I’d love to hear your thoughts and hypotheses!
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0:00 Hey there. So I just got off a call with one of my coaching clients and we hit on this really interesting idea that I just wanted to share with everyone and see if it might be useful to anyone else.
0:18 And I got permission to share it for my client. Sam, hi, thank you. This is what I love about coaching.
0:27 Sometimes we get to co-create these like really interesting things in the midst of a session. And and often I learn as much as as I share in these sessions.
0:40 So anyway, the idea was noticing the usefulness of having a hypothesis kind of as opposed to a goal or in place of a goal.
0:53 And sort of noticing that some of the things that a hypothesis does, like, let's say you're going into a change.
1:07 A new job or a new living situation or a new relationship or you want to create some kind of change, right?
1:16 And so rather than coming in with a goal of like, I would say, I want to make sure that in six months we've done this or I've gotten here or it needs to provide me with this, right?
1:27 Having a hypothesis of like, hmm, I wonder if, you know, I kind of have this hypothesis that if I, make this change, right?
1:35 These other things might happen and I might have these other new opportunities and then maybe that could lead to this other thing.
1:41 I wonder if that might happen. And then it does a couple of really useful things, that goals don't do or sort of that is the opposite of goals, which is that goals can often make us feel like if we're not reaching them, we're doing something wrong and then we get in a guilt place and we get fixated on what we’re not doing.
2:00 Whereas a hypothesis, because it’s basically just a question, it sidesteps the potential for guilt and shoulds and I'm not doing it right.
2:14 But it creates all this space for asking questions and kind of being open to possibilities in the future. And our kind of hypothesis about hypotheses is that, you know, it sort of gently primes your subconscious to be like, here's this thing that I'm interested in that I want to pay attention to that would be cool.
2:36 But then you can kind of set it aside and not spend all this time, like sort of making sure, oh, am I achieving my goal and getting to the next step, which can often be counterproductive.
2:51 And the thing we noticed is that it seems like, with a little bit of anecdotal evidence anyway, that the hypothesis helped achieve more with less guilt than actually creating a goal in the first place.
3:06 And just as a little addition to that, we're also sitting with the possibility of pairing that hypothesis with an intention, which is obviously the way that I work a lot.
3:20 Instead of goals in thinking about something to move towards and that I'm excited about, which comes from my wonderful teacher Staci Boden. And so Sam proposed this idea, which I'm really interested in, which is sort of, if you think about, like, a mission and a vision.
3:38 The vision is kind of where you want to get in the future or how you want to see the world change in the future and then mission is sort of, how are we going to show up, day to day to make that happen.
3:47 A hypothesis is kind of like the vision and then an intention is kind of like the mission. The intention is kind of like, okay, if this is my hypothesis that like this change might lead to this outcome that I'm interested in,
4:01 what could I learn from that journey or what would help me on that journey, right? Or what would help me explore that possibility?
4:08 What kind of energy? What kind of quality, right? How do I want to show up day to day? To sort of go on the journey that this hypothesis is putting me on.
4:18 So I just think it's really interesting. And it really leads with curiosity, which is something that I love and I think is a really valuable.
4:28 And so, you know, I think we will both, Sam and I will both be studying it over the next month or so, but I invite anyone else here to play with that idea of a hypothesis.
4:41 And I would love to hear what you think or if you use it and you notice anything, that would be great to hear.
4:47 So I hope everybody's doing well. Take care.
What if we try a hypothesis instead?