This is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong, this is not as it should be, this is beautiful, this is safe, unsafe, ugly, valuable, big, small, useful, not useful, stupid, smart……
We assess everything, everywhere, all the time. Human beings are assessment machines. We assess everything relative to our point of view. We subscribe value or non-value to things all the time, relative to where we think we stand, what we think we are about, what we think the world is about.
Yet in our assessing, we tend to make 2 fundamental errors.
- We don't look at where our assessment is coming from.
- We confuse an assessment with an assertion. Something true independent of our judgment.
I might have an assessment about my height: I am normal, yet that is a relative statement, as being big has no inherent way of being verified. I might say I am 174 cm, which is an assertion that you could verify using a measuring stick.
I am strong is an assessment. I am lifting 160 kg is an assertion.
These two often look the same, but are not. But many of us live as if they are equal. But treating them as equal can strongly limit our ability to learn, build relationships, stay flexible and open.
I am going to repeat it now: assessments are relative to our point of view. And our point of view is limited to our experience of the world, the info we consume, and factors like culture, upbringing, training, age, language, sex, anatomy, and so on and so on.
If we treat an assessment as a fixed state of something, we limit its possibility for being.
If I run an assessment of myself as someone who is "bad" at math, and I don't question the assessment, like look at the facts that could reveal, I have tried 5 times to solve this math problem, did not solve it, friend said "haha you still don't know how to do it?" and I said to myself, "you are bad at math" and never updated it, I might now live inside the assessment that I am bad at math, which will lead me to avoid situations where I would need to do math, which leads to me not learning it, which confirms my assessment.
If I assess myself as very intelligent and better than, I might strive for high positions, getting in a leadership role, yet becoming deaf to the inputs from others, not seeing where they might be able to contribute, ending up in the conversation that I have to do everything myself, not giving my team the chance to learn and contribute, which leads to people leaving, which confirms that they are too stupid and I am too intelligent to work with unintelligent people (this truly happens), never seeing how my assessment prevented me from seeing the intelligence in others and their views.
Assessments have enormous power if we don't see them for what they are, yet instead treat them as = facts.
This goes for people, situations, bodily sensations, feelings, and things.
A raise in heartbeat might be assessed by one as a clear sign that I will mess this up, and by another as a sign of excitement for the performance.
Assessments are meanings we give, yet what we give the meaning to doesn't hold inherent meaning independent of our giving it.
The invitation here is to train yourself in making the distinction between an assessment, a relative value statement, to an assertion, something that can be verified, and start wondering when you make an assessment, "Where does this assessment come from?"
My promise is that you will start to see that the world holds way more possibility than the one you automatically live inside, that people are not our assessments of them, and that by seeing it, new interactions become possible.
Stay curious, life is magical,
Moritz
P.S.
I am writing about speech acts, which are powerful acts in language we use every day. See my last article about declarations to learn more https://www.lembertstudio.com/writings/declerations