Be Careful With What You Assume About Yourself

One thing I’m sure everyone believes is that they know themselves EXTREMELY well. But how true is that?

It’s pretty true I’d say. After all, you are?you.

Who else could know you better, right?

Your parents/grandparents/uncles/older siblings might believe they know you better than you do, but let’s face it — that’s highly unlikely.

So, I want to understand that I believe no one knows you BETTER than you know yourself.

However, I’d like to make what can seem like a wild suggestion:?from now on, live without assuming you know 100% of everything about yourself.

You may be asking “What’s the point of this? Is there a benefit?”

Absolutely there is. This way of thinking will make you stop hindering your life experience or limiting yourself.

Allow me to explain:

To demonstrate what I mean, imagine you ate some canned mushrooms when you were 8 years old and you absolutely hated them.

The most likely behavior to be followed by that is for you to assume?you hate mushrooms for the rest of your life.

This will likely cause you to refuse to eat mushrooms under any circumstance because you hate them, right?

Well, what about once you’re 30 years old? Or even 45 or 60.

Does it really make sense to have the experience you had when you were 8 years old stop you from trying mushrooms ever again?

I personally am not a fan of mushrooms, which is why I used them as an example. But I used to think I hated them.

I had some canned ones once when I was a child and I hated it.

However, later on in my twenties, I tried some non-canned ones and they weren’t terrible. I didn’t really see why people liked them — to me, it just seemed like they had no taste — but I no longer hated them.

I am just not a particular fan.

But if I had always refused to try them based on my?self-assumptions, then I would’ve continued to live believing I HATE the taste of mushrooms. In reality, I’m just not a fan.

This was the simplest example of this I could think of, but where this habit of making assumptions can?really?get you great benefit is when it comes to your potential.

And that realization is exactly how I came up with this topic for this article:

I had to do a lot of research about something.

As soon as I realized I had to do research, a thought came up in my mind “Oh, but I hate doing research. I won’t be able to do it. I’ll feel so much resistance… Even if I overcome the resistance, I’ll hate every second of it. I should just pay someone else to do it.”

But then I realized the mistake I was making.

I stopped my train of thought and asked myself “Wait, where is this assumption coming from?”

It was coming from my high school and college days. Anytime I was given an assignment that involved research, I?always?dreaded it. And so, naturally, I automatically started to believe I just wasn’t cut out to do research. I don’t have the patience and I hate it.

However, since it’s been almost 7 years since I finished college, I decided to test this out.

Especially because the context in which I had hated to do research was always the fact that I didn’t find the topic to be interesting. That, and I was being told what to do. Much different than deciding it for myself.

The point of all of this is that I decided to do the research and it all went fairly smoothly. It was easier, quicker, and less boring than I was expecting.

It would’ve been a not-so-smart move to pay someone to do something that I easily and quickly took care of myself.

This is just an example of MY self-assumptions, but now I want you to start thinking about your own.

Whenever you assume something about yourself now, always think “Wait, where is this assumption coming from?”.?When?it’s coming from?also matters a lot.

What you need to do is analyze the context of when that assumption was first learned about yourself.

After that, you need to analyze how long it has been since you had an experience with what you’re assuming about yourself. (If you ate mushrooms yesterday and didn’t like them, it’s quite safe to assume you won’t like them today. But if you ate them 5 or 10 years ago…)

- If it’s been over a year, it might be worth a shot trying it out again, as long as the context isn’t exactly the same.

- If it’s been over 5 years, just try it anyway regardless of context.

The only way you make sure that your self-assumptions are correct is to test them again.

This will make you hinder your own potential on MUCH fewer occasions and will also make you hurt your goals less with any unwarranted self-limiting beliefs.

So, stop assuming so much and start testing it out more!

We’re all constantly changing and that is why we shouldn’t believe we know 100% of everything about ourselves.

Even our own self has the ability to surprise us.

Never stop hustling & never stop dreaming,

- Dez

P.S. I’m a Success Mindset Coach and I’d be happy to help you reflect on your limiting self-assumptions if you think you could use some help! You can check out my official website?https://kaidezen.com/?for more information