“Stop assuming you know what other people think, and just ask them what they really think!”
– Gonto, contemporary unthinker.
This is something that I’ve been talking a lot about with both people that work with me as well as my mom.
Most times, because of anxiety and insecurities, we always assume that other people think the worst of us. This is a very known syntom of impostor syndrome:
“I’m sure they think I’m annoying when I constantly recommend things to improve” “I’m pretty sure they didn’t like what I presented based on their facial expressions”
Those assumptions are almost always incorrect, and they can be very easily solved: Just ask the other person!
Asking other people what they think is hard in an enviroment where there’s no trust. This is why vulnerability based trust is so important. If you have trust, you can just be direct and ask instead of assume the worst.
Once you start asking and collecting answers from people that show your original thinking is incorrect, please STOP a minute, and check how wrong you were. This is “the reward” that’s going to help you create a new habit of NOT assuming the worse and actually asking!