The third agreement is very similar to the second agreement. Both relate to the stories we tell ourselves as a way to fill in the blanks when information is missing.
For some reason, we tend to jump to conclusions that are the worst-case scenario, taking things personally (second agreement) and making assumptions (third agreement) that put us in a mode of being defensive and certain that our view is correct without leaving any room for alternative meanings.
The second and third agreements ask us to open our thought process to questions and curiosity, and to also follow the first agreement in being impeccable with our word, which in this case means being direct with others when there is a lack of clarity, rather than make up our own conclusions.
I have a funny example of this. A friend of mine has her own house cleaning business and I became one of her clients. One morning she texted me to ask if she could come a little earlier to clean than we had originally planned. Her exact message said, “Do you mind if I come at 8:30 instead of 9:00?” to which I responded “No!”
I was excited that she was coming early because I hadn’t seen her in a while and wanted to catch up with her before she started cleaning the house. So when the clock struck 8:30, then 8:40, and she still hadn’t arrived, I thought “that’s strange, I wonder if something came up.” Then it was 8:50 and finally 9:00 and she showed up. I went straight to the door and let her in, again, excited to see her.
Her demeanor was very cold and she barely looked at me as she gruffly said “hi” in response to my very warm and enthusiastic “Hiiiiiii!” I asked her if she was ok and she said, “I’m fine, but obviously something is going on with YOU.”
I was so confused. I asked her what she meant. She said, “well I asked you if I could come early and you said ‘NO!’ with an exclamation point after it and I thought ‘what’s HER problem?’”
It hit me then and there. I wasn’t the problem. Grammar was the problem.
I showed her the text thread–”You said, ‘would you MIND if I came early,’ and I responded ‘No!’ as in, ‘No, I don’t mind.’”
Her face dropped. She immediately apologized and said she had read it quickly and had been stressed out due to a multitude of factors going on in her life.
She had made an assumption.
And not to pat myself on the back, but because I had done a lot of my own work with the Four Agreements and incorporating other feedback I’ve received throughout my life on my own communication style, I could immediately identify the issue and calmly (but firmly) push back on her reaction and clarify where the disconnect was.
Had I NOT been trained in the Four Agreements, we may have ended up in a standstill, two stubborn women unwilling to move from the “truth” we had created in each of our minds and unwilling to ask questions of one another to determine the real truth.
Making assumptions can easily lead to broken relationships.
From don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, “We make all sorts of assumptions because we don’t have the courage to ask questions.”
Making assumptions, just like taking things personally, is a defense mechanism.
We want to protect ourselves from being hurt, excluded, or judged.
We haven’t created a safe environment in our culture for people to ask questions or express opinions that may not be aligned with those whom they love.
I had a good friend who was talking with me about politics one day. She made a derogatory comment about one of the political parties in our country. I told her that one of our mutual friends was aligned with that party. She replied, “(so-and-so) is a (named the party she was opposed to)????”
I then challenged her, “Before you heard that, you always said you really liked this person. Does this new information make you view them differently?”
To her credit she replied, “I guess I don’t actually know any members of that party personally.”
She, like many of us, had made a broad sweeping assumption about what a person with a certain political affiliation would be like. It was difficult for her to hold two truths at one time, “I like this person a lot. I don’t like the political party they are aligned with. Does that mean I can’t like this person anymore?”
This is happening all around us right now.
Now is the time for us to practice asking thoughtful questions rather than make assumptions about a person’s beliefs and values.
If there is something we love, respect and admire about an individual, why would we assume that something we don’t happen to align on with that person would eliminate all of the other things that we appreciated about them?
I’ll give one more example here, from my time in India.
On a hike in the Himalayas with my yoga group and our local guide, we passed a school where children were outside playing soccer. It could have been a picture transposed from a school back in our home country of the United States, except for one detail–none of the children were wearing shoes.
A member in my group remarked that it was “so sad” that the children didn’t have any shoes. She asked if there was anything we could do to help them.
Our guide replied, “do they look unhappy to you?”
No one who observed this scene would have used the word “unhappy” to describe these children. They were laughing, running, playing and full of joy.
The guide reminded us that we often place our own beliefs onto others before learning more about the others’ situation.
The third agreement, “don’t make assumptions,” is our reminder to expand our thinking beyond the stories we create to protect ourselves or to hide from possibilities that feel scary or uncertain to us.
We make assumptions to try and reach some kind of certainty, for we are uncomfortable with ambiguity.
The warrior homework for this week is to check in with yourself any time you feel certain about something or draw a conclusion that you feel is infallible when you don’t actually have all of the facts.
Instead of making an assumption about a situation, ask a few questions to yourself, or to the individual who may be involved in the situation.
Here are some prompts to start with curiosity versus conclusions based on fiction:
– “I wonder why that person is so agitated today…” (versus assuming you know the answer, “they must still be mad about what happened last week! Why can’t they just get over it?”)
-“What could be going on in that person’s life to make them act/speak/feel that way?” (After you create this question in your own mind, be brave to ask the question, “are you okay? It seems like something may be on your mind. It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it but just know that I’m here if and when you want to.”)
Finally, here are a couple quotes about “certainty” that remind us to avoid making assumptions in search of elusive conclusions:
Voltaire: “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one”.
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Erich Fromm: “The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers”.