Did I Get That Wrong? How First Impressions Can Mislead You & How to Reclaim Clarity

“The most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making." --Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

The picture above is intentionally ambiguous! Take a moment, stop and study the image for a few moments. What assumptions did you bring to this image to make sense of it? What was the story you told yourself without really thinking about it?

My dictionary app stated that assumptions are: "a thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof." The challenge is that we must make assumptions to get through life.

If you had to stop and consciously analyze every tiny thing around you, you would never get out the door in the morning. You assume the floor will support your weight when you step out of bed. You assume the chair will hold you when you sit down, that the coffee mug will not suddenly melt in your hand, that the car coming toward the intersection will stop at the red light. You assume the milk in your fridge is still drinkable (wait, that could be questionable!), and that the bridge you drive over was built to stay standing. These assumptions are usually accurate enough, and they free your mind to focus on other things.

Life happens fast and cognition, deliberate thinking, is slow. In order to make sense of our environment quickly, your brain has to make certain kinds of assumptions. You assume the world will behave tomorrow much as it did yesterday. You assume that objects stay the same when you look away, that a broom leaning in the corner will still be there when you turn back. You assume that people will follow familiar patterns, for example that coworkers will show up roughly on time, traffic will move in its usual way, and your favorite grocery store will still be where you left it. You also assume that the snap impressions you form, someone is safe, someone is irritated, someone is bored with you, are accurate enough to act on. These shortcuts are not a flaw, they are how your nervous system keeps you moving through a complex world without collapsing from overload.

The assumptions you make extend far beyond the physical world. You make assumptions about what someone’s expression or tone means, about what their silence means, about the story behind what you see. You might assume that the look on your boss’s face in the morning meeting means he is disappointed in you, when he is actually replaying a difficult conversation with someone else. A couple I am working with got into a fight recently because he assumed the look on her face meant she was unhappy with the way he spoke to her rather critical mother. In reality she was irritated with mother’s behavior. He happened to look up just as the look of frustration about the mother’s incivility crossed her face, and because of their history of fighting over how to manage this difficult parent, he took her expression to be a criticism of him. The moment he acted as if his assumption were true, they were both off to the races.

This would not be such a problem if we remembered that we are guessing most of the time. However, we deeply want to believe that the world is as it appears to us. In psychology there is a name for this, it is called naive realism, the tendency to believe that our perception is simply how things are rather than one version of events created by our brain. When we fall into naive realism, we forget that our impressions are filtered through our history, our mood, our fears, and our hopes. We stop being curious. We stop checking. We confuse “this is how it seems to me right now” with “this is the truth.”

What can you do about this, especially in relationships that matter to you? Hold your assumptions lightly.

That does not mean distrusting everything or walking around, paralyzed. It means recognizing that thought is not fact, that your first story about what is happening might be incomplete or even wrong. When you can hold your assumptions with a lighter grip, you create space for new information, for correction, and for connection.

Here is how.

1. Catch the assumption.

Assumptions in the wild are sneaky things. They blend into the background scenery because they are the background of your existence. Remember that your brain is locked inside a dark, silent cave, your skull. It is receiving electrical and chemical signals from your nervous system and building a image of the world out of them. That image is amazingly useful, but it is still a picture, not the world itself. The first thing you must do is become aware that your story of how the world works, or what that look meant, or why they did not text back, is just that, your story. When you hear yourself saying, “She always…” or “He obviously…” or “Of course they meant…”, that is a good cue to pause. Be curious.

2. Challenge it.

Ask yourself, “What did I think I saw or heard?” The classic example is the person hiking who shrieks in alarm, jumps back, and is sure they saw a snake in their peripheral vision, only to discover, when they bring their direct focus to the object, that it is a stick lying on the trail. The first impression was not stupid, it was a quick safety shortcut. The problem is only when you don’t take the second look. In daily life, take a second look, and expand the context you’re using to make meaning. Did your partner’s tone really mean contempt or could it have been fatigue. Did your coworker’s silence really mean rejection or could they have been distracted by something else. You will catch assumptions hiding in plain sight when you slow down enough to check.

3. Think creatively.

Ask, “What else could this be?” On purpose, come up with at least three other explanations that could also fit the facts. Maybe your friend did not respond to your message because they are upset with you, or because they are overwhelmed with work, or because they read it while standing in line and genuinely forgot to respond. Maybe your boss’s frown is about you, or about an email they just read, or a headache they woke up with. Developing this kind of flexible thinking is a modern survival skill. People who work in high stakes, rapidly changing environments, train themselves to extrapolate multiple possible next steps, rather than prematurely latching onto the first solution that comes to mind. You can practice the same mental flexibility in everyday life. Not only will your openness to explore different interpretations reduce conflict, this widens your sense of what is possible.

4. Be open to new information.

Once you have noticed and questioned your assumption, let the world update you. That might mean asking a simple clarifying question, “Hey, when you looked at me like that, I told myself you were angry because of how I spoke to your mother this morning; is that actually what was going on for you?” It might mean noticing that the feared outcome did not happen, the friend still cares, the partner is still here, the conversation turned out better than you predicted. Holding your assumptions lightly gives you the opportunity to learn and grow. Instead of defending your first story, you get to refine it. Over time, your inner map of how people work and how the world responds becomes more accurate and more compassionate.

You will always need assumptions. They keep you moving, they keep you alive, and they simplify a world that is too complex to process all at once. The invitation is not to get rid of assumptions, it is to work with them more consciously. Notice them. Question them. Expand them. Let them change as you learn. When you remember that “how it seems” is not the same as “how it is,” you make more room for truth, for repair, and for connection, both with yourself and with the people you care about.