“Who do you say I am?” – Assumptions and Habits

My mind is spinning with thoughts as questions from a Facebook post asking about a Gospel reading collided with a book I’m reading about how habits form, become entrenched, and change.

In Mark 8:27-37, Jesus is asking his disciples who do people say that he, Jesus, is and then asks his disciples who do they say that he is.

The questions that caught my attention in the Facebook post focused on how we identify others, the assumptions we make about them; and how our assumptions impact our interactions. Of course this goes both ways. So I started thinking about that, the positive assumptions I make of some individuals or groups, the negative assumptions I make about others.

And then the thoughts collided with what I had been reading in The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Habits form with the repetition of a cycle that reinforces a behavior…a cue, a routine that takes place as a result of the cue, and then a reward for following through on the routine. Repeat. Repeat enough times for the reward to be craved and you have an established habit.

So…habits…assumptions…”Who do you say I am?”…???

I’m thinking that our assumptions are habits with which we look at someone, a group, a situation, something and sometimes we answer that question through the lens of the habit we have developed through repeated interactions or assumptions. To illustrate…

It’s probably a safe bet, assumption, that we all have at least one person in our lives that we find difficult to interact with…a coworker, family member, group member, teammate, etc. That person probably wasn’t difficult initially. But at some point we had a negative interaction. Ok, so what, that happens in good relationships at times. But what if those negative interactions keep happening, what if a cycle keeps repeating itself?

I’m in this interactive situation with Person Z and our numerous previous encounters have not gone well. Does my being in this situation act as a cue, to which I react by bracing myself for something negative, and if/when that negative happens there’s a reward from thinking “I knew it” or “Of course that was going to happen”? If negative encounters continue, I then form the habit of assuming that the next encounter will have a negative at some point.

Does this assumption then expand to other individuals or groups? In encountering others with the same name as Person Z, do I brace myself for something negative? Or if my assumption ties to a role or profession, do I extend that assumption to all people in that role or profession?

Assumptions are really the telling of a single story about a person or group. And that’s never a good thing. The counter questions in the Facebook post asked about how others see us, what assumptions are others making about us. There’s much more to me than what someone else might encounter in one interaction or even in a few limited interactions. I have more than a single story. So does everyone else. Of course looking at someone through a single lens gives an incomplete picture…maybe not wrong, but at the very least, not complete. Maybe we make correct assumptions at times. What about when we don’t?

So how is the habit cycle changed? How are assumptions changed? Assumptions based on negative encounters might in part be about self-preservation, that’s understandable. But what if we’ve assumed wrongly? In this very often divisive society or working situations, there may not be many options but to change that cue-routine-reward cycle to begin changing those assumptions and restoring relationships. Though I suppose walking away is an option as well, at times a necessary one.

I haven’t finished the book yet so I don’t know exactly how that change happens. But if we keep coming together with our assumptions, our single stories…especially negative ones…we will continue to answer the question “Who do you say I am?” about someone or a group in a negative light. And they may very well be answering that question about me and you in the same way.