Today’s Mandala Message: Be Mindful of Your Assumptions
This week I’m working through Principle #52 “When In Doubt, Check It Out”. I set my intention today to ponder being mindful of my assumptions. From Andrea M. Darcy on HarleyTherapy.co.uk about assumptions she states: “When you make an assumption, you tell yourself that something is true without actually having any evidence that it is. It’s all too easy to lead your life never questioning that you are assuming things to be facts.”
She offers five ways to help stop making assumptions. Number 5 is to become more mindful of our assumptions. She states: “Assumptions can be tricky, because they are thoughts we are so used to making they can go by without us even noticing. Mindfulness, the act of continuously drawing your attention to the present and how you are thinking and feeling right now, can over time train you to catch more of your thoughts, and thus your assumptions.”
Last Friday as I was driving out of town for a weekend retreat. I clipped a yard waste bin and broke off my right side mirror. The bin was fine…the mirror was not. I thought about telling my husband and then I thought that I didn’t want him to worry about me driving three hours away without a side mirror.
When I was almost home on Sunday, I called him to give him a heads up about the mirror…to give him time process it. After I came home and he saw the reality of it, he went into fix-it mode, going online to price mirrors, seeing if it was something he could do himself, in other words: obsessing over it. As handy as he is around the house and with our cars, I knew that a professional would have to fix it…this was a high-tech mirror with a camera and a heating element.
While my instinct to hold off telling him about the mirror was spot on, my assumption was off. Had I told him sooner, he would have fretted and obsessed about it all weekend. And yes, on some level he would be worried about me but the need to fix things would have overpowered everything else.
This way he had a delightful weekend while I on the other hand had it “hanging over my head” because I knew/know it’s going to be expensive to repair. When it did let it get to me, I reminded myself there was nothing I could do about it until I got home. I wasn’t going to go anywhere over the weekend except home on Sunday…and thankfully the drive was mostly rural roads…no highways involve…that would have been a different story.
A good mindfulness practice would be to monitor how much of what you know is based on assumptions and how much if based on facts.
So how about you? How much of your life is based on assumptions? Are you aware of the assumptions you make? Are you able to recognize your assumptions?
“The more you know
— Andrea M. Darcy
what you are assuming,
the more power you have
to change what you are assuming
into perspectives that open,
rather than close,
possibilities for you and your life.”
Blessings,
Maureen
The Mandala Lady
All Things Mandalas
An Invitation
I invite you to color along with me this year as part of what I’m calling “The Year of Self-Exploration and Expansion” with all of my “Mandalas of the ___” (day, week, month, year). If you’re interested in more of a self-exploration approach to coloring, check out my “Coloring Mandalas as Meditation”. You can download this mandala at MandalaoftheWeek.com.
Mandala of the Day 