3 Steps To Making Better Decisions By Silencing Your Assumptions

Assumptions create blind spots that prevent you from seeing the truth.

Your mind is plagued with biases, beliefs, and programming that have occurred throughout your life. It’s these automatic answers that lead to the worst outcomes. As a result, the mind becomes a manipulative enemy pushing you down the wrong path.

It doesn’t have to be that way:

Our Brain Rewards Assumptions

Assumptions are beliefs that you believe are true regardless of the facts.

Take people who believe the earth is flat as an example. We ignore information that is inconsistent with our beliefs. We’re pulled to what we believe is true based on our years of mental programming.

When we hear information that supports our assumptions, “the brain activates two areas of the prefrontal cortex associated with other rewards, like food and money,” writes Stephen Shapiro.

We seek out information that supports our beliefs because our brain receives “a reinforcing boost when we find it.” “Even when we’re 99% wrong, our brain seeks the 1%.”

No matter how strong your confirmation biases are, you can work past them.

Question Your Assumptions

To work past your assumptions, you must know you hold certain opinions to confirm or refute their accuracy.

Here’s how:

Step 1: Be aware.

Remind yourself that we all have a brain attracted to assumptive tendencies. We let our ego lead to poor decision-making.

Step 2: List your assumptions.

When you’re making important decisions, be aware of your “tendency to distort judgement and apply strategies to increase objectivity.”

Make an exhaustive list of your beliefs, company, industry, customers, products, etc.

If you hear people say, “We always do it this way” or “We never do it that way,” it’s likely an assumption. The word “It” is your key to an assumption.

Step 3: Force the opposite of your assumption to be true.

When you force the opposite of your assumption to be true, you begin to look at it from another angle.

Ask yourself: “What if what I believed to be true isn’t?” “What are some implications? “How would I act differently?” “How would this change me?” “What are some steps I’d take to start to live with this new information?

My Grandfather was always right when he would say, assumptions make an ass out of u and me.

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