How to Question Your Assumptions Without Judging Yourself

You are listening to The Awakening Woman on the Rise. If you are a woman who is seeking to live

a more authentic life but are feeling not enough to step out fully just yet, you are in the right

place. If you are a woman who is looking to live your personal truth and make the impact you truly

desire, you are in the right place. I'm your host, Wendy Yitbossi. Let's step out in this together.

So welcome to session two and I have a wonderful surprise for you and that is that I am joined by

a very good friend and colleague, Danielle Benson, and we are discussing day-to-day topics

that not only come up for us but I bet they come up for you too. So I invite you to listen to each

episode, see what sparks for you and take it from there. Welcome to Wisdom Wednesdays with

Wendy and Danielle. Wendy, I'm so excited to be here again. How cool is this? Oh, I know. I'm

so happy to be here. I love our time together and I love what anyone can get from it because

we kind of all go through the same stuff, don't you think, Danielle? I do and this is why it's

so cool because every time we have a conversation, I'm like, oh, I have felt this. I've had similar

conversations to this with other people this week or last week or I will have in the future

and it's just so cool to see how we're all growing together and we're all experiencing

the same things but in different ways with different perspectives but there's a through

line of humanity underneath it all, I think. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So just before

we started recording, you were telling me about an experience that you had on a call

where you were a participant in a call, right? You were a student in a call? Yes, that's right. Can you

share for the audience, for the listeners, what you were telling me? Yeah, so I was on a program

that was called Decide, Do, Done. The title is very attractive and very triggering in some ways

so I was excited to be on the call. Who doesn't want to decide better? I should speak for myself

and do, actually. I want things to be done. That's what I want. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Yeah, as opposed to done is better than perfect or not as opposed to? Yes, done is better than

perfect, for sure. So I was there, obviously, to learn. I wanted to make a shift in myself

and the facilitator was recording. It was an hour 15 minute class and so we were getting to share

when we were ready or whatever we wanted, which is all fine and good, but where I kind of tripped

over myself was in the replay. I watched myself. Normally, I'm afraid to watch, but because I

promised to answer some testimonial questions and to give a testimonial, I had to watch it again,

so I made sure I was on track. Danielle, I can't believe what I saw. It was like,

I looked like a person that was kind of writhing in pain, trying to get clear, trying to make sense

and trying to not look stupid or whatever I was afraid of. I just started spiraling

when I was watching it, thinking, I just know that the next time I speak up in the replay,

they're going to go, oh no, she's going to talk again. I can't take it. It hurts too much.

It was tough. I certainly worked my way through it and went through with my commitment and was

honest about that, but it really kind of put a stick in the spokes of the wheel

in terms of thinking, is this what I look like when I'm talking to people? Oh no, Danielle, help.

Yeah. And my obvious answer was no, that has not been my experience of you. However,

I have had the opportunity to see you as a student because we have worked together

and I am very well aware of how I show up as a student and I do think there is a huge difference

between the way we show up when we are there for ourselves, when we're there to work on ourselves,

to absorb the content. And when I say selfish, I mean, in a good way, like in a way that you're

working on yourself, you are there to absorb and to process and to take the material and take it

seriously. Whereas when you're a facilitator, your job is to look after the room, which is

completely different. When you're a student, your job is to look after yourself and to do the work.

When you're a facilitator, your job is to look after the room and make sure everyone is safe

and they're getting what they need. And so the way you show up as a student is going to be,

and I love what you said, like someone writhing in pain. Obviously you are processing something,

you know, and that's great. That's what you want. You want to be getting something out of that work.

You know, you want to be doing work. If you took a triggering course and spent the whole time on

the surface level going, everything's fine. I'm okay. Then maybe you would be more pleasant to

on the call, but you wouldn't get anything out of it.

You know, Danielle, I love what you're saying because just because it was different, like,

I guess if I thought about it, I probably had an assumption that that everyone on the call

is working on it, but I kind of got the impression that they had it all figured out,

you know, and, and so I felt really vulnerable in my unclarity, but yet my, my striving to,

to say it in a way that I could understand it well enough to grow from it. And maybe that

was part of the discomfort, assuming that everyone's like me.

Well, and that beautiful courage to be vulnerable and to let yourself,

you know, really confront, confront, confront the content, you know, letting yourself do that.

And maybe they were further along, maybe they weren't as far along. You don't know,

you don't know what's going on with them. But it also reminds me, and I, I, I am embarrassed to

say that a lot of my favorite wise quotes come from Facebook, but one of those things that goes

around on Facebook saying, you know, don't compare your behind the scenes to someone else's

highlight reel, because you are very aware of what's going on internally. You are very aware

of your tells, you know what to look for, you know yourself intimately, whereas you don't know

them intimately, and you are only seeing the face that they present to you. And so comparing your

internal experience to their external portrayal is extremely unjust.

Yeah, I want you to repeat something to everyone listening. Remind me the fish story.

I told you, when you told me this the first time, I told you not to compare not to judge

not to judge a fish by how well he can climb a tree, which is a paraphrasing of a quote,

I can't remember who it's by it might be. It's someone extremely famous on equality versus

egality. You know, like, you can't you got to judge people per their abilities, not per if

everyone is judged by the same standard, that's not actually equality kind of thing is where that

comes from. It's a whole lot. But it applies because you were you were judging your ability

to facilitate by the way you showed us up as a participant. And those are totally completely

different things. And the context is different. And you should be showing up differently in

different contexts. That's what context is for. That's, that's so freeing. It really is for me.

It's, um, you know, I'm not really sure how this relates. I'm curious your thoughts, Danielle. But

I had another experience. Sorry, yesterday. What are you sorry for? Oh, did you hit your mic? Yeah.

I had another experience yesterday with a group that I met with, that we're all equals in.

And this group has a particular intention, which is to

support each other where we need someone to believe for us that which we cannot yet believe

for ourselves. And I, my God, speaking of assumptions and expectations, and I just found

myself, and it's not wrong to have a meeting, be what the meeting is for. But this group, who each

one is a beautiful individual, talk about everything but intention. And we got on the call

at seven, most of us, and 825, which is normally when we stop, somebody suggested someone would

maybe you'd like an intention for that. And I kind of like lost it. And in the most diplomatic

way that I could possibly say that it's 825. I know, nobody wants to be in a meeting with me.

But no, but to just say, I realized in thinking about it after because I did say to the group

after I said, I apologize if I sounded harsh about time, and more needed to be said. But

it wasn't really time or right for it to say we did go through with the intention and it was good.

But I thought about it after and I thought, you know, Wendy, it was like when I was teaching

aerobics. I thought I assumed I'm going to use that word because it's sneaky and insidious in

some ways. It's very subtle. Right? Yes, exactly. So when I was teaching aerobics,

some years ago, I just assumed that everyone coming to that class wanted to not only tone

their body, feel better about how they look, maybe feel better about themselves to learn

about exercise, that was probably even more key. And I became so disappointed. Because I think it's

and it's not that they didn't do the, you know, the the exercising, they do the exercising,

but I came to realize that not everyone is there for the same reason that I am some of them just

wanted to get out of the house. Some of them just want a social time. And, and so I was thinking

about that with with this group. We meet once a month, which is not often, really, but so it's

kind of like more, more, more catch up. And, you know, and I'm thinking, okay, and actually, what

triggered me is one of the participants said, when she asked this person that maybe they'd like an

intention for that, she said, because after all, that's why we're here. And that was the springboard

for me. Yes, that is why we're here. What's going on? Yeah, I think it'd be good to look at assumption.

I think that's, well, I think there's two things there. There's the assumptions that the assumption

that, you know, other people are doing what we're doing for the same reasons that we're doing it,

which, you know, is usually not true. And there's a lot of, you know, people used to drive me nuts

about going to a community center gym, as you know, I was there to work out. And there's all

these people who are just standing on the machines or sitting on the machines chatting,

because they're just there for social time. So, you know, everyone's there for different reasons,

and that's okay. But I think that's where setting expectations and communication styles really come

in, because everyone's going to kind of assume, without the data to confront that, everyone's

going to kind of assume that everyone else wants what they want. So maybe the other people in the

call were assuming that everyone wanted to catch up, and you were assuming that everyone wanted

to set the intentions. And this is where we kind of bump up against each other. And I know we're

not talking about facilitation. This is not a coaching session. However, as a facilitator,

that is one of the most important things to do is set the intentions, set expectations

for a meeting, so that everyone's on the same page. So if the group is all equal, it's a bit

difficult. But you could have a leader, like have a different leader every month.

And this person is in charge of leading the meeting this week, and this person is in charge

of leading the meeting the next week. So you know that when Judy runs the meeting,

it's going to be more chitchat. But when Carol runs the meeting, it's going to be on time.

You know, at least there's that. Or, you know, as a participant, I mean, you do have a responsibility.

You want to respect your time and their time. And there's nothing wrong with calling people out,

not in a mean way, but just saying, hey, I noticed we spent a lot of time catching up.

The original intention of this group was to set intentions. What if we have a half hour catch up

afterwards? Or, you know, for those who want to, or something like that. So it always, for me,

those kind of things, and I think it's because I bump up against this in my relationships so much.

You know, assuming that someone feels a certain way. And then when you talk to them about it,

that's never what's going on. It's like, oh, you're stomping around, because you're mad at

me about blah, and really, I don't know if they've got a stomachache or something. And

you're like, oh, I don't even know. You know, so these, the communication is so important,

because I think we bump up against each other's assumptions. And we think we know what's going on

in someone else's head. But we don't, we don't know. What do you think about that?

I think that is so true. Like, I think, making assumptions is,

is one of the, in a way, one of the most challenging things to be aware of,

because I know that when I was growing up, I certainly wasn't taught to ask for clarification.

I wasn't taught to share what I feel and say, what do you feel? I wasn't, it wasn't kind of

part of the upbringing. It was kind of like, I don't know exactly what it was. I know that that

wasn't part of it. And so it's like, you know, in terms of, you know, people, as a minister,

one of the things I was doing previously was I was doing premarital coaching. So these are the

Mm hmm. So these are the questions that people ideally would be talking to each other about,

but for whatever reasons don't. And so bringing them up premaritally,

at least gives them the opportunity to, to look at these things. What am I assuming about this

person? How do they react when they're hurting or in pain? Or, you know, kind of like, what,

what can I expect to go through that? I know, but you know, what I found is that the young ones

didn't think they needed it. Because maybe when I say a different value system, their focus is more

on the wedding, you know, or more on life together. And I'm not saying those aren't good things. Those

are wonderful things. And the older, older people that that I married, I don't know, they they kind

of had it a bit more together, or they maybe didn't think they needed it. But I just find that

it's a it's a tough thing. We talked about facing facing these kind of things. And what if what if

they say something that is really important, and that I can't handle, you know, or, you know, like

child raising, or destroying that out of because, because we're all so different way. And we were

probably all raised differently. And so we have different values or not. So the all of that to

just say, is that asking for clarity, really finding out what is it that you expect from this?

What is it that you want from this? What do you hope for from this? Because those are key things.

Otherwise, you come up with what I came up with with yesterday. It's not that we haven't talked about

it before. But here's another important point is that sometimes you have to bring it up more than

once, not as a nag. Yeah. Let's see. Remember when we were chatting? And you know, awareness? Yes,

let's just revisit. But would you agree, Danielle? Do you think it's important?

Yeah. And I think that's why you have to set expectations at the beginning, even if you think

everyone's on the same page, because you can't reference, you can't reference us all having the

same expectations of being on the same page, if you haven't set that up. Yeah, so you know, you can

surface it. But if you're kind of halfway through and like, well, I thought this was kind of the

reason we're here. That's not nearly as strong as getting everyone to be in agreement first. And

then if someone goes off the rails, we can say, hey, we did agree this. Yeah. Are we are we are

we making an intentional, you know, tangent from this for a specific reason? Or do we want to get

back on track? And it does making everything intentional, I feel is the answer. I loved you

just you said something that really struck me. And I think every relationship ever should go

through. I know no one ever thinks they need counseling. But I think every human being does.

None of us think we do what we all do, just to make ourselves more self aware. But it made me think

what you were saying made me think of, it's kind of like at some point, we stop learning. And I

don't know what this is called. But you know, when when when infants are, are learning that they are

separate from the outside world, you know, oh, there's an internal experience and an external

experience. And that doesn't happen straight away. Like there's a wild, there's a wild where the

child thinks that everything, well, the infant thinks that everything around them is an extension

of themselves. And then they learn, there's me and there's other and there's that kind of

separation, that differentiation. And then we kind of go through that again, in teenagehood a little

bit more. And then we just kind of think it's done, which I think is the silliest thing, because

we're constantly needing to remind ourselves that our internal experience and the external world are

not the same. And it's, you know, if we just made more of a habit of that, of interrogating that a

little bit more, maybe we'd all be a little bit smarter, and happier, because we know what was

going on.

Well, that's right. It's almost like it frees up the space to move forward. You know, I think about

facilitation, Danielle, and when when we're, when we're facilitating a class or a program, one of

the things that is important to do is to set the ground rules beforehand, right? So and one of those

ground rules being what is it that you expect from this, this workshop or this program or whatever?

And, and I think that, that that is that how we can keep on on track with that. So I really value what

you're saying. And, and, you know, in some ways, one could look like, what's that terminology, the

front end is kind of heaviest, but it eases out as you go. Otherwise, it's later in the beginning, and

then the back end gets heavy, so to speak.

Whoa, we don't want a heavy back end.

I know, no, no, no, we don't want a heavy back end.

But I think you're right. I think that I think that's accurate. And it's not like that we have to

be a stickler, you know, we don't need to sacrifice, you know, someone's feelings or something, but to

make it intentional. So because we've set the ground rules, if we decide to deviate, we can all do that

intentionally. And go, you know what, we were going to talk about this, but this big thing has

come up. So we're going to put that aside, and we're going to talk about this big thing. But then at

least everyone's still on the same page. You know, it's not that you have to stick to the original

intention, because sometimes, you know, life happens, whatever. But at least then everyone knows

what's going on.

Yeah, I love that, Danielle. And make it sound easy.

Nothing is easy.

Seriously, I've got a question for you, or like a statement and then a question. I must admit that I

don't often say it out loud. Sometimes I can tend toward perfectionism, but not perfection for the

sake of I'm the best thing since sliced bread. But if I want to get somewhere, I need to be not just

clear, but I need to be doing what gets me there. And when you were sharing, just now, it reminded me

of, I think I went there with what I said. I mean, with this group, it was kind of like, I'm here for

this. I didn't say this. These weren't my words. But I'm thinking, I'm here for this. This is what I

want. It needs to be this way, or I don't want it.

That's totally okay. You know, if you need to opt out of a group, because it's not what you signed up

for. What's wrong with that?

I guess I feel like I'm not being open minded. I, you know, that I'm being too strict and rigid and,

but maybe not leaving. I mean, maybe. Yeah.

Life is short. I've had to make a lot of these decisions recently about things that I that I enjoy

and that I would like to do. But I only have so much time. And so there's things that you would like to

do. You'd like to be there for people. And we have to prioritize. There are some people that you're

like, you know, I'm not getting a lot out of this, but I really want to be here for these people. And

it's important to me. So I'm going to be here. And there are some things where you said yes, because

you had a certain expectation, it turned into something else. And now you're feeling obligated.

Life's too short for obligation. If you're intentionally making the choice, I am being here

because I want to serve these people. That's one thing. But if you're just kind of doing it, because

you said you would, and now it's changed. Life's too short. That's what I think.

I love that, Danielle. And I think that a lot of people deal with that personally in business, like,

you know, it's like one of the one of the participants last night in the meeting was saying

about how he felt like there, he didn't really have any control. And I said, my suggestion was, this

was before the kafafo. My suggestion was, you know, there are a lot of things we don't have

control over in our life. And sometimes what we need to do is find out what do I have control over

that can help in this, right? And so, and so, so what I'm being reminded of with what you're saying

is, it's, it's not so much about not saying something, but it's saying something with, when I

say care and concern, I mean, for the purpose that we're there. Yeah. And, you know, maybe more asking

a question, if possible, or, or something along those lines, because the truth is, everything is

not going to be exactly like I need it to be. I know I said it out loud. But for any of us, but

where is the point where we fall over the edge? Or when we're just standing up straight, or, you

know, not falling to either side, but just kind of standing straight for with love, to me, standing

straight with love, so that it's a win, win for everyone, not just a win, win for one.

Absolutely. And there's a lot to unpack there, you know, because you have your contribution in the

way that you're spending your time. But you also have, you know, how much you're contributing to

the group, and whether or not they need you. And whether or not this is an isolated incident, or if

this is a pattern, you know, there's, there's so much going on there. And I just feel like, we

tend to self obligate a lot. And I'm very, I'm very much trying to, I am very much working on

eradicating obligation from my life. And if I'm doing something, because I feel like I need to do

it, and I don't want to do it, doing that with intention and love and going, I don't want to do

this, I think it's important, and I'm choosing to do it, as opposed to, well, I have to because

love. So I think there's that. So that's, you know, I'm colored by that experience right now.

Also, yeah, we've got to do everything with kindness and with compassion. You had a question

for me about perfectionism, though. But I think we just want a statement.

Have a statement and then a question.

Yeah, well, the statement, yeah, was about expecting perfect being that what's that word

where it's black or white, there's no gray, that kind of perfectionism. Yeah. And then,

and then I proceeded to talk about how that was showing up.

Yeah, I don't know if there's more that you might have to say about that. But it's kind of managing,

managing the reality of not only life, but humans, of which, you know, I have to be honest.

You are one?

Take this out of the recording.

What? No, no, no. Oh, my God. I don't know. Maybe I do think this way, but I hope people

won't think I'm all this way. But um, but I think these are real things that happen in life. And,

and, you know, we're not aware of them until we're aware of them. And then once we're aware

of them of a tendency that we have, that's not really making friends and influencing people.

Um, how can we handle it? Because as you say, at least as I hear you say, Danielle,

we have a right to the life that feels ours to live. And, and how can I carry that forward?

In a win win way?

Beautiful questions, Wendy. I love these questions. And I'm gonna get to say something I say

quite often is live in this question. I think this is such what you're doing right now is such a

beautiful example of kind of pure leadership, where you're not pretending to be better than

other people. You're leading by example, you're going, Hey, I've noticed this in my life.

I'm interrogating it. I don't have the answer. But I'm aware of it. I'm surfacing the awareness,

I'm asking the question. I'm living in the question. I'm going to experiment and poke around

and keep figuring it out exploring and then invite other people to do the same without

any judgment. Without, you know, I should be better. And that kind of black and white thinking

we're talking about earlier, my therapist talks about gray thinking, the inclusive thinking as

opposed to black and white, which is one or the other. And I think the fact that you are you're so

generous with your vulnerability and sharing what you're thinking and how you're experiencing

things. It's just so beautiful to me because it it gives me permission to do the same thing.

And then I get to go, Yeah, where am I doing that? And if we all did that?

Yeah, exactly. Danielle. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So maybe that's where we should end it. Yeah. What questions? What awarenesses do you

have that can come up without judgment, without you judging yourself about? I'm so perfect. I'm

too much of a perfectionist. I'm not much of a not enough of a perfectionist. I'm too selfish.

I'm not doing enough for other people. Without all of that judgment. What things can you notice

about yourself? What patterns and assumptions can you surface? And just live in those questions?

How can I do something different? How can I live a life with less obligation? How can I

live a life, maybe with more joy, with more compassion, with more, maybe with more social

stuff in it, like more social interaction, or maybe with more efficiency? How can I live a

life with more efficiency? Asking yourself these questions, living with these questions.

That's what it's all about. Because you don't always know the answers. And there isn't always

one right answer. Sometimes it's just an exploration and the exploration is actually

the thing you want. That's where the magic happens. What do you think, Wendy?

I agree. I was just thinking that questioning ourselves with care is not a weakness.

It's actually a strength. And I think that the willingness to question ourselves without

judgment, as you said, open space to feel something different, to hear something different,

maybe to see something differently, which will help us move forward.

I love that. So compassionately question your assumptions. That is this Wednesday's wisdom.

Thank you so much, Wendy, for being here with me. This was so awesome. And we'll see you next

time. Thank you, Danielle.