Assumptions have their most severe impact as the key blocks to human thinking. Untrue assumptions lived as true are what block us nearly always. And so we can bypass the usual question about blocks (‘What is stopping you?’) and head right for the key block by asking:
What might you be assuming that is stopping you?
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So here in one sentence (albeit dense) is what this life-restoring kind of question seems to do:
An incisive question, through a playful hypothetical construct, replaces an untrue limiting assumption with a true liberating one, and connects it to a desired outcome.
And here is why (even denser):
The key block to a desired outcome is an untrue limiting assumption lived as true that can be removed only by replacing it with a true liberating assumption inserted into a playful (because hypothetical) question using the subjunctive tense.
E.g. if you knew x, how would you do y? The mind can play inside that construct. And in playing, it embeds the new true assumption and decides on actions and/or changes its feelings. Everything. The brain likes to play, not obey. And the incisive question construct lets it do that. Playful because hypothetical. Wonderful to know.
The untrue assumptions we live as true. They interrupt our thinking on a regular basis. I didn’t use to see untrue assumptions as interruption. But, of course, they are. We can be thinking along, generating insights and possibilities and bold choices; and suddenly, just like that, we’re back where we started.
We can create a thinking environment even in the dwellings of extreme disagreement. We can, quite simply and profoundly, promise not to interrupt. We can honour the three ingredients of that promise: to start giving attention, to stay interested in where the person will go next and to ‘share the stage’ equally.
The key block to thinking is an untrue assumption, lived as true.
The key block to thinking is an untrue assumption, lived as true.
The key liberator of thinking is a true liberating assumption.
An assumption is often the answer to why we do or feel something.
The criteria for assessing the truth or untruth of an assumption are:
Information (is the assumption factually provable?)
Logic (is the assumption logically provable?)
If you knew’, is hypothetical. So the question has to start that way. And ‘how would you’ is hypothetical. So the question has to end that way. And in the middle has to be the truth: the true liberating assumption. It is not hypothetical.