Have you ever walked away from a conversation, meeting, or even from watching a sporting event thinking: “That didn’t go how I thought it would”?
As human beings, we tend to make assumptions about how things are going to go. For example, we may presume someone will react a certain way to what we have to say to them. The danger of this is, we can actually create self-fulfilling prophecies that blind us, fueling the “fire” and prevents us from interpreting what the other individual actually meant.
If you’ve ever ripped into someone only to have them come back with: “Hang on! That’s not what I am saying at all!” then, you know what we mean. When we presume we know what someone is thinking, what they are going to say, or what they intend, we have a habit of interpreting their reactions and what they say through our lens versus being truly open to what they are actually conveying to us. This leads to create self-fulfilling prophecies.
All it takes to alleviate this is a slight shift in the way we approach these conversations. We can prepare for the possible outcomes of how a conversation may go without forcing our narrative to be met by remaining open to the possibilities; rather than, forcing our narrative to be met through assumptions. Join us as we dive into how to create this subtle, yet powerful, shift.