Cleaning up my bedroom drawer I came across a birthday card written to me by my friend Mandy.
We go for weekly walks and throughout my personal development and coach training, Mandy has had to put up with being coached A LOT. She got a weekly watered-down version of my ongoing trainings and she was basically my first coaching client – whether she liked it or not.
When I found her card a few years later, I had to smile, “Assume Nothing”, Mandy writes. One of the Four Agreements of life by Don Miguel Ruiz that clearly made an impression on my friend to make it onto my special birthday card. Even my kids and husband love to throw that statement at me when they catch me deep in assumption and complaint about one thing or another. They clearly learned something from me.
When I did my coaching training at Creative Consciousness International I learned that assumptions are on top of the list when it comes to giving your personal power away. Right next to living a life of expectations and complaints, assumptions are the starting point of sliding down your personal Ladder of Power into the domain of reactive living or as Marc Steinberg puts it “victimhood”.
According to one of my participants, assumptions are the mother of all %#@* ups.
Have you perhaps noticed already how much “Tzores”, a Yiddish word for distress, trouble or plight is caused by unquestioned assumptions?
Living in assumption disrupts personal peace and takes away precious life force energy, also known as prana or Qi. And staying in the assumption keeps us stuck and disempowered, which is of course where the trained eagle eye of a coach can help.
‘I think she doesn’t want to spend time with me.’ ‘I bet she doesn’t like me.’ Or ‘She’s probably mad at me. That’s why she never phones.’ When the simple truth is that my friend is consumed by personal worries about her aging parents and could probably do with a phone call from me herself. Oops – do I know this, or have I just caught myself making another assumption?
So, what can we do about this business of making an ASS out of U and ME (ass_u_me)? How do we stop assuming and start living a creative versus a reactive life?
Start with asking a question (in case of the above friend example …. ‘Have I done something to upset you? Is there a reason you are not phoning me?’) or express a wish (‘I wish you would call me from time to time.’)
According to Nancy Kline, founder of Time to Think, all behaviour is based on assumptions, one way or another, conscious or not so conscious.
The secret is to spot when we are in assumption. As a Time to Think coach, I take my clients through the following process looking for assumptions that are potentially holding them back from moving towards a particular goal.
Ask yourself the following:
- What might you be assuming that’s stopping you (from phoning your friend)?
- Write down ALL the assumptions that are stopping you. (She doesn’t like me. She has got a new best friend. She has moved on. etc.)
- Identify the key assumption that’s most stopping you (from phoning your friend).
- Then ask yourself if that key assumption is true. (Is it true that she doesn’t like me? – probably not).
- Come up with the reasons why this is not true. (She invited me the other day for dinner.)
- Then ask yourself if this is not true, what could you assume instead? What would be a more liberating assumption? (She has got her hands full).
- Then you formulate Nancy Kline’s famous Incisive Question and unlock a next step (If I knew that she has got her hands full with her aging parents, how would that make me feel? What would I do?)
- Voila – you have just learned how to unlock a next step (pick up the phone and reach out to your friend).
Well done for taking a first step and empowering yourself and freeing yourself from a reactive life of assumptions. And of course, I am here to assist you when these assumptions are a bit more deeply rooted. Coaching helps uncovering our limiting belief systems. We all have them and as my children like to point out to me on a regular basis – even a coach has got them and is not perfect.
To book a Time to Think session with me, to attend a workshop or book a training, please visit my website or send me an email to hello@sibylle.co.za.
