience to be sure, think a bit further and work out whether you should challenge your own assumptions, particularly if this assumption is limiting you in some way.

I’d love to hear about what you learn about yourself when you do this.

If you find that you have limiting beliefs that are holding you back and would like some help removing those limiting beliefs, please get in touch.

emma@emma2france.com ~ 07702 814690