It’s 9:15 in the morning and my gorgeous little granddaughter comes running through all ready for nursery. “Would you like me to take you?” I ask and hear from the kitchen (her father) “You can’t because we don’t have the child seat”. Well I knew we did and I knew that it was in the kitchen and I know that he had put her coat on it when she came in the previous evening; so we put it in the car and off we went.
And then I ended up wandering around the centre of Bradford (yes, it is quite a sad life!) reflecting on this. How come a perfectly functioning adult fails to see a substantial child seat even though he has several times been within inches of it? And I thought of the many times I too have lost something only to have a colleague find it in the same place that I have been unsuccessfully looking … and of course the times that I pointed out to someone else that what they are looking for is right under their nose. So this is a fairly common pattern it seems – we can fail to see something that is physically right under our noses. So what’s going on?
Well, there are lots of things that could be going on and the one that I want to talk about today is assumptions. Where is the child seat? The working assumption, which is is correct 99% of the time, is that it is in my wife’s car. She was away and so a reasonable assumption would be that the car seat was not with us. If I am subconsciously assuming that something is not present, it seems quite likely that my consciousness is not going to be looking for it and hence will not see it even when it is there. I assume that tickets that gig I wanted to go to have sold out, so I do not even enquire – only to find out after the event that the hall was half full; I assume that that beautiful young woman/man would not consider going out with me and so I do not even ask.
Assumptions get in our way and part of my daily challenge is to identify some of the assumptions that I am running at any particular moment. Remember, we all run a series of assumptions all the time. Assumptions, call them beliefs, influence our thoughts and actions in ways that are sometimes incomprehensible to both ourselves and others.
Even my four-year-old granddaughter is running them. She (implicitly) assumes that when she asks “Why?” there is an answer that can be given in terms and a timeframe that a four-year-old will understand. Maybe there is and maybe my assumption that that is not always true is wrong.
So the story has two thrown up two challenges. Firstly to notice more actively what is around you. To use your eyes and ears and smell etc actively rather than in the passive way that many of us operate most of the time. Secondly to stop occasionally and explore what assumptions you are holding about a situation. What do you believe to be true in this situation? What would have to be true for what is happening to make sense? When you surface these assumptions you will have a different perspective on what you are observing and hence more choices about how to live willfully and thoughtfully this world.
(Oh, by the way, one of my assumptions is that if you have read this far you must be interested in the topic. So how about taking a couple of minutes out to write your comments or share with me some assumption that you found to be less than helpful.)
Hi Geoff,
Nice little read to get me thinking at 10am even if i am in bed with a cold!
Id like to put a link between those who are strongly internally referenced and ‘close minded’ to those less likely to see the car seat, and of course meaning those who are not so internally referenced and ‘open minded’ morre likely to see the car seat. Maybe an obvious point, but i thought id say it anyway.
Also your grammar is getting nearly as bad as mine, perfect spelling but a few double word repetitions which can make you lose you train of thought, something you dont want in a great passage of text designed to get the reader thinking. Which it does very well.
Take care and talk soon
Ash
Geoff – The cartoon and your story go well together. I just wrote a proposal this morning indicating the broad business assumptions. Love your definition. And the complexities of our human mind. You are clever and willing to take risks in production of this article.
However, I do feel your story was long and grammatically challenging. Keep at it, I use an editor very often to correct my grammar and written presentation.
Ciao. KT
Hi, Geoff. I am a partner in a negotiations concultancy. We find that one of the biggest barriers to a succesful negotiation – and one of the main causes of frustration – is that a two people can take the same data, filter it through their “assumptions” and reach completely different conclusions. Each believes that his/ her conclusion is right and is the only possible conclusion, and therefore sees the other as stupid or obstructive if they don’t see it that way (if they have even realised that the other person has drawn a different conclusion). Working back down the “ladder of inference” (ie unwinding your assumptions) and then looking at the data fresh and thinking “could someone else see this in a different way and, applying different assumptions reach a different conclusion” is a massive strength – but it is not easy, as many of our assumptions are deeply ingrained in our subconscious, and it requires a great degree of self awareness to be able to unwind them.
Nice reminder Geoff. I am paqrticulalry reminded of all the assumptions I made when I was a child, about cause and effect for example – assuming that I was the centre of the universe and that if I did something and then something else occurred, the first was a cause of – or inevitably linked to – the second. And of course I still make assumptions without examining the evidence. We all like things to fit into neat patterns of predictability don’t we (now there’s an assumption for you!) And of course we like it because it is easier, on the whole, not to think and not to question.