Do You Believe Everything You’re Told? Learn to Discern from a famous Nursery Rhyme

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Episode Transcript

Stuart (00:00):
And welcome to winning without college.

(00:01):
The podcast that helps you develop themindset, habits, and skills you need
to get ahead in business and in life.
And if you enjoy these episodes andyou get value from them, if you could
do me a huge favor and just give us areview and hit that subscribe button,
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My name is Stuart Takehara yourtransformational career coach dedicated

(00:22):
to helping you unstuck your life.
And today we're diving into a topicthat can make or break your success.
And we're talking about assumptions.
Now, I know what you mightbe thinking, Stuart, we all
know about assumptions, right?
They make an ass out of you and me.
Nah, that's, that's notwhat we're talking about.
Today, we're going to gomuch deeper than that.
Today, we're going to dissectan assumption through the

(00:44):
lens of our childhood.
Today, we're going to dissect theassumptions through the lens of an old
school nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty.
Now you will know thestory of Humpty Dumpty.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,Humpty Dumpty, say it with me.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King's horses and all theKing's men, couldn't put Humpty
Dumpty back together again.
Right.
You remember this?

(01:05):
Here's the kicker.
At no point in this nursery rhyme, didit ever say Humpty Dumpty was an egg.
Right.
Isn't that crazy.
How do we think that he was an egg whenit never even said that he was an egg?
This little nursery rhyme that weall learned as kids has this powerful
lesson hidden in plain sight.

(01:26):
The assumption that Humpty Dumptywas an egg is so ingrained into our
minds that we don't even question it.
We just automaticallymake that assumption.
And that's what we'regoing to talk about today.
How assumptions sneak into our livesand shape our beliefs and actions
without us even realizing it.
How do they do that?
See, it's the power ofimplied information.

(01:47):
We assume that Humpty Dumpty was anegg because that's how he was depicted.
Every storybook, every illustrationshows him as this fragile egg with
a face and maybe a little blueshorts or something like that.
It's an implied piece of informationthat we all just accepted.
But it's not in the originaltext of the nursery rhyme.

(02:08):
This shows how powerful impliedinformation can be when someone
implies something, we often take itas truth without even questioning it.
It's a natural human tendency.
You see, we fill the gaps with whatseems to make the most sense or
what we've been told to believe.
And those implications solidifyinto our version of reality.

(02:31):
Let me give you anexample from my own life.
When I was in high school, oneof my teachers told me that my
research skills we're lacking.
She implied that I wasn't thorough enoughand I didn't pay close enough to detail.
I didn't pay close enoughattention to details.
And I don't know where she got this.
I can't even tell you what the, what.
What the task was that Ididn't do the research on.

(02:53):
I can't tell you any of this otherstuff, but all I can tell you is
that one conversation that probablylasted 20 seconds for years,
I carried that assumption with me.
And every time Iapproached a research task,
I did so with a sense of inadequacy.
It brought my levels of stressup high anxiety, because I was
getting into something that Ididn't think that I was good at.

(03:17):
And it wasn't until well into myfirst job that I was told my research
skills were actually very solid.
So much so actually got promotedbecause of my abilities to research
topics over other people's.
I had taken this teacher's implication,this one teacher's implication.
And I made it my realitywithout even questioning it.

(03:39):
And I don't know, maybe that teacher wasjust having a bad day and took it out
on me or maybe I was cramming for otherclasses, and this project was just the
lowest on my to-do list for that thing.
I don't remember.
But that one statement, thatone conversation, those few
seconds, stuck with me for years.
You see there's dangers inassumptions in our lives, and it

(04:00):
just isn't about nursery rhymes.
This happens all the time,day-to-day in our daily lives.
As we go about our work, as wego out through a career, as we go
about through our relationships.
When you think about it, when yourteacher says you research sucks.
Or your parent tells youyou're never going to get it.
Or your counselor claims that you'renever gonna make anything of yourself.
You start to believe you statements.

(04:21):
You get it into your head and you go,well, if no one has any expectations
of me, I'm just going to go dowhatever I want because no one cares.
You know, we treat these assumptionsas facts because they come from people
we see as authority figures, it'slike believing Humpty Dumpty was an
egg because someone in power told usit was an egg or they implied to us.
That it was an egg and these assumptions,they start to shape our identity and

(04:44):
they start to shape our potential.
They become self fulfilling prophecies.
If you believe you're not goodenough, you'll start acting in
ways that reinforce that belief.
But here's the thing.
We need to recognize these falsebeliefs, and break free from them.
Just because someone in authority sayssomething, it doesn't make it true.

(05:04):
These assumptions actually becomebaggage from our past that weigh us down.
But we don't have to carrythat baggage anymore.
We need to challenge these assumptions.
And when you let go of theones that don't serve us.
Imagine if we all walked aroundquestioning the implied facts that we've
been told, if we question assumptions.

(05:25):
How liberating would that be for usto be able to recognize when someone
is just giving us a total line of BS?
How liberating would that be, whenwe have the power to rewrite these
assumptions and reshape our realities.
You see, we need strategies tobreak free from false assumptions.
So how do we do that?
First, we need to question the source.

(05:46):
Ask yourself.
If the person making this statementreally knows what they're talking about.
Are they really an authority in your life?
Are they in authority in anyone's lives?
What qualifications dothey have to judge you?
Often we find that people making theseassumptions about us are projecting
their own limitations or biases onto us.

(06:07):
They think that because they can'tdo it, you can't do it either.
And that's just not true.
Second.
Seek evidence.
Look for proof that either supportsor contradicts what you're being told.
As someone says you're not good atsomething, find instances where you
excelled at it or look at reasons asto why maybe it wasn't good this time.

(06:29):
If it was your first time doing something.
Yeah.
You're going to suck at itcompared to someone who's done it.
20 times or 30.
30 times or a hundred times.
If someone says you're not good atsomething, find out why, and then find
reasons where you Excel at it, or comeup with a game plan on how to get better.
Next reframe your thinking.
Replace negative assumptionswith positive ones.

(06:51):
Instead of saying, I'm notgood at this, try thinking
and saying, I'm learning this.
I'm improving at this every day.
And one of my favoriteTV shows the west wing.
I know it's been off the air forlike, I don't know, a decade or
two, but give me a break here, okay?
There's a scene where presidentBartlett and his secretary, Mrs.
Landingham are having aconversation in the oval office

(07:12):
about the phone's Intercom system.
And president Bartlet says, it's notthat I don't know how to use Intercom.
It's that I haven't learned it yet.
See this shift in mindset can have aprofound impact on how you approach
challenges and opportunities.
If someone says you don't know how todo it, you go, oh yeah, you're right.
I don't know how to do it.
And then that's in the conversation

(07:33):
.You say.
I haven't learned it yet,now, all of a sudden it's an
opportunity for improvement and
an opportunity to get better,
an opportunity for youto step up in your life.
So now let's dig into this alittle deeper and, and find out
why we believe assumptions fromauthority figures are true.
You see authority figures, whether they'reparents or teachers or bosses, they, they

(07:55):
tend to hold a certain power over us.
We give their words, weight, and weoften accept their opinions as facts.
Whereas this isn'tnecessarily a bad thing.
It's human nature to do that.
We look to others for guidance.
We look to others for support.
We look to others for affirmation.
However, it's important to remember thatthese authority figures are not perfect.

(08:18):
They're human too.
And they have their own biases
and they have their own limitations
and they have their own perspectives.
Just because someone has a title orposition of power, doesn't mean they
have all the right answers or thattheir assumptions about you are correct.
There are human too.
And they have bad days andthey get tunnel vision.
They get tired, they get irritable,they get angry, just like all of us.

(08:41):
And just like all of us, sometimesthey misplaced their anger and
they misplaced their frustration.
However sometimes.
It's not on accident.
It's on purpose.
Sometimes it's just plain wrong.
Sometimes, it said to you to make youangry, to get you believing something
is false or to pray on your weaknesses.
And I don't know why, but maybethey're threatened by you.

(09:02):
Maybe they're jealous.
Sometimes you're going to be toldsomething by someone who just doesn't
like you to make you feel worthless,to put you down to prop themselves up.
You got to go back to that situationto say, does this person actually
have any authority over my life?
And when you realize thatthey don't, you just have to
learn to kind of brush it off.
You need to stop.
Breathe and focus and truly takea moment to decide if what you're

(09:26):
being told is truthful, assumptiveor just quiet out of flat out lie.
You just never know.
But once you can start to look at thesesituations and then frame this question,
you'll learn that negative thoughtsor negative assumptions will no longer
have the power on you that they used to.
So let's try this.
I want to do this little exercise.
Think back to a time, when someonemade an assumption about you, that

(09:51):
you accepted without questioning.
It could be a teacher that says you'renot good at math or a friend implying
that you're not athletic or a boss tellingyou you're not leadership material.
Someone saying you're justnever going to get it.
You know, we've all had that kind ofmoment where someone just kinda like
the life they just give up on you.
Now, either write it down ifyou can, or just put it in
your head over and over again.
And I want you to go back to thatmoment when this thing was there.

(10:15):
Just go back to this momentand think about this.
Where did that assumption come from?
What evidence supports it?
What evidence contradicts it?
And how has this assumptionaffected your life's decisions?
How has this assumption.

(10:36):
Affected the decisionsyou've made ever since then.
See, this exercise is a powerful wayto start unpacking and challenging the
assumptions that have shaped your life.
So what now?
It's time to let go of that baggage.
We all carry around assumptionsfrom our past that don't serve us.
These are all things that wefalsely believe that hold us back.

(10:58):
That whisper in your ear.
You can't.
Letting go isn't easy.
But it's necessary for growth.
You need to take all these assumptions.
You can't do this.
You're not good enough.
All these things that you've been told.
You need to let it go.
Because it's necessary to shedthat old skin, and regrow a new.
Start by acknowledging these assumptions,recognize them for what they are.

(11:22):
Unfounded, not true false beliefs,based off of someone else's opinion.
Then actively work at replacing themwith positive empowering beliefs
about yourself, you know, to be truethings that, you know, are right.
I have a friend from high school andback then he had this reputation of

(11:43):
being the lazy F up in our friends group.
He never focused on his studies.
He never went to class.
He only worried about hisnext little hookup things.
He worked dead end jobs oneafter another, after another.
Everyone thought that he would end upjust like his father being a lazy person,
working, you know, short term, dead endjobs all the time, just waiting for his
parents to die, to get an inheritance thatwould never come, but that didn't happen.

(12:04):
Later in life, he went school and he gothis bachelor's even got his master's and
now he's a chief information securityofficer for a major public university.
You know, that is not easy stuff.
That is hard stuff.
It's detailed stuff.
It's detailed learning.
That nobody thought he had thecommitment or the attention
span to be able to handle.
But there came a time in hislife where he said, I'm not going

(12:25):
to listen to the people who aretelling me all these things.
I'm going to change for me.
I can do it and I'm goingto prove everyone wrong.
And he did.
You see, he shed his old skin and peopletelling him he couldn't do something.
And he worked hard to prove them wrong.
So the next time you findyourself accepting an assumption
as fact, remember Humpty Dumpty.
Challenge the impliedinformation and don't let false

(12:47):
beliefs shape your reality.
You need to question the source,seek evidence, reframe your
thinking, and let go of that baggage.
You have the power todefine your own potential.
Before we sign off here.
I want to hear from you.
What are some assumptionsyou've had to overcome?
How did you do it?
Share your stories with me onsocial media or send me an email.
Your journey could inspiresomeone else to break free from

(13:09):
their own limiting beliefs.
So that's all I got for you today.
If you enjoyed this episode, make sureto subscribe and share and leave a review
and as always keep pushing forward.
Keep winning withoutcollege until next time.
Take care.
Keep challenging those assumptions.
Remember your successdoesn't come with a syllabus.
We'll see you in the next episode.