What's on Your Bookshelf?
“What’s On Your Bookshelf” is a personal and professional growth podcast exploring the intersections of passion, potential, and purpose - featuring multi-certified coach and leadership development consultant Denise R. Russo alongside Sam Powell, Zach Elliott, Tom Schweizer, Dennis LaRue, and Michelle King.
What's on Your Bookshelf?
140 The Four Agreements: Assumptions Unraveled
We explore the Third Agreement—don’t make assumptions—through real stories at work and home, and connect it to impeccable words and not taking things personally. Curiosity, clear communication, and coaching emerge as tools to replace guesswork with truth and recover agency.
• the trap of adding meanings that were never said
• how merit myths distort hiring and rejection
• assuming positive intent to lower threat and listen
• practical questions that replace stories with facts
• coaching as a way to test beliefs and act wisely
• linking all four agreements to self-leadership
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Welcome to What's on Your Bookshelf, a life and leadership podcast where we live out loud the pages of the books that are on our shelves. With your host, Denise Russo and Sam Powell.
SPEAKER_02:Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of What's on Your Bookshelf. My name is Denise Russo. I'm here with my friend Sam Powell. And we are walking through a book called The Four Agreements. It is a Toltec Wisdom book and a practical guide to personal freedom. We have this podcast because we're living out loud the pages of the books that we've taken off our shelves. And this one is really, really a doozy, isn't it, Sam?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm really liking it. Like I think I said this probably every episode, but sometimes this one feels like it pulls some of like the deepest lessons of my life, like out of my head in this really kind of nebulous space and into some concrete words. And so I'm, I don't know, I'm really like vibing with the book.
SPEAKER_02:I like this book too. And it's really short, it's an easy read. If you haven't picked up this book yet, we should have in the show notes an easy way for you to grab a copy of it. And it's not long, but it's also not easy. And what I think I mean by that is like the words are easy, the concepts are easy, but applying it not so easy. Yeah. Yeah. So we've walked through a whole bunch so far. The first agreement really got me. That's about being impeccable with your word. And what I took away from that, Sam, is that it's not even just about the words we say to others, but the words we say to ourselves. And the second thing was the second agreement was about not taking things so personal. And I think again, it's like not just what other people are doing, but what we're doing. And then today is about not making assumptions. And so I'm really looking forward to our time together over the next half hour or so on this because I think we do have a tendency to make assumptions about everything.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think so. And I think that, you know, if you really think about the conflict that you have in your personal life, in the world, like on the smallest and biggest stages, a lot of times it just comes down to assumptions, right? Like I assume that you think the same way I do. I assume that your life experience is my life experience. I assume that the way I think about things is the way everyone thinks about things. Like it's funny, my my son is really um like sensitive to fabric. Like he won't wear like a plain cotton blend t-shirt. He doesn't like the way it feels. He like describes it as like just feels weird on his body. And so like he does a lot of like the athletic performance type, you know, like smoother materials and stuff. But he's impossible to shop for because he has to feel it. So like he wants clothes as his gifts, but like for Christmas or birthdays when people ask, but he has to go pick it out because if you pick it out for him, there's like uh coin flip as to whether or not he's gonna like it or not like it. And um I was talking to my mom about that because she said, Oh, you know, what could I get? Austin, you know, like we were just having one of those conversations, and um she was like, I could go pick him up some school clothes if you need, because I said he was out of pants, right? He grew from last winter to this winter, and uh she's like, Oh, I can go pick him up stuff. And I was like, Yeah, I you could, but he might not wear it, right? And she was saying that, you know, she's been that way her whole life too, and she thought everybody needed to touch clothes in order to buy them. She's like, I walk through a store and I feel every single thing, and she's like, I used to drive my mom crazy. She goes, I didn't realize that not everybody was like that, right? Like you're we're all so caught up in our own life experience and the way that we process the world, the way that we've seen the world, which, you know, in the grand scheme of things, we've seen a tiny drop in the bucket of what's out there in the world. But we just make these assumptions that, like, oh yeah, I don't like this. Nobody likes this, right? Like, oh, everybody has to do this. I remember seeing a whole dialogue about how people think, and people were blowing up like a Twitter thread on what do you mean you do it this way or you think this way, or you don't have an inner dialogue, or you do have an inner dialogue. Like, and I think those assumptions create so much of the conflict that we, you know, that we deal with because we're all just we only have our own point of view unless we go and seek out other ones.
SPEAKER_02:And we believe the assumptions to be true, and then we make up these stories in our minds, and then we get hurt feelings sometimes over nothing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, over absolutely nothing. And you were talking last time about a story where you had been sitting down with a boss and they had told you that you were a really good starter and they meant it as a compliment, but you made this assumption and you'd said it last time, it was like dot dot dot that you're not a good finisher. And the person, and you'd said like the person never meant that. They never ever did that. But that's something that, like, I've heard you say that to me in the last few years and over the time that we worked together, as like something that you made this assumption and like pulled it in. So, like, and I thought it was super interesting. And so as we as we turned to the page from last week to this week, that story was just stuck in my head of it was one of those assumptions that then sits with you and becomes an agreement, right? Like it's almost as if these are the things that sometimes we then imprint on you know, on our soul, on our being, on our identity.
SPEAKER_02:Have you seen the movie Inside Out by Pixar? Yeah, so you know, in the movie, and if you're listening and you've never seen the movie part one or two, please watch it. It's such a good adult leadership development, human behavior series film, and yet it's a children's animated program from Disney. And there's in the movie when the characters create what they call core memories, they're these things that look like glass marbles, and they're they're fragile, but they get stored. And I think in this story where I had this leader tell me I was a good story or a good starter, I created a marble. And the marble wasn't exactly her marble, it was my marble, right? Right. So she had her version of what she thought about me, which was positive. But I took what she said and took the silence of what she didn't say, which was I felt like she was saying I was a bad finisher. And that has stuck with me at the subconscious and very conscious level as well in my life and in my career. And so the book calls it like it is and says, all the sadness and drama you have lived in your life is rooted in making assumptions and taking things personally. And when I think of that story I shared, I took very personally something that didn't even happen. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, how many times do we do that, right? Like it's those thoughts that you think in the shower late at night when you're trying to fall asleep and you're like, oh my gosh, everybody hates me, right? I shouldn't have done that, I shouldn't have thought that. And like you're just making stuff up like they're people are thinking about their own lives. They're at home having their own existential crisis, not thinking about you whatsoever. They're just thinking about what you think about them. And so we spend our whole lives thinking about how we're thinking about each other, but nobody's actually thinking about each other. And it's really exhausting at the end of the day. And you know, and I and and I like that, you know, what you just said, I highlighted that same part, but it's the blend of the last a last agreement and this agreement, right? Is not taking things personally. And this is we make assumptions and then take them personally. Like this is like we double down on the, you know, this this place that keeps us trapped in, you know, what he calls a dream, right? It's not real, it's not anything that's actually going on in reality, but like we are all all the time stuck in these things. And so when I think about, you know, the purpose of this book is to give you freedom. If you can release taking things personally and you can release assumptions, I mean, that that feels like freedom to me. And he, you know, he says, well, just a little bit after the quote you said that it's always better to ask questions than to make assumptions, because assumptions set us up for suffering. And I think that that's like that's one of the skills I try to teach my kids is well, I guess I don't really try to teach the baby that because she's one, but she will, she'll get the lesson eventually. But it's that don't assume, right, that what you're thinking, right? Because it's that judgment that we have first and foremost when somebody says something, instead, like sit in curiosity. If you can take a pause, take a moment to pause the judgment that you want to have in in whatever thing, situation, something's going on, and instead go, huh. I wonder if, right? I wonder what they're thinking, I wonder this. And you just lean in and say, tell me more about that. Tell me more about how you're feeling, tell me more about what makes you say that or what makes you think that. Because if you do that, you create just enough space to combat the assumptions. And, you know, I think good questions, like good leaders ask good questions, right? Like it's that thought process of giving a little bit of space to where you don't sit in this world of assumption and you sit in a world of curiosity instead, which helps you reach across the table to somebody.
SPEAKER_02:I think there's a couple pieces to that is that one, you have to be brave enough to ask the question, because sometimes the question, because you took something personally from the last chapter, you're afraid to ask the question, or maybe you're afraid of what the answer would be. But there's a second piece is that let's assume you're not afraid to ask the question, but you don't get an answer. So I think it's important to think about the fact that you're not always going to get an answer, and you may not always get the answer you want if you do get an answer. This exact same scenario happened to me just recently. Well, I can't say exact same parallel scenario happened recently. So recently I was having um a discussion around being a part of a project that I really, really, really wanted to be a part of. And I had prepared, I had all of the skills, talents, and abilities, background and expertise. I asked the right questions. I answered the questions that I was asked the best way I could. And in the end, I didn't get this project that I really, really wanted. So the first thing I did was I immediately asked the question about getting feedback for why I wasn't given the opportunity. And the answer that came back was kind of like an answer that wasn't really an answer. It was an answer that said, Well, you know, you were great and you're so talented. And we had to pick the very best of the best. And so then I hung up that phone and then started the storyline and sabotaging myself about, well, I'm not the best. I clearly am not the best. What could I have done to be the best? Instead of realizing that, you know, you have a company called Lead the Game, and that is about if you think of it from a sports context, there will always be a winner. John, you just mentioned John's book, Good Leaders Ask Great Questions, but John Maxwell also wrote a book called Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn. And the book basically says you're never losing, but you're always learning. And so you may not be great at finishing, but you are great at starting, or you might be really, really talented and good for a job you're applying for and still not get it. It doesn't mean that you're not good. It doesn't mean you're not qualified. In fact, we were just having this conversation before we started the recording around people that are desperate right now for roles and the market is saturated with people that need jobs. It's competitive, it's difficult, and recruiters are overwhelmed, overworked, and probably just picking the very first thing that's on the top of the pile that could remotely possibly do the job.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And like I was just actually engaging in like a Facebook or not Facebook, a LinkedIn chat about that, right? Like somebody had like the person had posted a screenshot of like some rant online that was like recruiters are terrible and like how dare they blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Like, right? Like blaming with like so much contempt recruiters for lack of transparency, feedback, information, ghosting, like all they name every problem in the job market right now. And it's like that's it, that's not like that's not it. Like you should take a second, and the whole and the person who posted it, their whole point was it's not recruiters. Like the recruiters aren't the problem, they're a victim of the problem, right? And and we want to because we want to take that, right? Because of this person, like taking things personal, we have this immediate want to, because we take something personal, then push back and figure out what it is, right? It's that rejection of the hurt that I feel in this moment, the disappointment that I feel in this moment. And we push back and we try to blame somebody else. We try to find, you know, whatever. And instead of right, what we should do is sit in some curiosity and go, I wonder what a recruiter is actually going through, right? Like there, we're like, I'm so frustrated that they're if the posting's been up for an hour and there are over a hundred applicants. Well, what does what does a recruiter feel like? They got 250 applicants that they personally have to process in an hour, right? Like the amount of overwhelm that would be in that situation, right? And like you said, a lot of times when it comes down to hiring decisions, it's down to factors that you have no idea about. I've been a hiring manager hundreds and hundreds of times. I I led a team that went through hypergrowth and we brought people in and out. Like, I mean, we hired a ton of people. And I, it was a team of like customer success managers. We were managing customers. And so sometimes what I was hiring for from one moment to the next was different. It's like the person that left and who were backfilling had this very particular account and these very particular needs in that account. And so maybe the person who was like next up on my list of people to hire, like they were the best candidate overall. Like if I'm thinking ideal customer success manager, I would hire this person. But the person three down on the list, who's good, was actually the person I made the offer to because they had a particular thing that would fit that particular need at the time. And I think that's what a lot of people forget about in things like the job market in this situation, because we assume that everything at work, because the lies we've been told is that it's all meritocracy, right? Like if I'm the best, I get the job. If I'm, you know, the the best athlete, I win the game. That's not how like go watch any Sunday, like right there's the term any given Sunday exists for a reason, right? Like the best team can lose to the worst team on any given day because of a number of factors, right? Like you can be the best candidate. You could be, you could have been the absolute best person for that project you wanted, but they needed one particular thing that you had no idea about, right? And like they didn't say it because they just didn't say it or whatever. And this other random person who maybe is not a good candidate potentially, or maybe they are, just had the thing that they needed. And and I think we get so frustrated and we end up taking these, like making all these assumptions that this is how the world works and this is how things happen, and this is the decisions, this is the way that people make decisions because this is how I would make decisions. And it's just that's just not it, right? That's just not those are the assumptions that are helping that are keeping us stuck, keeping us, you know, kind of caught up in these unhelpful cycles.
SPEAKER_02:Ruiz says in the book that we make assumptions that everyone sees life the way that we do. We assume that others think the way we think, feel the way we feel, judge the way we judge, and abuse the way we abuse. And it's the biggest assumptions that humans make. And so to me, this is why coaching works. So I put a note on this part of the page, Sam, where he talks about how if you make assumptions about yourself, like even the stories I've just shared, you aren't able to discover easily what to do next, maybe. And so when you have a coach, because you're overestimating or underestimating yourself, you're asking yourself questions, you're not finding answers, sometimes having that impartial, unbiased person to ask you questions that make you pause and help you to think, help you to also remove a little bit of the emotion, which is tricky. You can't remove your emotions. I've been doing a lot of study on the emotionally agile brain. In fact, we just concluded a really great series on a very complex book called The Emotionally Agile Brain. And it talks about how like 95% of what we do is based on our thoughts and our emotions and our feelings. It's just that's what makes us human. And you can't remove that. But what you can do is harness it and understand it and drive yourself towards something different, and that's why coaching works, because if you can't just go inside of yourself and be able to say, okay, what am I going to do next? Then you're going to stay stuck, right? We talked about even in the obstacle is the way is that there was the villagers that just said, Well, I can't push the boulder. So they just stopped. They didn't even try to think of anything else. And then when the guy actually moved the rock, they got mad at him. Yeah. And you know, he assumed, Well, I did what they wanted. I moved the rock, people could leave the village. And his assumption was that he thought people wanted to leave, but but actually they just were okay feeling comfortable being stuck.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. I uh years ago when I led a team, one of my team leads that uh ran part of the team, she came to me and said, Hey, I have this idea for a training that I think we should we should do. And it was all around uh assuming positive intent. And so we were we were a team that managed customers, right? And so, like we're dealing with personalities with pro we manage customers inside of customer support. So it's people coming to you with giant problems that someone inside their company is yelling at them about, right? It's like blocking business, causing these are Fortune 500 companies, like huge problems. They're coming to you as the person to fix it. And so it's a stressful job in a stressful situation. And so she was like, I think that this would really help everybody out. And so we she went through the training with me and I loved it. And we implemented it as like a required training, it became part of our onboarding process. But the whole training was based on just the simple pro like the simple premise that everyone is trying their best, and you need to assume that from the get-go with everything that they've got in all the resources that they have, right? From you know, mentally, emotionally, you know, physical resources, people resources, people are just doing their best to get through things, and you need to assume that they've got a positive intention and work from that place because that leaves things open. Because the opposite of that is that you're assuming that people don't have a positive intention, that they're out to get you, that they're doing whatever. And when you live in that place, you are basically putting yourself in a state of danger at all times, right? You're looking for, like, think about all the toxic workplaces that you've ever worked in, right? The toxic bosses, the toxic coworkers, you your hackles are raised, like, right, you're sitting there with your shield and your spear, and you're like ready to go on the attack at any point. But if you can flip that around and say, we're gonna assume everybody's trying their best, right? And I'm just gonna live in that place of, you know, I assume you've got a good intention here. And so when you do that, it gives you the foundation to then sit in curiosity, to sit and have those questions, right? And like you said, like a coach is amazing for this because you've got to work with your emotions. We all feel them, we all make emotional decisions. This is how we live our life. Emotions are good things, they help us, they keep us safe at the end of the day. Um, but you've got to analyze them, you've got to understand that. And the great thing about having those outside perspectives is having somebody who can help you assume positive intent in your own space and say, Well, what would that look like if you were doing that? Are you sure that that's you know, how do you like my favorite coaching question? One of my favorite coaching questions is how do you know that's true? Right. If I say something and I'm like, oh gosh, I think everybody hates me, right? Or oh my gosh, I know that they're all judging me for this thing that I said and the, you know, the thing that I messed up. I had a blog post go out and there was absolutely a typo in the subject line today. 100% missed a letter, whatever. And I'm like, oh my gosh, everyone's gonna judge me. And it's like, well, how do you know that's true? How do you know that they're not looking at it thinking, oh, is this what she meant to write? Because it made a different word and kind of changed the meaning. It's like, well, is this what she meant? Like, right? And it's that, how do you know this is true? How do you like, right? I was trying my best, so just moving too fast, apparently. Like, did it not a big deal? But it's that having somebody be able to hold that space of assuming we're trying our best, right? Of of, you know, let me let me dig a little deeper, let me see what's going on, let me sit in a space where I can ask uh questions. And, you know, he says that we we oftentimes lack the courage, like you were saying earlier, to ask questions because we've made this agreement that uh uh questions aren't like a safe thing, essentially, at the end of the day, right? Like we the assumption was made that you know questions aren't a safe thing because we need to know things. Knowing is safety and questioning is therefore not knowing, and so therefore not safe. And we've all collectively at some point come to this agreement. And so there's that, like you said, you need that bravery to kind of open that up and to to live in those spaces.
SPEAKER_02:When I first started working for success factors, it was before it became SAP, and we had this very brash and bold CEO, like really brash, like would say the F word on all hands meetings and stuff, right? So he made us sign this document, and it was like all these lists of rules, and his communication was extraordinarily clear. It was like, don't leave a man down and don't be an a-hole, except spelled out, and we had to sign it. And people thought it was like, wow, that's super bold. But he was like, I don't want you to make any assumptions about what I expect in this company, and yet he became so beloved that when it was time for us to do the acquisitions and he was deciding to move on, people took it really very difficultly. And the book he kind of talks about clear communication. He says, with clear communication, all of your relationships change and you don't need to make assumptions because then things become clear. And if you can just say, This is what I want, and this is what you want, and you could communicate and be impeccable with your word, doesn't it all go back to the very first chapter, which he even said when the book started? If you don't get the first one right, which is being impeccable with your word, then none of the rest works anyway. And so I was kind of struck when you were talking about the assumption of positive intent, because that's an assumption, right? We assume people are coming to work to be good people, but is that true also? Like asking the question, is it true? Maybe it isn't. Maybe it is. Years and years ago, I used to work for an airline and I was responsible for recruiting and training the new hires that were primarily coming from college campuses, people that had not yet graduated but were well on their way to earning their degrees and stuff. And I remember that in the closing day of the onboarding, we would talk about how happy they were in that moment and how excited they were that they were going to get this certificate and we're gonna have a celebration and have some fun before they started their first day on the floor in a very challenging customer service-oriented environment. Just like you're talking about working with Fortune 500s, people working for things like airlines are working with people whose flights are canceled because of things way outside of anybody's control, like weather. And one of the things that we talked about with these students or these new hires was think of how you feel right now. Are you excited right now? Are you really thinking like you're really happy that this is your new job? Because I promise you something along the way is going to change. And what changes? And when that changes, whether you're working for a Fortune 500 company or you're in customer support or you work at a hospital or you're on a sports field, no matter what it is or where it is, when you no longer feel that you can be at your best and that you can be impeccable with your word, and that you can um not make assumptions and not take things personally. And then we'll get into the fourth one next week. But when that happens, be brave enough to walk away because you're doing nobody any favors by you being sad or you pushing your negative energy onto anybody else. It kind of goes around, even Sam, what we've talked about a lot with IkieGuy, right? You can be good at something and not like it. You can like what you're doing and not be good at it. You can like what you're doing, be good at it, but just don't gel with your team or your manager or the company's culture, or you can gel with all of that, but go home every day so exhausted because you don't feel like what you're doing is making a difference in the world. And if those things don't all align, life is too short to stay stuck.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. And uh, you know, what you're saying, he says, like everybody has the right to tell you no or yes, but you always have the right to ask, right? So, like you're saying, right? Like when you get an answer, right? Like you don't have to keep pushing, keep going along with it, right? Like it's that respecting, I guess everybody's a right to consent at the like in a more basic term, right? Like I am allowed to ask any question that I want, really, and you're allowed to say no, yes, no answer, whatever, right? Like it's that you you're allowed to choose what you want, right? On the iki guy scale. You're allowed to choose that balance that works for you at the end of the day, and being able to recognize that is key. And he he says a little bit later, you know, like information or idea is merely the seed in your mind. What will really make the difference is action. And so, you know, you need to be able to become aware, and like you always say, right? Like your thoughts lead to, you know, your beliefs to lead to you know what you do in the world and all that sort of good stuff. And, you know, I think that that's that your if you can let go of assumptions and sit in curiosity and know you've got the right to ask questions, and that's not a bad thing, it's not a scary thing, it's not an unsafe thing, right? Letting go of that agreement that questions are somehow, you know, a bad, a bad thing to not know something is a bad thing. It's you know, none of that's true. If you can let that go, and if you can sit in the space of curiosity and not assuming that somebody's life and thought process and all that is the same as yours, then it gives you this space, right? It it really does create the sense of freedom for you to then let go of taking things personally, right? And and be helps you become impeccable with your word.
SPEAKER_02:I think in the end, for me for this chapter, it was a reinforcement that this book is about you and that in life, we don't live life alone. So you are surrounded by other people, circumstances, things, places, whatever. But it's it is our obligation to focus on ourselves first. It's like the story of when you're on the airplane and the flight attendant says, if we have an emergency, put the oxygen mask on yourself first. We started a book with Zach uh called Extreme Ownership, and it was a book written by former Navy SEALs, and the very first uh chapter talks about how as a leader, you start with yourself first because you can't lead others well if you aren't leading yourself well. And so next week, when we rounded out with the fourth agreement, we we talked about being impeccable with your word. We talked about today not making assumptions, we talked about How we are going to not take things personally. But in the end, it's about how you're going to show up each day. So next week we're going to talk about how if anybody else is not having that positive intent, or that their motives are different than yours, or their thinking is different than yours, or their beliefs are different than yours. That's okay. This is about you. And next week we're going to talk about always doing your best and what that means as we finish up the fourth agreement. So anything else, Sam, for today before I we let the listeners go?
SPEAKER_01:Uh no, I don't assume that they need anything else.
SPEAKER_02:Good ending. Good ending. Well, if friends, thanks for visiting with us today. Hope you're getting value from this book, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. We'd love to hear from you if you're able to have findings that you're applying in your own life that are making a difference. There's ways for you to reach out to us in the show notes. You can find us on LinkedIn. We would love to be able to see how your journey through our books and living them out loud is manifesting for yourself. So for at least for today, my name is Denise Russo. And on behalf of my friend Sam Powell, this has been another episode of What's on Your Bookshelf, and I'm not sure if you're not sure if you're not sure if you're not sure.