If I have learned anything in my 49 years on this planet, it is that there is an alarming amount of people who are not good at understanding perception, assuming and communicating enough to know how they all should work.

I myself have been guilty along the way but have tried to learn from my mistakes and understand that not everyone sees things from my perception. Therefore, I do try not assume that I know an answer before I communicate to see if the other person had a different perception.

I do fall off the wagon from time to time and I kick myself for it when I do. When it happens I am big enough to admit I was wrong and apologize. Many people fail to take the steps of admitting and apologizing.

I know, it sounds deep but it really is not. I have said for years that communication is the key to any situation and relationship. The problems starts when a person sees half of a situation, thinks their perception is the whole story and then assumes they know what has happened or been implied.

As an example, I will tell you about a work place incident that I witnessed. A lady came in earlier than her normal time, said she had meetings to go to and she left. We will call her lady A.

Another woman at work, we will call her lady B, insisted this woman was lying about having meetings and told everyone that lady A was just running around all day and getting paid for it.

Lady B even went as far to ask the supervisor if lady A had meetings that day. The supervisor replied that she was not aware of any meetings.

To make a long story short, lady B was wrong. Lady A did in fact have meetings and the supervisor had just forgotten about them because they did not involve her.

So as you can see, Lady B made a mess out of something because she ran with just her assumptions. To boot, it was something she had no business sticking her nose into to begin with but that is another topic all together.

My favorite way to say assuming is ASSuming because it usually does make an ass out of you in the end. Yet, I see people doing it all of the time and the aftermath of problems that can occur from it. I also see these same people repeating the cycle no matter what the outcome is because they do not seem to learn from their mistakes. (Lady B is one of those people.)

There is actually a forth key to this and that is honesty. I am also alarmed at the amount of people who find it easier to lie than to tell the truth but that may be going too far off the track of this conversation. So just know that when I say communication, I mean honest communication. I did not want to ASSume that you knew that. :)