The Anatomy of an Assumption
How confusion becomes conclusion and why certainty feels the same either way.
Recently, I received a text that left me wondering.
It was pretty clear that the sender had spent a lot of time thinking about something I had said. The message was long. It was emotional.
What fascinated me wasn’t the emotion.
It was the certainty.
For them, a handful of words I had written had become something much larger. There were conclusions about what I meant. Conclusions about what I was feeling. Conclusions about why I had chosen those words and what they revealed about my character, my intentions, and even my worldview.
They had filled in gaps of meaning that were never part of what I had said and never crossed my mind. There was so much detail that I found myself wondering where parts of it had come from.
Some of the observations were connected to things I had actually said. Many were not.
At various points, I found myself grouped into broad categories of people. References were made to attitudes and beliefs that I didn’t hold. Even my work as a coach somehow became supporting evidence for conclusions that had already been reached.
The more I read, my reaction went from surprise to curiosity.
Not curiosity about the sender.
Curiosity about the process.
How does a handful of words become an entire narrative?
Not just a narrative, but a detailed explanation of another person’s motives, feelings, disappointments, and intentions?
Somewhere between what I had written and the text I was reading, an entirely different story had been created.
What fascinated me wasn’t that assumptions had been made. We all make assumptions.
What fascinated me was how much material had been generated from so little source content.
A few words had somehow become motives. Motives became feelings. Feelings became conclusions.
At some point my coaching business got pulled into the conversation as supporting evidence. I remember reading that part and thinking, “Wow, we’re really building this thing out.”
Why do assumptions feel like facts?
The assumptions didn’t stop at what I supposedly meant. They expanded into who I supposedly was.
Apparently, I held beliefs I didn’t know I held.
Apparently, I had motivations I wasn’t aware of.
Apparently, I belonged to categories of people I hadn’t realized I had joined.
The story seemed completely real. That’s what made it so interesting.
At no point did it feel like I was reading possibilities. It felt like I was reading facts. The conclusions had already been reached. The dots had already been connected. The case had already been made.
Is certainty sometimes more about comfort than accuracy?
Which left me wondering if assumptions are rarely about information alone.
Maybe they’re also about certainty.
Maybe there is something deeply satisfying about arriving at an answer, even when we don’t have all the pieces. Maybe uncertainty is harder to sit with than we like to admit. Because once the story starts taking shape, it can become surprisingly difficult to separate what actually happened from everything we’ve added to it.
What happens once the narrative feels like reality?
And maybe that’s where Dan’s question comes in:
In our desire to create meaning, where does confusion become conclusion?
Human beings are remarkably uncomfortable with unfinished stories. Give us a few facts and we’ll start connecting dots. Give us gaps and we’ll feel compelled to fill them. Not because we’re trying to deceive ourselves. Most of the time we’re simply trying to make sense of what doesn’t make sense.
We want context. We want understanding. We want the story to feel complete. The challenge is that the mind doesn’t seem particularly interested in leaving blanks empty. If information is missing, we’ll often supply our own. If somebody’s motives aren’t clear, we’ll create an explanation. If a comment feels off, we’ll explain it. If a text lands awkwardly, we’ll build a narrative around it.
And once we’ve built that narrative, something interesting happens. We stop experiencing it as a narrative and start experiencing it as reality.
That’s the part that fascinates me.
Most assumptions don’t arrive announcing themselves as assumptions. They arrive disguised as understanding. We become convinced we know what someone meant, why they said it, how they feel, or what their actions mean. The shift is subtle. A possibility becomes an explanation. The explanation becomes a conclusion. The conclusion becomes a fact.
Before long, we’re responding not to what happened, but to what we’ve decided happened.
That doesn’t mean assumptions are always wrong. Sometimes they’re exactly right. The challenge is that certainty sounds the same in both situations. Whether we’re observing reality or filling in gaps, the voice in our head tends to speak with the same confidence.
And that confidence can be convincing.
Convincing enough to create distance where none existed. Convincing enough to start arguments that never needed to happen. Convincing enough to transform a comment, a text, a conversation, or a silence into evidence supporting a story that may never have been true in the first place.
Maybe that’s the place to start.
Coaching well starts with knowing yourself well. If you're ready to go deeper, Mystery to Mastery is waiting.
MCXI Institute | Daniel Olexa and Monselete Bowden
