Fact Versus Assumption

A lecturer once spent a morning teaching our group attending her training course, and then asked us to list facts we knew about her. We filled a large white piece of flip chart paper with a number of facts: friendly, assertive, married, kind, gentle, and the list went on. Our lecturer then asked us to tell her which ones of the listed "facts" were actually "assumptions". By going through the list one by one of what we thought were "facts", she told us that what we had listed were actually assumptions, things we did not know for sure, except for "married" which was indeed a fact she had allowed us to know.
How did we know she was kind, or friendly, or assertive? We couldn't know for sure, as we had only spent a short time with her, and she was of course on her best behaviour with us. It was quite an eye opening exercise. I realised that people should avoid snap judgements, and we do need to make sure that what we take as fact might actually be assumption. Always check to make sure something is factual before assuming it to be.

This applies to situations when dealing with people too. Never assume you know for sure what someone else is thinking, or why they may do something. This was a key lesson I learnt from a mentor, and I am so grateful to him. I used to do a lot of assuming: assuming if I was not invited to meeting after meeting, that it was on purpose, or catching an expression on someone’s face and assuming they were having negative thoughts about me. You cannot know what someone else is thinking. That person might just be thinking how much they’d like to go home. Don’t assume.

Another example where assumptions happen is in projection. You will fill in the gaps when given partial information from someone. I am sure you have experienced someone saying something like: “Well, I can’t tell you all the information, but it involves something that happened between my daughter and her stepfather when she was seven”. Your mind might go over any number of possibilities, and you might be surprised when you find out the facts that this story actually relates to an ugly custody battle. When you see emotion expressed, you will come up with assumptions for what you see, for example when you see someone crying and the person will not tell you what is wrong - perhaps the person is just having an unusually bad day. Look for patterns before making an assumption that someone is always depressed, for example, as you might have seen a temporary state of mind only.