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[post_content] =>
Even though your grandma told you not to assume because it “makes an ass out of you and me,” assuming is part of life. In fact, if you avoided making assumptions, your life would come to a standstill.
Upon waking up in the morning you’d have to test the stability of the floor by dropping a large dumbbell on it, because you wouldn’t want to assume that it was still structurally sound. Something could have happened to it in the night. Nor would you want to assume that the air is safe to breathe, or that you’re a real human and not actually a robot, or that everyone hasn’t changed their name since yesterday. Without assuming, life would get very crazy very quickly.
If you were able to see the actual extent of your assumptions, it might be more than your mind could handle. But it’s likely that it would also be a profound revelation, because you would see that all these assumptions – and very little objective fact – comprise an enormous story about how life is and who you are.
That story could be one of unlimited potential and unrestrained play! More often, though, it’s a story of “life’s not fair,” and “it’s hard to make real change,” and “people are mean.”
While it’s simply a matter of sanity to assume that our environment is basically unchanged from day to day, it’s quite different to make assumptions about other people’s thoughts, feelings, and motives or our own limitations. Yet, we do it all the time, and often we assume the worst.
When someone doesn’t communicate or act in the way we hope and expect, we might make an automatic assumption that it means they don’t like us or that they have ill intentions.
We rarely find out if our assumptions about other people are accurate, so we could just as easily assume generously. We can assume that people like us, that they’re kind, that they’re doing their best, and that they’re intrinsically noble.
What happens when we assume generously?
The two most significant shifts are:
(1) our story changes for the better
(2) we relate to the other party in a more constructive way
First, our story changes for the better. We may have challenges and others may be confused or even hurtful, but if our assumption is an overarching goodness, we have a lot more freedom in the matter (and so do they).
We’re able to see a bigger picture.
We don’t need to react.
We’re not the victim and our brothers and sisters aren’t villains.
Second, we relate to the other party in a more constructive way. When we assume someone has negative intentions, it’s easy to subtly (or not-so-subtly) contribute to an experience that seems to confirm this.
Through our energy, body language, and words, we convey our resistance to our assumption about them, and they respond to it. Sometimes it goes back and forth for days or weeks or years, until one person – maybe you – decides to cut through the bullshit and assume generously about them.
As soon as you make this choice, you begin listening differently (or listening at all!). You relate to others in a way that’s authentic and seeks harmony, and even calls forth their virtue.
This can snowball in the same way it does with negative assumptions, because seeing the other in a positive light requires tapping into your own virtue. You’re going beyond the drama and conflict and seeing with a higher form of vision.
Thus, your virtue calls forth their virtue, and their virtue inspires your virtue to come even more to the forefront. Soon you’re seeing the light in everyone and simultaneously basking in that light.
But, what if you’re wrong in your generous assumptions?
For the most part, it’s harmless.
You thought someone liked you but they don’t. You thought someone was helping but they weren’t. These incidents are going to be few and far between and you would have discovered the truth regardless of your perspective. In the meantime, though, you were re-scripting your own story of life, and this discovery needn’t invalidate it.
Of course, there’s a difference between having faith in the goodness of humanity and being naive or willfully ignorant. Regardless of someone’s intentions, if you’re actually being harmed in a relationship, don’t try to convince yourself that you should stick around and see their virtue.
Use your intuition and love yourself – and remove yourself from harm if necessary. But don’t let such experiences make you lose sight of the power to interpret events in a positive light, in a way that helps you learn and grow, or in a way that gives you greater clarity as to how you’d like to create your life differently from here on out.
So, here’s an experiment for you to try: for the rest of today, assume generously in every situation. This will require watching the assumptions you’re making – and that in itself can be an eye-opening and life-changing experience.
First, you’ll see what you’re usually assuming degrades your experience of life. Then you’ll have a chance to change your perspective. You don’t need to go to the opposite end of the spectrum (e.g., if someone spits on you, it might be a stretch to assume this is a subtle form of baptism in their culture).
Instead, try giving them the benefit of the doubt. Can you listen? Can you see beyond the surface, beyond your own snap judgement? What happens next? Share your experiences with me in the comments section below.
Love love love,
Briana
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[post_content] => Over the past couple months, those of us at The Dragontree Spa have seen a lot of different happenings. Some good, others not so good.
Our Pearl Street location saw mass destruction all around us in the Boulder flood. More recently, our Northwest Portland location experienced loads of flooding. We have seen teams of people in our community (and our staff!) join forces to help others bail water, sling mud, rip up carpet, and more.
The Dragontree Boulder offered deep discounts to flood victims, so that they could rest and rejuvenate and continue on the hard road ahead. We have seen our staff come together in Portland to fix their water issues and continue offering massage, facials, and acupuncture to their community.
Here in Boulder we saw a gorgeous Fall, with some of the most beautiful orange, red, yellow, and purple leaves that I have ever seen (and that says a lot). I even saw two snows before Halloween, which makes me giddy with delight.
As I look back on the past few months, I am so thankful for the opportunity to experience all of these things. In the midst of tradgedy, I saw the
best of people come out as they helped their neighbors. I saw bodies and minds restored as those who lost everything took the time to relax with a massage or facial or simply a foot bath. I saw some of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen in nature.
As The Dragontree continues to expand, in Boulder and in Portland, I think it is so important to stop and remember the beauty around us. I don’t want to ever forget the reason that we do what we do. Our mission is to seed our community with centered, peaceful, and healthy people.
As you enter the busy holiday season, I implore you to do the same. Don’t get too busy or stressed to see there is beauty and there is goodness all around us. Growth is good, but remember who you are at your core. Always strive to improve and be better, but also be grateful for where you have been and the accomplishments that you’ve made. Strive to make your community a better place. This Thanksgiving, I thankful for the opportunity to be in Boulder, to run a beautiful spa, and to be surrounded by loving, caring, and giving people.
What are you thankful for?
[post_title] => Thankful Hearts, Helpful Hands
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[post_date] => 2022-02-03 22:51:35
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When a patient comes in to see me, I get a brief opportunity to facilitate a shift toward the positive. I might overhaul their diet, give them exercises, insert acupuncture needles, or prescribe some medicine. It’s clear that these interventions help. But when I look back at the treatments that were major turning points for people, about half the time what made the difference was something I said.
Most of what I say is pretty simple stuff. The more simple, the bigger the potential impact. All the essential truths of the great spiritual traditions are simple. But they’re underappreciated and easily forgotten. There’s so much other stuff vying for priority real estate in our minds. And in a time when we put so much value on complexity – science, for instance – simple concepts don’t get taken seriously. Someone once said, The truth is simple. If it were complicated, everyone would get it.
The nice part about profound truths being simple is that you don’t have to work so hard. Stop trying to have all the answers; just listen and remember what you already know. The simple truth I want to share with you today is one you are undoubtedly familiar with: positive thinking makes good things happen. If someone said to you, “I have the solution to most of your problems: think positive,” you might say, “I have the solution to why nobody likes you: unsolicited, crappy advice.” But I urge you to reconsider.
If you consistently had positive thoughts about your life, do you know what would happen? You would feel consistently positive about your life. And that pretty much constitutes a good life, doesn’t it? Regardless of whether or not your life is exactly the way you want it to be, if you cultivate positive thoughts, your consciousness – your experience of life – will be more positive. Isn’t that what really matters? Your perspective is more important than your circumstances. Wouldn’t you rather be poor and happy than rich and miserable? If you’re happy, you’re happy.
But it’s not just a mind trick where you fool yourself into being thrilled by a pathetic life. As you make a habit of forging positive thoughts, you become a more positive person, and then the objective circumstances of your life change. Have you ever met someone who was really successful and also super positive? Which do you think came first? I would venture to guess it was the positive part.
The tricky aspect – or so it seems to a mind that loves complication– is actually remembering to think positively. Many people feel it’s not their innate nature to be positive, or that life circumstances have made it difficult to be an optimist. But they have just made a habit of focusing on and emphasizing negative viewpoints. It’s true that the glass is both half empty and half full. Both perspectives are valid, but they are not equally meaningful observations. The optimist focuses on what is and the pessimist on what isn’t.
Like the song goes, accentuate the positive. Here’s how:
- Look and listen for good signs, positive news, beauty, and fascinating things, and then latch onto them, talk about them, share them, savor them, amplify them, run with them. Imagine you just tapped into a vein of gold in the earth, and now you want to follow that vein. Jump from one good thing to the next. Make a game out of it.
- Create more positivity in the world. This is especially important if you find it hard to arouse your own optimism. Instigate positivity in people around you, even if you feel dark inside. Create the vein of gold that you can then follow, by asking people about their lives, their kids, their dreams. You will ignite a light in someone else that will lead you in the right direction. Then keep doing it. Deliver genuine compliments. Help others to see the positive side of whatever they’re grappling with. It’s often easier to do for others than for yourself.
- Get out of the dirt. Following the gold vein is as much a matter of not choosing to veer into the dirt as it is a choice to follow the gold. Catch yourself choosing to indulge in negativity and be disciplined about shifting your attention to something else. It’s like breaking an addiction. Notice which of your acquaintances have a “this sucks” mentality and (a) hang out with them less (b) laugh internally at everything negative they say – lightly, not disparagingly (c) don’t let them throw you off your gold vein. Also, stop watching Breaking Bad. Choose your media consumption consciously.
- Tweet/post/comment responsibly. The stories and opinions you choose to share shape who you are in the world – plus who and what you attract. Are you a positive influence on your environment or a negative one? Before you click “Post,” look at what you’ve written. If it’s snarky or amounts to “Doesn’t this suck?” just delete it. You won’t feel any regret.
- Respond with humor to situations that would otherwise make you angry, irritated, or anxious. I know it’s hard, but if your habit is to relinquish the whole gold vein just because of some stupid situation, you simply cannot engage with it in an adversarial way. Be imperturbable. Go on a drama fast. Stay committed to your positivity.
- Lose the belief that finding problems and errors makes you smart or likeable. People who enjoy finding what’s wrong with everything rarely care as much about looking for solutions.
- Know what you want. Most of us spend so much time thinking about our current problems and the undesired future situations we hope to avoid that we have a clearer sense of what we don’t want than what we do want. Know with laser-like precision what kind of life you want and replace the habit of dwelling on what you don’t want with savoring the anticipation of getting what you do want.
Once you’re in the zone, let’s go have some tea together. Positive people are fun to be around. I wonder what cool thing you’ll do next.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => The Truth is Simple. Start Feeling Better.
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Even though your grandma told you not to assume because it “makes an ass out of you and me,” assuming is part of life. In fact, if you avoided making assumptions, your life would come to a standstill.
Upon waking up in the morning you’d have to test the stability of the floor by dropping a large dumbbell on it, because you wouldn’t want to assume that it was still structurally sound. Something could have happened to it in the night. Nor would you want to assume that the air is safe to breathe, or that you’re a real human and not actually a robot, or that everyone hasn’t changed their name since yesterday. Without assuming, life would get very crazy very quickly.
If you were able to see the actual extent of your assumptions, it might be more than your mind could handle. But it’s likely that it would also be a profound revelation, because you would see that all these assumptions – and very little objective fact – comprise an enormous story about how life is and who you are.
That story could be one of unlimited potential and unrestrained play! More often, though, it’s a story of “life’s not fair,” and “it’s hard to make real change,” and “people are mean.”
While it’s simply a matter of sanity to assume that our environment is basically unchanged from day to day, it’s quite different to make assumptions about other people’s thoughts, feelings, and motives or our own limitations. Yet, we do it all the time, and often we assume the worst.
When someone doesn’t communicate or act in the way we hope and expect, we might make an automatic assumption that it means they don’t like us or that they have ill intentions.
We rarely find out if our assumptions about other people are accurate, so we could just as easily assume generously. We can assume that people like us, that they’re kind, that they’re doing their best, and that they’re intrinsically noble.
What happens when we assume generously?
The two most significant shifts are:
(1) our story changes for the better
(2) we relate to the other party in a more constructive way
First, our story changes for the better. We may have challenges and others may be confused or even hurtful, but if our assumption is an overarching goodness, we have a lot more freedom in the matter (and so do they).
We’re able to see a bigger picture.
We don’t need to react.
We’re not the victim and our brothers and sisters aren’t villains.
Second, we relate to the other party in a more constructive way. When we assume someone has negative intentions, it’s easy to subtly (or not-so-subtly) contribute to an experience that seems to confirm this.
Through our energy, body language, and words, we convey our resistance to our assumption about them, and they respond to it. Sometimes it goes back and forth for days or weeks or years, until one person – maybe you – decides to cut through the bullshit and assume generously about them.
As soon as you make this choice, you begin listening differently (or listening at all!). You relate to others in a way that’s authentic and seeks harmony, and even calls forth their virtue.
This can snowball in the same way it does with negative assumptions, because seeing the other in a positive light requires tapping into your own virtue. You’re going beyond the drama and conflict and seeing with a higher form of vision.
Thus, your virtue calls forth their virtue, and their virtue inspires your virtue to come even more to the forefront. Soon you’re seeing the light in everyone and simultaneously basking in that light.
But, what if you’re wrong in your generous assumptions?
For the most part, it’s harmless.
You thought someone liked you but they don’t. You thought someone was helping but they weren’t. These incidents are going to be few and far between and you would have discovered the truth regardless of your perspective. In the meantime, though, you were re-scripting your own story of life, and this discovery needn’t invalidate it.
Of course, there’s a difference between having faith in the goodness of humanity and being naive or willfully ignorant. Regardless of someone’s intentions, if you’re actually being harmed in a relationship, don’t try to convince yourself that you should stick around and see their virtue.
Use your intuition and love yourself – and remove yourself from harm if necessary. But don’t let such experiences make you lose sight of the power to interpret events in a positive light, in a way that helps you learn and grow, or in a way that gives you greater clarity as to how you’d like to create your life differently from here on out.
So, here’s an experiment for you to try: for the rest of today, assume generously in every situation. This will require watching the assumptions you’re making – and that in itself can be an eye-opening and life-changing experience.
First, you’ll see what you’re usually assuming degrades your experience of life. Then you’ll have a chance to change your perspective. You don’t need to go to the opposite end of the spectrum (e.g., if someone spits on you, it might be a stretch to assume this is a subtle form of baptism in their culture).
Instead, try giving them the benefit of the doubt. Can you listen? Can you see beyond the surface, beyond your own snap judgement? What happens next? Share your experiences with me in the comments section below.
Love love love,
Briana
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