Question the Conclusion
You Don’t Have to Believe Everything You Think
A little girl watches her mom make dinner and notices she always trims the ends off the roast before sliding it into the oven. Curious, she asks why. Her mom responds, "I don’t know. It’s just how Grandma always did it.”
So the girl goes to Grandma, who laughs and says, "Oh honey, I only did it because our oven was too small.”
This tiny parable reveals a big truth: how past experiences can dictate our present behaviors. We blindly follow outdated practices without considering their relevance in our present lives. It’s like living your life based on expired instructions. The good news is, you don’t have to believe everything you think!
American author Byron Katie has done beautiful work on the concept of inquiry. In her book, Loving What Is, she argues that the act of writing down our thoughts puts a pause on our inner monologue, not so we can keep them forever like inspirational fridge magnets, but so we can actually see them, allowing us to distinguish between reality and the conclusions created by our minds. Writing down our thoughts ensures their authenticity, instead of letting them run the show in the background like a bad ‘90s sitcom rerun.
My own coach once said, “I wonder what would happen if you sat for 10 minutes a day and wrote down everything swirling in your head?” At first I thought, easy peasy, I love a good to-do list. But sitting still for 10 minutes was not as easy as it sounds and I was shocked at what I discovered. On Day 1, after ten minutes of noble silence and heroic resistance to email-checking, I wrote this gem:
I don’t get anything done.
Wow. Ten minutes well spent. (And ironically, I did get something done… I wrote that.)
In coaching, we unpacked it:
Where in your life are you not getting it done?
What meaning do you make when you don’t get it done?
Who are the people who are affected by you not getting it done?
What is the importance of getting it done?
How long have you been thinking of getting it done?
What is the level of confidence in your ability to get it done?
And just like that, my default mental soundtrack lost its grips. I stopped treating my thoughts like facts, and started treating them like what they are: suggestions. Options. Sometimes… wild guesses.
Inquiry isn’t about fixing yourself, it’s about noticing.
Noticing what’s running in the background.
Noticing what you’ve outgrown.
Noticing that maybe, just maybe, your mental roast doesn’t need trimming.
When we create space to observe our thoughts - without judgment, without urgency - we unlock the possibility to respond with choice instead of habit.
That’s where clarity lives.
That’s where freedom begins.
And that’s when the roast finally fits in the oven.