Questioning Your Assumptions

The older I get the more I learn I really don't know - I just assume I did. And it's humbling, it is, but it's good too, because I do love to learn. Tonight, for example, reading The Daily Beast, I learned that the actress Martha Plimpton is not a Plimpton per the George Plimpton sort but a Carradine and that Keith is her Dad. Silly me (I have always had a fondness for Plimpton's brainy independent blondness dancing to the beat of her own drummer, which I wish I could have done more myself at a much younger age).

When I was in my early 20's I decided upon learning that the German word for rabbit was "golf," that the game of "golf" being played (as it were) on a green field full of holes (which rabbits like to live in), and that a golf ball looks a bit like a rabbit tail - that the whole game was based on rabbits. Apparently it's not, though modern golf is traced back to shepherds in Scottland knocking balls into rabbit holes (according to wikipedia anyway).

As a child I assumed that jockeys were children because they were so small, and because I thought it would be a fabulous job that I just might be right for.

There's really no end to the things we make assumptions about - we do it all day everyday or we'd never get from "A" to "B" very quickly at all. We assume cars are going to stop at a red light, that our car is going to start in the first place, that it's safe to deposit our check in the bank, that our friend will meet us for lunch at the agreed time and so on and so forth.

But sometimes our assumptions are made out of fear, or dread, and these assumptions can paint us into a corner and cut down on our opportunities and possibilities. We might not take courses to learn new skills because we're afraid we're too old to make a change anyway, we might not take the time to find out what it will take to fix our computer which has really begun to slow down because we fear we just can't afford it, we might fear going online and learning about the new social media because we fear it'll eat up our day on silly conversations with faraway friends from grade school, or that we won't understand how it actually works, or no one will "friend" us in the first place, and well you get the picture.

Sometimes we assume that we already know what we need to know, and who we need to know, in order to get where we want to go. We think we've got the answers - even when we aren't getting the results we want from applying those same old answers and those same old connections.

In the past year + I've been questioning all of the assumptions I can pull forward and recognize about how I go about business, not because I think I've gone about things in the wrong way, or even have bad habits I need to break in order to get ahead, but because I wanted the way I approached work to feel different.

I decided I wanted to integrate my private passions more into my public work life, focusing more on causes and approaches and themes I really love, and I also wanted to honor the creativity I bring to the table as something of true financial value for my clients, with greater merit, and not just an added bonus someone received on the side because they chose to work with me.

What's been fascinating is to find out where I really needed to do some homework and sharpen my knowledge, and where I simply needed an attitude adjustment and some re-framing, learning to own better what I already know.

And the biggest thing that made me realize that in many ways I was probably already closer to where I wanted to go than not was in coming into contact with old dear friends I hadn't seen in 20+ years. It was observing these friends who are so smart and lovely and learned and self critical that I began to wonder, hmmm...what about me?