The other day this saying randomly popped into my mind…
“Never ASSUME, it often makes an ASS of U and Me”.
Well it got me thinking about how ASSUMING impacts our lives. We often hear the word used when something has failed to happened, but which should have happened, because an assumption was made instead of checking. For example you might leave the house without your keys, only to realise after you’ve shut the door and locked yourself out, simply because you assumed your partner had picked them up.
That’s one example of assuming, others might include:
- assuming we have the correct information,
- assuming we are being told the whole truth,
- assuming we have and understand all the facts,
- assuming we know best.
I came up with this list while considering the current political debate ranging in the UK, where lot’s of strongly held opinions are flying around, based, to a large extent, on many assumptions.
So making assumptions can be very problematic, we should never assume anything, we should always double check, or do the research to make sure we have all the facts. Assuming is a form of laziness, which can cause us more hassle and pain further down the road.
I decided to look up the synonyms of ASSUME and came up with the following list:
- taking for granted
- taken as given
- accept
- conclude
- consider
- estimate
- expect
- guess
- infer
- presume
- speculate
- suspect
- think
- understand
- ascertain
- conjecture
- deduce
- deem
- divine
- fancy
- find
- gather
- hypothesise
- imagine
- judge
- posit
- postulate
- predicate
- presuppose
- suppose
- surmise
- theorise
- be afraid
- be inclined to think
- count upon
- fall for
- get the idea
- have a hunch
- have sneaking suspicion
When I read though this list, it got me thinking about how ASSUMING is not just about missing something, or not checking if something has indeed taken place, it can also be a reason why we DON’T TAKE ACTION.
Think about it for a minute, if you assume you KNOW the outcome of say, a particular course of action, it might be enough to discourage you from even trying. Your internal inner dialogue might go like this…
- “It won’t work”, or
- “I’m not good enough to make a success of this”, or
- “People aren’t going to buy it anyway.”
This might be an assumption based on nothing more then self-doubt, but if you just assume you can’t do it, or assume it won’t work out, you aren’t likely to take the necessary steps to find out.
Stop ASSUMING, it’s a motivation killer. The only way you can know for sure is by giving it a go.
If you’re struggling for motivation, check out our motivational guide.