Wholehearted Reader:

I hope you are able to enjoy some of the wonderful and playful energy of summer!  I will be taking some time off to recharge but I’ll be back with something juicy I have been working on the past few months so stay tuned! 

Be Generous with your Assumptions

The bow of my kayak cut cleanly and silently through the water – the only thing disturbing the glass-like surface.  A granite rock formation rose out of the water ahead of me and was my intended destination for a closer look. 

Absorbed in the visual calmness surrounding me and intent on my goal, I was startled by a sudden scraping sound – my kayak slowed by a rock just beneath the surface.  The rock formation I had been paddling toward extended underwater for several meters in all directions, submerged just deep enough for me to get stuck.  I had assumed that the rock rose straight out of the water and had forgotten that most things in life are rarely as they appear on the surface!

This is the problem with assumptions.  Have you ever done this (I have) – assume that a person, place or thing is just what you are seeing on the surface and rarely do you check any further to see if your assumptions are correct?  Failing to question your assumptions leads you to getting stuck in negative judgements, communication breakdowns, misunderstandings or on a rock in the middle of the lake!

What has confused me and often hurt me are the times when a friend or family member makes a negative assumption about something I have said, done or not done.  They seem to forget what they know to be true about me – that I am smart, kind, compassionate and capable.  If they could remember what they know about me, then maybe they would assume, instead, that there is more going on under the surface than they can currently see.  Instead of assuming that I am bad, wrong, inconsiderate or don’t know what I’m doing, why not be generous with their assumptions?

A concept that Brené Brown speaks about, being generous with your assumptions means you stop to think about your experience of a person, expand the benefit of the doubt and then check in with them to see if they are okay…

“Hey, when you canceled on me for the second time this week, I got concerned.  That isn’t like you – is everything okay?”

Being generous with your assumptions takes practice.  It means you must stop, breathe and step away from your knee jerk reactions of annoyance, judgement, disappointment or frustration and consider that there might be an even bigger “rock” under the surface.  There may be something you don’t know about yet that is causing the undesired behavior.  It is a challenging practice but it’s important and worthwhile and, I think, very necessary right now. 

Let’s be a more generous community.  Let’s be generous with our kindness, our love, our compassion and most of all with our assumptions.  Let’s remember that we all have inherent goodness and let that assumption keep us from getting stuck on the ‘rocks.’

Love,

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