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The 10 Assumption-Related Dangers have the power to significantly impact various aspects of your life, from relationships to career choices.
The brain is designed to make assumptions. Just like present-day advanced computers, it searches for patterns or what cognitive scientist call “mental models” to make it a more reliable machine.
For example, on our way home we pay little or no attention to where we are going, the brain has developed a pattern on the path we take and we assume that the route hasn’t changed giving us enough room to focus on what we’ll eat for dinner {very important}.
Assumptions just like other things are actually learned behaviour. It happens mostly during childhood from our parents, culture, religions, and beliefs. Children tend to take their parents assumptions raging from what religion to belong to, to what you deserve and what you don’t deserve.
We all make assumptions. We do it every now and then. Many times we have that feeling that we know what’s going on in someone’s head, even someone’s life when all we need to do is just ask and we’ll get the right information. The dangers of assumptions go a long way to affecting who is assuming rather than who or what the person is assuming about.
Most times people go around assuming the worst about someone. Doesn’t mean people don’t assume the best about someone, it just hardly ever happens. Be it the best or the worst, the feeling you get after your assumption has been falsified isn’t always good.
WHY WE HAVE NO PROBLEM ASSUMING
Assumptions are easy, all you need is a piece of incomplete information about something. Sometimes you need no information at all.
Funny enough, it’s no big deal for us to decide why an event has taken place. Instead of asking for complete information, we base our decision on little or no evidence and no factual knowledge as though it is the right thing from the right source. We start to see these assumptions as though it’s the truth and often times we are wrong.
Just so you know
wrong assumptions are one of the lowest forms of knowledge if not the lowest, wrong assumptions are pestilent killer from what you actually know not, assumptions are the mother of all fuckups.
A lot of damages can be done by mistaking assumption for the truth ranging from something of little importance to a broken relationship/friendship. We don’t feel so good after finding the truth, then imagine when you assume the worst or best about someone with emotions being involved. Getting to know the truth can have so many negative effects.
Below are the dangers of assumptions in our everyday life.
Lemony Snicket
assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make – bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake – if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble
- Still, don’t know why he included strawberry shortcake(lol)
10 Dreadful Dangers Of Assumptions That Can Destroy Your Life
1. ASSUMPTIONS LEADS TO WRONG IDEAS
Assumptions lead to people having the wrong idea of someone or something. Growing up as a kid was a very funny experience for me, I heard a lot of things. some I happen to believe, some I don’t. With certainty, the older ones including my parents say a lot of things that are almost impossible not to believe. I was/am someone who hardly believes things so most people mistook me for stubborn.
There was this common belief that taking Pepsi and pawpaw is a form of food poison. This never went well with me from the moment I heard it. I guess most of you heard it too while growing. The fact that I didn’t believe it didn’t justify that I was right.
So, one of those days I was home alone, I tried it and I enjoyed it. Obviously, I’m still alive. The belief that Pepsi and pawpaw is a food poisoning when taken together is a wrong idea that people still believe and might still be passed on from generation to generation. Quit assuming so you stop passing the wrong ideas.
Charlie Munger
if you can get good at destroying your own wrong ideas, that is a great gift
2. ASSUMPTIONS MAKE ONE DRAW WRONG CONCLUSION
One of the dangers of assumptions is that it makes you confidently draw the wrong conclusion from an event or about someone. It gives the individual assuming a false sense of justification in the sense that he or she feels correct by drawing the wrong conclusion based on half baked facts or no facts at all. This is very wrong because not everything that glitter is gold and all that is gold does not glitter.
- I haven’t seen the gold that doesn’t glitter though(lol)
And this wrong conclusion leads to false knowledge which you will pass on to people as long as nobody disproves that which you thought is right. Remember the wrong knowledge about something or someone is dangerous. Quit assuming and understand things better.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
I know nothing more annoying when people I don’t know jump to conclusions on my person based on nothing but gossip or speculation
3. ASSUMPTIONS MAKES ONE UNNECESSARILY JUDGEMENTAL
I remember while still growing up {like I’m fully grown now LOL} a friend once told me “I always thought you were this snobbish little miss queen bee always with her clique kinda girl but when I eventually got to know you I was wowed, you are so not what I envisaged”{LOL}.
Funny enough, most people have judge people wrongly once or twice in their life and usually bow their head in shame when they find out that they were wrong. Take a scenario whereby you never did judge that person, but collected the right information or got to know them better, there would be no need for you to be a judge of someone’s life and the world would be a less hostile place for us all.
Jayesh Varma
there must be thousands of ways to judge a person but only one reason not, to know him better
4. ASSUMPTIONS PROMOTES TRANSFER OF WRONG INFORMATION
Imagine nothing made I and that my friend cross path, he probably would have never approached me while carrying such assumptions even before getting to know me. Just imagine if someone had asked about me from him.
The same way a lot of people might have destroyed the reputation of others all due to assumptions and it could get difficult to remove such stain on one’s reputation because information moves as fast as lightening {this is me exaggerating}. Often times people that assume are carriers of wrong information. So get the right information and quit assuming so you can pass the right information when the need arises.
Criss Jami
it’s okay, to be honest about not knowing rather than spreading falsehood. While it is often said that honesty is the best policy, silence is the second-best policy
5. ASSUMPTIONS MAKES ONE COPY OTHERS
It’s a popular belief that if you have someone you look up to, be it a mentor or someone you admire or someone following the same career with you, it’s good to copy one or two from them only when you are sure it’s the same career and not otherwise
- Then why the hell is copying in examination hall bad? {LOL}
Back business, studying their lifestyle is good. Just like a manual, it guides you. This is different from what assumption is about. You see a wealthy person, you don’t know what he does for a living and you assume he does something legal. Sometimes you might be right, other times you might be wrong.
You’ll meet him with the aim you want to be like him and work with him, only for you to see your self with other gang members carrying guns going for robbery operations at night. Being that it’s too late to back out, you’ve just started a journey you never planned to start all because you assumed about the life of someone. Quit assuming and study people more.
6. ASSUMPTIONS ENCOURAGES COMPARISON WITH OTHERS
The whole basis of assumption is incomplete information. Assumptions will do less of harm if you assume that the sun rises in the north and set in the south. Believe me, people won’t even know how daft you are unless you make the mistake of saying that in public. The reaction from people when you utter such might be humiliating.
When you assume things about someone and draw a lot of characteristic or attribute from them and start comparing your life with them, it leads to depression, kills your self-esteem to mention but a few.
Take the world we live in today where perfection on social media is now the order of the day, we see pictures of people and start feeling our life sucks and even starts wishing we were living la Vida Loca like them, wishing you had that bag and that shoe. Do you know if it was borrowed just to take a picture? Nah, you don’t just care.
We obviously can’t see failures, scars, and problems through pictures or from the sidelines…You only see a page in a book and assume the unread pages. Why compare your whole life with that of someone you barely even know? If you focus more on your own life and growth, you’ll have little or no time to assume things about someone not to mention comparing yourself with them. It’s a dangerous game, don’t play it.
7. ASSUMPTIONS DAMAGES CAPACITY TO RELATE TO OTHERS
In the eyes and mind of people that assume a lot, they know a lot of things about something, someone or an event which prevent them from doing the needful which is asking questions. They assume they know how others think, feel or behave which prevent them from giving listening ears to people {as seen in the example I gave above, he wanted to be my friend but the idea of I would probably just be a snob kept him away at first and now we are like best of friends}.
This also applies to people that assume the worst about someone which make them selective when choosing friends and sometimes they miss out on people that will actually be of great help to them. Quit assuming and relate well with others.
8. ASSUMPTIONS BREAKS RELATIONSHIPS
Just as it damages the capacity to relate to others it also breaks the few relationships you’ll acquire. This is one of the heights of the dangers of assumption if not the height. There are a lot of things to assume about, some with consequences, many with little or no consequences. Put emotions in the picture of assumption, it becomes a different ball game altogether. It breaks trust.
- Believe me, just like an egg when broken it can’t be recovered.
If trust is broken, what’s left in the relationship? Just in case you don’t know, absolutely nothing. By relationship I mean relationships; be it in friendship or spouses. Quit assuming and save your relationships today.
9.ASSUMPTIONS BLOCKS POSSIBILITIES
One of the dangers of assumptions is that it reduces your thinking capacity. People that assume are hardly ever flexible, always rigid to a fault. If you assume that the only way to edit pictures is using adobe photoshop and it happens that a technological meltdown occurs, you’ll back out from editing pictures because of the false knowledge you got from the wrong assumption you drew. For those that don’t assume, they are always open to new ideas, always giving listening ears to what’s new. Quit assuming and watch opportunities open for you.
10. ASSUMPTIONS LEADS TO PRIMITIVE LIFESTYLE
The world is evolving every day and it is up to you and me to follow with the pace or be left out in the dark. What assumption does to you is that it makes you loyal to a style, an event, a belief as long as it works for you. Preventing you from ever-evolving in ideas and prevent you from doing things in an easier way. You can’t be so good in assumption and have an open mind. The two don’t go together. Quit assuming and learn new things.
Lastly, don’t assume that people don’t need this
Kindly share to family and friends, and leave your comments below.
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