Landy Peek (00:00)
Welcome to the Landy Peak podcast. I'm your host and friend, Landy Peak, and I am thrilled to have you join me. In each episode, we will explore what makes life truly fulfilling. Happiness, deep connections, and self -discovery. Together we'll uncover that happiness is not a destination, but a way of living. Now, let's dive into today's episode.
Landy Peek (00:30)
Hello and welcome. This is your friend, Landy Peak, and I'm so excited that you're taking this time for you to do something that will really help your life. And joining me on this podcast episode. Now, this is piggybacking our last episode where I touched upon our assumptions and how sometimes we assume that certain things are going to happen.
that certain people are going to have certain beliefs similar to ours. And that's not always the case. And I shared in the last episode around how I was taking things personally and also inserting my assumptions. But today we're really gonna focus on those assumptions.
we do this in our own lives so many times and into other people's lives where we take our filter, our experience in life and
put it on someone else. Like I did with my daughter's teacher, thinking that she's gonna see that I'm a bad parent because my daughter didn't turn in her homework. Where I don't even know if those are her beliefs or if she can see, wow, this is a really good parent, but I also understand kids. And a lot of times good parents have kids that just don't turn in homework.
And it has nothing to do with the parents. It's totally executive functioning with the kids. So then we work with the executive functioning of the kids, I was assuming and putting in my own stories that really weren't true. And we do this so often. We put ourselves as humans into an equation where we really have no business being. Each one of us goes through life.
And we have our own filter. It's like rose colored glasses, it's whatever color you want. And this is based on our lived experiences, the beliefs we have picked up from others, our parents, the media, friends, teachers.
all of it comes together and becomes a guidebook on how we live our life. And it creates the experiences that we have in life.
So with each of us going through life with our own filters, our own lived experiences overlaid onto what actually is happening, that's why we can go through the same set of circumstances and come out with different stories. Have you ever noticed that people go through something together and they have completely different stories? So this happened to me over the summer.
I mean, it's happened to be a lot, but one instance comes over the summer. We went to Frozen the musical. My dad took us as a family to Frozen the musical, which was awesome. And there were sign language interpreters.
and they had a female one for the first act and a male one for the second act.
and we get back and we're talking about it. And my dad said it was really cool that they had the female sign language interpreter interpreting the female voices and the male sign language interpreter interpreting the male voices. And I'm like, hold on what? In my viewpoint, the female was there for the first act and the male was there for the second act.
our brains had picked up same information, scrambled it and put it into our perceptions in very different ways. Now, can I tell you who was right? No, because I can't go back. and it really doesn't matter, right? The experience was good for both of us, but it's funny how
Our brains can take a similar or same experience and overlay different things and come out with different stories.
And this happens all the time where we have different experiences based upon our own viewpoints. That's why they say like as humans, we're not accurate historians.
So often we have our own filters and we insert them on other people's lives, other people's experiences. We assume things are gonna happen because of our life experiences, because of our beliefs. And sometimes we even tell people things that are gonna happen based on our assumptions, right? In the last episode, me telling my daughter that she needed to bring her homework in her backpack.
because the teacher was going to believe that I was a bad parent if the homework wasn't in the backpack. That's me inserting my own beliefs, creating a story that's not factual.
around a circumstance. Now she had a completely different viewpoint.
being able to see other people's viewpoints, I think is essential. But more than that, understanding we're putting things out there
we make assumptions, right? And so here's an example, again, from my daughter's life. my daughter comes home from school and she tells me that she was absolutely starving all day. my daughter has the very last lunch period of
anyone in the school. She doesn't go to lunch to like one, one 15, I think. it's a long time between drop off and lunch and her teacher's incredible. her teacher has a snack time while they do read aloud. I had been sticking her snack and I purposely had an extra snack.
Teacher said, send an extra snack, but I put it in her lunchbox. What I didn't know was that every morning they took the lunchboxes and put them in a bin to go down to the lunch room. last year when she went to school, the lunchbox stayed in her backpack. So she always had access to it. This year, different teacher, different system, and she didn't have access to her lunchbox,
every day she'd been taking her snack out of her lunchbox so that she had it for snack time. Well, on this particular day, she did not take her snack out of her lunchbox. She forgot. So she put her lunchbox in the bin. And when snack time rolled around,
She went to grab her snack and realized her snack was in her lunchbox.
So she asked me frantically, like, you please make sure that my snack is out of my lunchbox? This is a big thing. She was starving. It's like five hours that she has to go before her lunch gets there. It's a long time for a kid who's trying to learn
as the mom, I feel so bad. My kid was hungry. And we've talked about it's her journey and it's my journey. So I had to step back, do a little separation and go, okay, I can empathize. Like she was hungry. I feel bad. And I talked to her about this because you know, I want to do everything I can. I want to protect her and I
I want to jump in and fix it. And I know I can't. So I can make sure she has a snack separate. So we put an extra snack in her backpack that just will live there in a granola bar. And then I will send her snacks so that she can eat at her snack time and then she'll have her lunch. I get she was hungry, but it's not end of the world hunger. So there's a lot of
mom energy that goes in there that's all wrapped up like, my gosh. And I have to step back and say, you know what, this is a learning experience for her and that's okay.
I made my own assumptions and then was upset for myself in that she was going to have access to her lunch. So I never thought to ask like, I separate it out? I made my own assumptions.
she also made her own assumptions. So as I step back, get out of my emotions of, my gosh, my poor baby, you know? And we talked about some problem solving because I want my kids to be able to be confident adults who can problem solve, who can ask for things to be able to meet their own needs.
And so I asked, did you tell your teacher that you were really hungry?
And she said,
So did you ask if you could go get your lunch so that you could get your snack out of your lunch? And she said, no.
my kids go to an incredible school with such amazing teachers. And I know many, many, many teachers have extra snacks for kids that forget snacks. And as a parent, I'm always happy. And I have supplied snacks to both of my kids' classes This was early on in the year. Hadn't made it to Costco to go get snacks.
So I didn't have extra snacks there and her teacher honestly didn't have extra snacks. but what I asked her was, did you advocate for yourself? And I always tell my kids,
It's always worth asking because the worst thing that's gonna happen is they're gonna say no, and you're exactly where you are. So if my daughter had gone to her teacher and said, I forgot to take my snack out of the lunchbox, I'm really hungry, can I go get it? There is a possibility that her teacher would have said no.
There was also a possibility that her teacher would have said, my gosh, of course, go grab your snack. And she wouldn't have sat there hungry.
But she made her own assumptions. She didn't even give her teacher the opportunity.
she said, no, I didn't tell her that I was hungry or didn't have a snack because I knew what she would say. And I said, what would she say? And she said, she'd tell me I just had to wait till lunchtime. Now in my heart, it hurts. I honestly don't believe this is true. Her teacher is so awesome. And I honestly think that if she had told
her teacher that she was hungry, the teacher would have said, go in the bin and grab your lunchbox. Of course, I'm putting my own assumptions on the teacher, just like my daughter put her own assumptions on the teacher and neither one of us actually know. So the funny thing is we're both bringing in our own assumptions. And what I really want her to hear is that it's worth asking because
If she said no, she's exactly where she is. But if the teacher said yes, then she didn't go hungry.
And the teacher is happy to supply these kids with snacks. Parents bring in snacks. She makes sure parents know and kids know that if you forget you have snacks. Beginning of the year, she did not have extra snacks, but she does now a lot. As I wasn't the only parent that brought in snacks. I'm sure I'm not the only parent that had child come home saying I was hungry.
she had such strong assumptions. She'd put her own filters, own beliefs on what this teacher was gonna say that she didn't even try. So she sat there hungry.
she told me she was eating teeny tiny bits of gum because the flavor was helping.
instead of asking. Now we know that there's so much more that goes into asking. There's the social perception of what, what are my peers going to think? What's the teacher going to think of me? You know, am I going to get in trouble? Do I just buy into believing authority and never challenge authority and a teacher's an authority person?
There's a lot that goes into this. I'm oversimplifying just using the example of assumptions
what I want you to hear, because I think sometimes we don't say things, we don't advocate for ourselves because we don't have the language to do it. We don't have the example. And I know a lot of times people get stuck in the language. We don't know.
what to say or how to say it so we don't say anything at all. Instead of bumbling through, because we don't want to look bad in front of other people, we just sit there. so I always, in situations like this, love to talk through how to communicate with my kids, that role playing. we all
want to be good self advocates and then to be advocates for other people. We are not born being self advocates. We are not born being advocates. It is a learned skill. It is a skill that we have seen modeled, that we have taken language examples from.
And so in any situation, I'm always coming back with my kids to how could we have role played this so that they do have those language examples. So they have at least some jumping off point to talk through some of those trickier situations.
I do this with adults as well. It's not just my kids. I do this with myself. And if I have some big conversation that's coming up, then I will rehearse it and talk through it. I'll talk to other people about it. I do this with my husband, with friends, right? This isn't human social thing is that social learning. It gives us different options. And this is the coolest thing. So our brains.
will only give us the options from our past experiences and beliefs.
the funny thing is, and I'll share an experience that I had personally.
in how our brains work is I was at a playground and there is a squished cupcake at the top of the slide.
my son yells down to me and he's like, mom, there's a squished cupcake. My brain, don't eat it, don't lick it, don't touch it, don't sit in it, don't stand in it, don't throw it. My personal experiences with my son.
He's gonna look at, he's gonna touch it, he's gonna throw it at somebody, he's gonna play in it, he's gonna, right? Don't do this. So this is what I tell my kids. From my experiences, don't get in it. Gross, please don't get in it. Especially, please don't eat it.
There was another mom there. She had grabbed some paper towels, climbs up the structure, cleans up the cupcake. My brain never gave me the option to clean up the cupcake. It was just, don't touch it. Stay away from it. If somebody had said, hey, Landy, can you go clean up the cupcake? 100 % I would have gotten the baby wipes for my car and cleaned up the cupcake.
My brain didn't give me that option.
Our brains only give us the options that are the most enticing, that are the most potent. So she probably didn't have a kiddo that is one that would eat food off the ground, where I did. So my most potent was, don't eat it. Don't touch it, don't lick it, don't throw it at somebody. And hers was, clean it up.
Now, if that situation happens again, my brain has another option that it's going to present. don't eat it, don't lick it, don't touch it, don't throw it, and I'll go clean it up.
If you've ever had the experience that you do something and somebody is like, why did you do that? Or why didn't you do this? You know what I'm talking about? Because you never thought of it. This is where our assumptions are coming in, right? If that mom had gotten mad at me and said, my gosh, I can't believe she just stood there and didn't clean it up.
Her assumption was that I thought about cleaning it up and just didn't. But that never even occurred to me. So my daughter's assumption was the teacher would say no, not giving her the opportunity to say yes or no. Now I could have been mad at the teacher, assuming that she noticed that my daughter was sitting there hungry. And now I'm mad at her because she didn't attend to my daughter's needs. But again, I'm assuming
that she paid attention and that she noticed that my daughter wasn't eating. But maybe there's several kids in there that don't eat, that don't want to eat. Right? So then I'm assuming that she knows that my daughter is hungry
I'm assuming that she's reading my daughter's knowing that she's hungry. Then she's going to offer her a snack. Make all assumptions, right? She's busy. She's got 20 some kids in the class. She's also reading while they're eating. Yeah, she may have noticed she didn't eat, but she also may have thought, well, she already finished her snack. She didn't bring a snack. She's not hungry. She doesn't want a snack. There's a thousand other reasons, right? Again, we're all making assumptions.
Sometimes we assume that people will advocate for themselves and maybe they don't have the language. Maybe it never even occurred to them. Like I assumed my daughter would have talked to her teacher. And while I brought up that idea after school, maybe it never occurred to her in school. I don't know, we overlay guilt and we overlay shame because we put our own assumptions on the situation.
I remember getting so mad at my husband.
because he didn't read my mind. And I remember thinking, he should know me well enough, right? Like I'm acting mad. He should know I'm upset and he should ask me about it. He should know I am hungry at this time, right? There's so much assumption.
I even did this last night with my husband. It was dinner time and I am hungry. And my brain is assuming when it gets close to dinner time, then, and if your house is like mine, it starts to get a little chaos. The dogs want food and all of a sudden they're kind of pacing the edge of the kitchen going, I want it, I want it, I want it. start to get obnoxious. I have two giant dogs.
Then I have kids that are starting to go, mom, I'm hungry. Mom, I'm hungry. Mom, I'm hungry.
I'm trying to go through lunch boxes and clear out lunch boxes and get stuff ready for dinner. And I'm busy. So I'm in the kitchen into the picture. I'm in the kitchen. The kids are in there with me. We're trying to get lunches packed because I love getting home, clearing out the lunches, having the kids pack their lunches. So it's just done. And I don't have to think about it after dinner. Then I can kind of transition. So
We're getting all of that done. I'm trying to help them. I'm trying to get dinner. I don't know what I want to cook. So I'm starting to look through. It's end of the week.
if you're like me, I hate figuring out what's for dinner. And sometimes I'm really good in plan, but end of the week tends to be like, what's left? And my husband is sitting there at the dining room table. And I keep glaring at him.
it's chaos in the kitchen. I keep looking in the fridge. I keep saying, does anybody have any ideas for dinner? My medicine sits there on the computer. I'm getting more and more frustrated.
then I have that little like, savvy like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm doing registration for the cars, he was renewing the registration on my car. He was renewing the dog licenses. was good, valuable stuff that he was doing.
And I'm like at dinner time?
And then there's that little bit of snippy of I'm mad because I'm assuming that he's noticing that there's all this going on and really dinner time is not the time to sit on your computer and do all the paperwork. There's other times to do that. He is seeing he has a free moment. I, in his assumption, am handling this. We talked about this afterwards. I'm handling dinner. I've got that under control. So he has a free moment so he can get this other stuff done.
Now a little snippy comes out and I'm mad at him for not noticing, because I'm assuming he's in my brain and seeing things the exact way that I'm seeing it, not noticing me struggling. And he's upset because he's trying to do good things for me by re -registering my car,
And he's upset because he's trying to help me in his viewpoint. He's helping by getting the renewal of the dog licenses, by getting the renewal of the car registration. And here I am snapping at him and he's trying to help.
and we both have the assumptions that the other one is going to see our viewpoints.
So in his brain, we're dividing and conquering and getting stuff done. In my brain, because my husband travels for work. So when he's home, in my brain, he should help. I do this all the time by myself. I get really frustrated when he's sitting there and I don't want to cook dinner again. I'm in this chaos that is my life. And he's there sitting not helping me.
We both had the assumption of what was going to happen. And when it didn't happen, we both got frustrated. And the thing is, if I had asked nicely, hey, would you help me with dinner? 100%, he would have put down his stuff, said sure, and come over. If he had said, hey, I'm gonna pay the bills, is now an okay time? I would have said no. I would have said thank you. I still would have said no.
Like, help me. But I would have been more understanding at the point when I was watching him on the computer. I didn't know what he was doing. So I was extra frustrated. But if both of us had communicated, if neither one of us had just assumed the other one knew what we were doing, we would have had an easier time in that moment. Now, we're both pretty good at catching that stimpiness and not shifting into an argument. So we did. We caught it.
we backpedaled and said, okay, this isn't working. What do you need and what do I need?
But it was the assumptions that got us both tangled and upset.
So there's a quote that I love and I think it's from Tony Robbins, but I'm not entirely sure. And it's the quality of your life is dependent upon the quality of your questions or something like that.
I'm not so true and it's so powerful.
Because it's real, like the quality of my life. If we had rewound and asked the questions before, can you help me with dinner? Is this an okay time?
It would have gone smooth without anybody getting the grumpies.
it comes down to being aware that when we're feeling that angst inside of us and having that question, am I assuming what somebody else is thinking, what somebody else will do, somebody else's response?
We all make assumptions all of the time. And my biggest frustrations in life are when I assume something. When I assume how somebody is gonna react, somebody is gonna think that somebody is reading my mind. I assume that when there's an empty milk in the fridge, it will get thrown out and not put back in the fridge. But sometimes those assumptions,
are not taking into account that somebody's brain didn't give them that option. That they're not living through my viewpoint. That they're not living through my lens.
And one of the biggest ahas that I have figured out is that sometimes I'm assuming that people are going to live the quality of life that I expect for myself. So I have expectations for myself that I would do things that I will throw away the milk carton. But that's assuming that they're thinking exactly like me.
And so I'll pick on my poor husband again. He really is incredible. And I love him dearly. he does the dishes every night. every night that he's home. The dishes are his duty.
But if there's anything extra, like right now, there are two half empty Gatorade bottles from my son and his friends when they were over the play date, sitting on the back of the sink. Now.
What needs to happen, and my assumption is, because when I do the dishes, I will dump the Gatorade, rinse out the bottles, and put them in the recycling. When my husband does the dishes, and it's been sitting there for two days now.
The bottles sit there because it's not his brain is not giving him the option to rinse the bottles and put them in the recycling. And I was just busy the first day. So I set them there because when I go through and do the dishes, like I wiped down the sink and I wiped down the counters and you know, any of those bottles that are sitting there, I'm going to dump the little bit that's extra in there and rinse them out, put them in the recycling. So my assumption was my husband would do exactly the same thing.
His brain's not giving him those options. And so those bottles have sat there for two days. And the first day I grumbled and I was like, well, I guess I'll do them tonight. But he did the dishes again because he's home, which is fabulous.
So my frustration came because I assumed he thought like I did. And if I snap at him, then his frustration is going to come because he didn't even think of that option.
there's so many of those little times throughout our day, throughout our lives, that we're putting in those assumptions that somebody's thinking exactly like us, and that's not true. And so we get frustrated without really realizing that maybe their brain never even gave them that option.
I invite you to get curious where you're placing those assumptions in your life. And what happens when you assume that somebody's going to think a certain way or act a certain way or do something in a certain way, because that's how you would do it. And how much frustration are you getting? Because the thing is,
I sat there and grumbled the next day about those two Gatorade bottles. Did my husband worry about them that next day? No, never even occurred to him. They were just sitting there. So I was bothered and he was not because my assumptions and yes, I could have sat there and rinsed them out, put them in the recycling and eventually I did. But it really comes down to it wasn't bothering him. It was bothering me.
We can take this from these little things like Gatorade bottles and lunches. So how many times do you assume a holiday or a vacation is going to go a certain way and then you're really disappointed?
We put our expectations on our assumptions. And our expectations lead us to have a certain kind of quality.
But when our expectations and our assumptions don't meet reality, then we're really upset.
So sometimes having an expectation is good. I expect that I will be treated a certain way. I don't assume it's going to happen. I have the expectations, and we'll use an example of travel. If we're going on a vacation, we have the expectations that we will catch a flight, the flight will take off on time. We will go to a hotel, and then we will do whatever we're to do on our vacation. Say we're going to Disneyland.
But I'm not going to assume that my flight is going to take off on time. So there's a difference between expectations and assumptions, right? My expectation is, yes, I want it to take off at a certain time, whatever time's on my ticket. But I'm not assuming that it's going to take off on time. Sometimes we assume it's going to be late. But there is a difference between that expectation and the assumption. There's a fine line.
And there's a key to allowing yourself to really enjoy things. It's to still hold the expectation. I expect to go to Disneyland on my vacation. I booked the ticket. I booked the hotel.
but not to put weight in the assumptions that we make. I don't assume the flight is gonna be smooth. I don't assume the kids are not gonna be cranky, right? if that makes sense, the difference between that expectation that we can hold, this is where I wanna go. And the assumptions that we're gonna overlay this. And it's those assumptions that we get tripped up in. If I'm making the assumption it's gonna be a fabulous flight, the kids are gonna be happy the whole time.
I'm going be really upset when they're cranky. I'm still going to get to Disneyland, but I'm going to have a miserable time. If I have, we're going to Disneyland and if they happen to be cranky, they happen to be cranky. I can control and I am responsible for me and my experience.
I can understand they're having a hard time. It doesn't tank my energy in the same way.
as you're going through and getting curious, really get curious about those assumptions, about how you can communicate in a different way so that we're not tied up in those assumptions. Because remember the relationships are the key to our happiness. And so much of our frustration and stress comes from our relationships because we're taking it personally, because we're assuming things about other people.
they're going to think, how they're going to act, and then we get mad when they don't do it the way we think they should.
So I invite you to really get curious in your own life and look at where are you having your biggest frustrations? Where are you having those unhappy times? And then go back a little bit and get curious about why. What's behind that frustration? Is it an assumption that somebody is supposed to read your mind? That they didn't react or interact in the same way that you would?
Are you taking it personally because somebody is upset? You know, if we're going to Disneyland, I've seen this so much where parents they take their kids to Disneyland on this big vacation. And then the kids are cranky and tired and hungry and they throw a fit. And the parents take that fit personally. I spent so much money and so much time and I did this amazing thing for you and you're throwing a fit.
They took it personally. That fit is nothing to do with the parent and the vacation. The fit is everything to do with they're hungry and they're tired and they're overstimulated. The kids are probably so excited to be at Disneyland, but it's also a lot to be at Disneyland. And so it's stepping back and saying, am I taking this personally when it's not personally about me? Honestly, it has nothing to do with about me. And am I making assumptions?
that are not clearly communicated.
Sometimes our own beliefs and our own values are what are making us frustrated and upset because we hold these and put these on someone else when they don't hold the same values, same beliefs, and same viewpoint on life.
So put on your detective hat, taking a step back and really ask yourself in that next moment of frustration.
What's this about? Did I assume something was going to happen?
Did I put my own personal thing and personal beliefs on this situation?
Because right in that moment...
I you're going to start to see how you can start deactivating those moments because you're like, well, couldn't read my brain.
And not that little bit of shift can make such an incredible difference in your life.
I want to thank you for taking the time to do something good for yourself and listening to this podcast and getting curious about how it can change your life and your relationships to create more happiness for you. Because that contentment in our relationships and our happiness is what is going to give us the healthy mind and healthy brain for the long term.
And I also want to say, because I think everyone should hear, you are so incredible. You're an incredible human being. You are smart. You are fun. You're kind. You're creative and talented. And I am so lucky to have you in my life. I love you and I like you. And I wish you all the happiness. We'll talk to you in the next episode.
Landy Peek (33:48)
Hey, before you go, just a little bit of legal. This podcast is designed for educational purposes only. It is not to replace any expert advice from your doctors, therapists, coaches, or any other professional that you would work with. It's just a chat with a friend, me, where we get curious about ideas, thoughts, and things that are going on in our lives. And as we're talking about friends, if you know someone who would benefit from the conversation today, please share.
Because I think the more that we open up these conversations, the more benefit we all get. So until next time, give yourself a big hug from me and stay curious because that's the fun in this world.
