Why Jumping to Conclusions Holds You Back

The Big 4 energy blocks keep you stuck and prevent you from achieving what you want in your life. We’ve already explored limiting beliefs and assumptions. This month, let’s look at the third energy block: interpretations. When you interpret something, you create an opinion about an event, situation or experience. In essence, you create an explanation and then look for evidence to support its validity. When you make an interpretation, you don’t even see that other explanations exist. In actuality, though, an interpretation often represents only one viewpoint among the many possible.

Your interpretations hold a strong energetic charge, which affects your emotions and actions. If you believe your viewpoint of a particular situation is the only explanation, you might not be aware of another point of view. You may end up wasting a lot of time and resources marching off in the wrong direction. Because you don’t see that other possibilities exist, you remain stuck in your story and feel like you have no control over the outcome.

So let’s say you haven’t heard from the man whom you’ve recently been dating in a few days. If you think he's acting that way because he's suddenly disinterested, you might spend a lot of time and energy wondering what you did to make him ignore you and lose interest. You might then start to doubt yourself and become stuck in your catabolic energy.

As with assumptions, interpretations are personal and therefore somewhat difficult to let go of and challenge. Holding onto them may seem like the easy way out, as facing them may move you into uncharted territory. However, challenging your interpretations opens you up to a world of possibilities—literally.

Typical interpretations may sound like this:

He doesn’t like me.
He thinks I’m too ugly/fat/old.
He probably found someone younger.

Interpretations can be directly challenged by asking, “What’s another way to look at that?” Just realizing there are other ways to look at something lessens the power of your interpretation. One way to do this is to imagine what another individual’s perspective of the situation might be. Asking for others' point of view about a difficult situation (even if they are not directly involved) can break existing paradigms and open pathways for more successful solutions. Challenging yourself or others to argue the point of view directly opposite your interpretation also works remarkably well to arrive at new information, new angles and new paths to success.

This month, before you “jump to conclusions” and believe the first story that comes to mind, consider other possibilities that could lead you to new, empowering choices and actions.