129 How to change your critical life assumptions

Every decision you make has assumptions behind it. Knowing how to identify and change your critical life assumptions positively affects your behavior and your decisions.

This week’s Inspire Me quote is from Isaac Asimov:

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.“

As we take note of how life works and what patterns our lives seem to take on, we develop our critical life assumptions—how we see the world and our place in it. Four areas of our lives that we usually make these assumptions about are our vocational abilities, relational qualities, spiritual value, and physical limitations. Because our critical life assumptions can take us captive, we need to evaluate them periodically and make sure they line up with truth.

Quotes from the show:

• “We make assumptions, and they may not be right. And good business leaders always test their assumptions because […] they are trying to […] build value. Now take that same concept and apply it to our lives. The life assumptions that we have are largely built around value.” —Leary
• “Your experiences […] dictate your reality.” —Armin
• “Hurt people hurt people. Critical life assumptions that are unhealthy often come from where our hurt is.” —Leary
• “Unhealthy critical life assumptions keep us captive, and we need to know that we make decisions, even subconsciously, based on those we have.” —Leary
• “You don’t necessarily know which [critical life assumptions] are dominant [at any particular time].” —Leary
• “The whole point about critical life assumption[s] is that they largely stay hidden. They are a paradigm, and we accept [them] unchallenged. You have to step back and say ‘What assumptions are driving my life right now?’ It is a willingness to ask some tough questions because these critical life assumptions affect our behavior. We’ll see them in what we do and want to do. We’ll see it in what we do and don’t want to do.” —Leary
• “We’ve become a culture [with so much information available that] we have allowed it to misinform us and […] make critical life assumptions about wide variety of people […], and we just generalize them. Whether it’s true or false, we accept them as true.” —Armin
• “Part of my role here is to take it captive because of what Christ has done. That’s the obedience of Christ—He died on the cross for me to show He loves me. So my response to that love that He gave me is to change the way I think. If I am going to worship and give gratitude back for what what God has done for me (Christ’s obedience), my act of worship is, in fact, to change how I think and to take every thought captive.” —Leary

This week’s Challenge Me:

• Schedule a time to reflect on your critical life assumptions and rewrite any unhealthy ones. It’s not that difficult to do, but it does require an intentionality to sit down and do it. Once you are aware of your critical life assumptions, you can work on them appropriately.

Comments? Questions? Stories from your own life? Share them with us in the comments below.

Resources mentioned in or related to this podcast episode:

• Episode 102, “Self-Talk Survival Guide.”