J for Jumping to Conclusions

"The only way some of us exercise our minds is by jumping to conclusions…"

~ Cullen Hightower

"As you think, so you become.....Our busy minds are forever jumping to conclusions, manufacturing and interpreting signs that aren't there."

~ Epictetus

"As human beings, we suffer from an innate tendency to jump to conclusions; to judge people too quickly and to pronounce them failures or heroes without due consideration of the actual facts and ideals of the period."

~ Prince

How true are the above-mentioned quotes?

 Isn’t it common for us to jump to a conclusion on any situation or judge someone without knowing the full story?

How often has it happened to you? How often you end up doing the same to others?

But why? Why do we do that?

The answer is very simple, our brain has been trained to do that.

‘How?’ some might ask.

Well, the answer is, look around you. You will find your parents, relatives doing it and you have been seeing and watching them do that since you can remember and we humans are known to imitate and learn from others behavior.

For example, if we see a young boy and girl standing in the middle of the road, chatting animatedly, what’s the first thought that comes to your mind? What shameless girl is that, talking with a boy standing in the middle of the street or maybe they are having an affair..tch tch…

For the boy it might be different, wasting time running behind girls instead of studying etc etc.

First of all why, why bother having such thoughts about people we don’t know. Even if we know both or either of them, chances are that maybe they accidentally bumped into each other after a long time, maybe they are classmates and are catching up or just saying ‘Hi, Hello’.

Another one from my personal experience when sometimes I express my doubt about a child, people bluntly say on my face “Just because you have a child with special needs doesn’t mean every child you see has a problem”.

That’s another thing when I am proved right, but well, it doesn’t matter.

But my concern is why jump to conclusions and judge a person without knowing the background?

Instead, jump into the water and learn swimming, jump from a cliff and learn bungee jumping or paragliding.

Jokes apart, why not train our mind to focus on our goals rather than assuming things and spoiling our peace of mind and sometimes relationships. Many times these assumptions and judgments create a crack in relationships.

What do you think?

How many times have you experienced your parents/friends jump to a conclusion on a particular situation without allowing you to explain the facts or without knowing the truth?

Or maybe you have made an opinion about someone without knowing the background and then realized that you were wrong?

Do let me know in your comments below.