Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 283 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast!
Have you ever been talking to someone and they say something and you immediately think you know what they mean because you have been through the same thing, or you have experienced something similar only to find out it didn’t mean the same thing to them that it did to you? Or maybe something happens and you jump to conclusions about what it means or what’s going on only to find out you’re wrong?
I’ll give you a couple examples. I was watching Brooke coach live and a woman was saying she was estranged from her daughter and that is what she needed coaching on. Being estranged from her daughter. I immediately was like oh my goodness that’s so horrible. Not being able to see or talk to your daughter is awful, I mean I have been estranged from one of my sisters for almost 4 years soI understand how hard that can be. I just had all these thoughts about what this meant for this poor woman. Well on further questioning it turns out ….
She sees her daughter every week, sometimes twice a week and talks to her on the phone regularly. Her idea of estranged and mine were very very different. Her idea of estranged is that her daughter got married and their relationship has changed and they aren’t thick as thieves like they were before she was married and now she has a new baby and she’s so busy and she only sees her once or twice a week…..
I was like…what? You’re not estranged…..! Oh my goodness. This so reinforced for me the importance of making sure we never ASSUME what something means to someone.
We jump to conclusions so quickly about what things mean from our point of view and it can be the cause of a lot of problems for us. It’s always so good to not react, and to never assume. I got myself into a little situation by jumping to conclusions on something else this week. It was kind of embarrassing for me. So we got back from our vacation in Paris and took quite a few things to the dry cleaners, two of those things I really love, this sweater by brother and his wife bought me that I LOVE and a dress Eric bought that I also love. Anyway, the dry cleaning company text us that our clothes were ready any time we wanted to pick them up would be fine. So off we go to get them. When we get there, it’s a drive through which I love, they say oh sorry there are two things that aren’t ready so we could pick those up next time, to which we were like no problem. Of course. Ok after a cursory look at the dry cleaning, I didn’t see my sweater or my dress. Now in my mind, those are the two things and now Im a little bit worried. Not too bad, just a little. So the next time we go to drop off and pick up those other items, they said oh the tags fell off a couple items so we are going to have to find them, now Im getting frustrated and I tell them, it’s these two things they lost and they are like ok, writing down descriptions and then Im like, you know what, Ill just come in and look and help you identify them, she at this point is like ok crazy lady, you can’t do that. Ok, by now Eric is like, they will find them. This has never happened before. She assured me she would find them and will call us in just a little bit once they do. Don’t worry.
In the mean time we are driving home and Im upset. I have jumped to the conclusion that they have lost my two favorite things and they were gifts and they were expensive, all the things, right? And now Eric is like, Heidi, are you sure those were not in the big order you picked up? And I said I looked and didn’t see them but I didn’t look hard because they had said they were finishing two things so I didn’t look very hard…so he was like, I will bet they are in there so just be calm and lets look and if not they will find them. I wasn’t so sure at that point, as soon as I get home I bee line it to where we hang the fresh dry cleaning and sure enough both my sweater and my dress are there, I was relieved and embarrassed and also very glad my husband had stopped me before I insisted on helping them look. I of course immediately call and apologize and tell them I found them, not to look any further and they say thank you.
We jump to conclusions about everything…what it means when someone doesn’t immediately text us back, what it means when someone doesn’t return a smile at us when we smile at them, assuming someone is a certain way because of how they look, thinking we know what someone is thinking about anything ever…you know mind reading.
This is one thing I can honestly say I work on pretty regularly. I catch myself mid jumping to a conclusion or mid assuming something mid mind reading. We all do it. And it’s hurting us. Some do it more than others, my husband does not have a problem with it. And I think it’s because every decision he makes he analyzes the options before he makes it. I read a study when I was researching this topic where the researcher took 600 people and they showed them two lakes, one lake was mostly red fish and one lake was mostly gray fish. They had to decide which lake was being fished as they were shown fish and some of the people would answer on the first fish, if it was red well it must have come from the lake with mostly red fish, some would wait until at least two fish and others would need to see more evidence before they made a decision. I’m pretty sure I would be one that made a decision after 2 red fish. The good thing is Im aware of it.
Awareness allows me to step back, and ask, is there another possible option here? Could this mean something different than I think? Like the lady who was estranged so to speak. I was trying to read her mind and that never works. Do I have all the facts? Do I have enough information to make an informed decision? Did I really do my due diligence, like with the dry cleaning….I recognized I hadn’t really looked for my two pieces well because I knew two were not finished so before I really got upset, I needed to do a little more digging, and at that point found the two pieces. I had created all of that anxiety and frustration, none of which was necessary at all. I love knowing that because in the future this will give me a point of reference to say, ok calm down, gather a little more information, Could I be creating something in my head that isn’t even a problem?
Experience teaches you to look at the other side of the story in any situation. Your friend tells you her side of the story of something that happened at work, you can bet the other person would tell the story in a very different way. And let me say, neither will be wrong because both of them are entitled to their feelings. It’s when we get ourselves all worked up and we are creating these problems for ourselves because of habit patterns that our silly brain has.
Every emotion I felt this week is perfectly normal and nothing has gone wrong, in fact Im better for having been through it because it gave me awareness. Awareness that I need to notice when Im starting to jump to a conclusion before I have all the facts, awareness that my meaning of a word and your meaning of a word are probably very different. Awareness that I may see green in a dress where someone else sees it as totally gray. Awareness that I cannot possibly read your mind and you cannot read mine.
My challenge to you today is to ask yourself how often am I creating misery in my head because someone doesn’t text me back or when they do text I make it mean something it may not? How often am I creating fictitious conversations in my head that turn out to be completely wrong? How often am I jumping to a conclusion before I have all the facts? This can save us all a lot of anxiety and embarrassment…Trust me. I love you guys Ill talk to you in a few days!
