Assumptions

I must confess, I have taken some time off from the blog mostly because I was on vacation but I have also been taking a good deal of time to formulate my thoughts around this blog’s topic. The topic of making assumptions is at the heart of the many issues that I am working through lately. I ten to ruminate on the important topics for a long time. I decide what to say, how I will say it, and I challenge myself to be the most authentic and forthcoming about my struggles. I can fall too much into the trap of being too much in my head and I fear this has occurred while figuring out how to approach this topic. So, I decided the morning just to get it out and see what happens. For better of for worse, here it is: Assumptions (#3 on the 4 Agreements).

This morning I was in line at my local Starbucks. As I was waiting I found myself wondering what kind of day everyone in line was having as I was checking in with myself. Some were chatty with each other, some were flirting with the barista, and others were glaring at the baristas because their triple shot coffee was taking an impossibly long time to get to them. I found myself wondering what life would be like if we all got to wear signs around our necks that described our lives that particular day, the things we are dealing with, what we are worrying about, and in general how we feel. I then got to thinking that there should be a approach or do not approach feature to our signs so we could better understand if someone is available to be approached or not. As I was taking myself on this tangent while waiting for my coffee I realized that I was making assumptions about others who were also in line with me. I also came to the realization that I am obsessed with assumptions and have been for a great while.

You know the old saying “when you assume you make an ass out of u and me.” Recently I have come to terms with the fact that I make SO many assumptions about everyone around me, nearly all the time. I also know that I need to break myself of making assumptions about others particularly in relation to me. Not making assumptions and coming to terms with my addiction to making assumptions has been the most difficult aspect of further developing my emotional intelligence. I am determined to better understand why I choose to make assumptions rather than seek to understand what others really think and feel about me. So far I have found that making assumptions gives me an excuse for everything to be about me…all the time. This is where my emotional intelligence takes a nose-dive, and I am ashamed to admit how child-like and positively selfish I am most of the time to make everything about me! At the risk of telling too much of my “story” I will say that in my childhood I was not really and truly able (for one reason or another) to be a kid. I made nothing at all about me because I was too busy trying to be the perfect kid, I rarely threw tantrums or insisted on my own way. I believe I have developed this hyper-sensitivity to assumption so I could speculate about what everyone is saying about me. My speculations are NEVER positive, I always assume that others think the worst of me. Of course they are concerned with me, because everything I do is wrong and everything I say is not right. I have never talked about these assumptions or sought confirmation for these assumptions because I didn’t want confirmation that everyone thought negatively about me, just as I assumed. These assumptions have been my silent shame, the one constant in my life – no matter where I went, what I accomplished, no matter what compliments I received I was convinced that I was not worthy of praise, that others were just being nice and didn’t want to share what they really thought of me.

In my adult life assumptions are awful, horrible, not productive and are in fact are counterproductive. They get in the way of my relationships with everyone – family, partner, friends, co-workers, just everyone. It has hurt more than one relationship in my life because I can’t let go of the assumption long enough to believe what they tell me. I have great difficulty taking even the simplest compliment and even if I do I find myself hours/days later analyzing what they said. I would perpetually seek out the catch and waiting for them to see in my what I saw in me. What did I see? I saw the girl who wasn’t worthy of love, of good things, and not worthy of having a beautiful, full life. You can bet that these assumptions are hurtful and it is obvious that I have a lot of pain balled up in assumptions. When I hear negative feedback the first thing I do is assume that EVERYONE feels this way about me or EVERYONE hates me because of this little thing that occurred.

It seems like I will always be like this, but I want so badly to form my own opinions about myself without the burden of others’ assumptions of me. I want so badly to feel another way besides bad when something comes up and to not latch onto the negative. I want to know in my heart that I am a good person, that I do good work, and that I am worthy of others’ praise. Can I please build for myself a less dramatic and childish existence? I MUST figure out how to exist without the burden of negative assumption. The question is how? How can I turn around this behavior that is almost as old as I am? How can I remove the hurt and abject pain from assumption – stop my throat from tightening up and tears welling up when I assume the worst about how others see me?

My journey continues and I don’t really have answers at this point. What I have are 36 years of pain that I have built up in myself, the will to make things be different, and hope. I want to be free of negative assumption and to take the power away from assumptions, I sense a long and spectacular journey ahead of me to figure out who I really am without the assumptions of others – who I could be without constantly checking the perceived feelings of others. In acknowledging this publicly and letting myself admit that this happens in my daily I am hopeful that I can work towards taking the power away from negative assumptions. Because here is what I know when I remove assumptions:

1) people love me – I am loved
2) I am brave and accomplished
3) my husband thinks I am a beautiful and amazing person
4) my family loves me no matter what and supports me unconditionally
5) my students look up to me, respect me, and are grateful for everything I do for them
6) my co-workers enjoy working with me
7) others may not prefer my style or may not like me, but there is nothing I can do about it

Most importantly I know that when I feel good about myself NOTHING can stop me, I am powerful and confident – I am spectacular. Here’s to more days in the future where I feel good about myself and I acknowledge the amazing things I have done, the places I have been, and the fantastic life I get to live. Assumptions be damned, I am me and that is a great thing to be. Thanks for listening and hanging in there with me as I work on improving myself, this is a long road but it also is a fantastic journey.

Voice Temporarily Misplaced

I am back, my apologies for disappearing for a bit there. For lack of a better explanation, I temporarily misplaced my voice. So we are clear I didn’t physically lose my voice, I temporarily silenced my voice in order to regroup, rebound, and otherwise get through a difficult time. Last week I experienced a challenge in the form of critical feedback that I was not expecting and it kind of knocked me off of my horse, until now I haven’t been able to get back on and continue my ride. Today’s post is an attempt to share with you a little about the situation, how I worked through the challenges associated with criticisms and judgements, where I am now because of the journey to find my voice once again, and to make peace with the criticisms and judgements so I can move forward.

In order to adequately explain what happened I have a little back story. For most of my life I have been in search of my voice, my true identity, and experiences that were mine that I can share with the world thereby sharing myself with the world. In many cases through my journey to find myself and most importantly my voice I was frequently derailed by people in my life who sought to “teach me how the world is” and to “snap me back into reality”. They would share negative feedback with me and tell me I was doing everything wrong. I guess  I started believing those voices telling me that I was nothing special and I would never amount to anything. I bought what they were selling completely. I got the idea that they could detect a defect in me that I was unable to see. I believed them because I knew they must know more that I do about me. I wholly gave over myself to others and resigned myself to the fact that they were the ones who would shape me now. How did this manifest in my life? I would rarely share an opinion with others unless I knew they shared that opinion. I rarely argued because I knew in my heart that I was always wrong. This opened me up to falling prey to people who sought to manipulate me and be negative presences in my life.

Now that I am attempting to rediscover myself and establishing my real identity, I have discovered that I am someone who has been emotionally battered and bruised. But I have not been defeated. I am still establishing who I am. I am still relatively cautious about how I use my voice and for what purpose, but I am more and more comfortable with using my voice.

 In my journey working with my life coach, I am infinitely more comfortable using my voice. I am determined to not continue to make assumptions about what others think about me and not believe those assumptions to be the absolute truth. Now I find myself in an ongoing period of discovery and I am developing the kind of emotional intelligence that I want to have. It is still very difficult for me, and the challenge I received last week illustrate this quite nicely.

Last week I received negative and critical feedback in an email from a colleague. The feedback was not only negative but also seemed to be judgmental, and worst of all it was a complete surprise. I do not like surprises especially when it involves feedback. I believe if you have information that I could have used months earlier to improve my former colleague’s experience and my performance, why would you not express it in the moment?

This critical feedback was the first significant challenge to my voice and to my sense of self with my work that I have received since I have transitioned from working with my coach to working with myself on myself. After the shock and surprise wore off I was determined to use the strategies I learned while working with my coach to help me work through it. I closed the email, I attempted to distract myself with other projects, I took a walk, and I called some of my people to get their takes on the situation. But nothing would adequately stop the criticisms from swirling around in my head and all the while the criticisms and judgements shouted at me from my memory. 

In the past I would have completely shut down to protect myself. I believed that if one person thinks this way about me EVERYONE must see it too. I have done this in the past, I would emotionally disappear from my life. A little tip, it is really difficult to be authentic when you are attempting to be emotionally void. In order to try to carry on like nothing was wrong I would act my way through situations, I would attempt to fake authenticity, which is the worst oxymoron I have ever heard.

In the current situation I decided to temporarily misplace my voice to retreat into myself (get out of my head) and search myself for how I wanted to proceed, and how I would respond. Most of all, I needed to use this period of misplaced voice to figure out how move forward and reclaim my voice once I got right with everything. And that is what I did. I also spent a good amount of time wondering: Would I be able to rebound? Could I come out of this stronger? Would my voice return to a similar strength or stronger than before?

Today I can say that I have been able to come through this challenging time. I am a little bruised but I am healing nicely and my voice is coming back. I will continue to evaluate my response to challenges and find ways to strengthen my voice – for now I will write, for now I will put my thoughts out there and be as authentic as I can be, for now I will vow not to be afraid of who I am and definitely will not be afraid of what others think about me. I will get to a place where I can sit with my voice and let it say what it needs to say. I will take my voice out for a spin every now and again. I will continue to reclaim my voice as a spectacular banner for my identity and wave it proudly! After all “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw