This morning I came across a common source of stress – jumping. Well, not the type of jumping that you do when you are participating in athletics, although I suppose that would be a potential source of stress as well. That could be a topic for another day.

The jumping I am talking about is jumping to conclusions.

You know, when you get a tiny bit of data and then reach a conclusion which is often wrong. And then thinking about that conclusion starts to trigger all sorts of reactions in you, many of which can be stressful.

Here’s an example that came to me this morning, teaching me again a good lesson in the need to investigate before concluding. I was at the kitchen sink, washing some dishes. The flow of water out of the faucet was only about 60% of what it normally is. Now I’ve seen this happen before and each time, I had to spend time figuring out what was causing the lowered flow of water. Some times, it was a toilet that had been flushed and was refilling. Other times, it was someone else in the house taking a shower or using water in a bathroom. Some times it was the clothes washer running in the laundry room. And at times it was a faucet that that had been left open inadvertently, somewhere in the house or outside to water the garden. The final common reason was that the sediment filters on the main water line were clogged and needed replacing.  Each of these possibilities could lead me to spend anywhere between 2 minutes to 20 determining and then taking care of the problem if need be.

Now, at that time of the morning, I was not looking forward to going around the house listening for flowing water to see if it was just a poorly closed faucet at some location or to changing the main sediment filters. Naturally, some stress about this potential time drain started to poke its head up. I could imagine myself spending time I would have preferred using to do other things and that thought was not agreeable.

At this moment, with stress bubbling just beneath the surface, about to erupt I had a flash of insight. Instead of thinking about all those previous times I had spent time chasing the cause of reduced water flow, I decided to pause and see if there might be some other explanation that I had not thought of yet. I took off my “let’s get stressed now because I think I already know the answer” hat and put on my “let’s see if we have all the data before concluding” hat.

As I stood there, thinking about the events of the past few minutes (the water was flowing at a reduced rate, I was in front of the kitchen sink, I had filled a glass with water before starting to wash the dishes), the answer came to me. In fact, it was staring me in the face, looking at me rather sheepishly. The answer to why there was less water flow coming out the faucet was strikingly simple and yet I had to actually pay attention to what was going on to notice it. And, it was not any of the possible answers I had come up when I thought I knew what it must be because this reduced water situation looked quite similar to so many times before.

The Buddhists talk about beginner’s mind, where one looks at a situation as if seeing it for the first time. Doing so, one is encouraged to gather all the data possible before reaching any conclusion. Professional trackers who look for lost people and follow animals do the same thing. Instead of looking at a track on the ground and assuming that it is a dog’s footprint, they look at all the data about it they can find – size, markings of nails, spacing, etc..  Only after noticing many of the track’s characteristics do they start to draw conclusions on what it might be.  In fact, without actually seeing the animal that made the track, they can only speculate based on the evidence before them and their experiences with previous similar-looking tracks. They get better and better at this determination, and the best trackers know that jumping to conclusions often leads them to wrong conclusions and a lot of wasted time and effort.

So, what was the reason for my reduced water flow? The answer, right in front of me, was the little water filter on the faucet. It is one that when you swing it one way, it allows normal flow of water bypassing the filter and when you swing the other way, it diverts the water through a simple carbon filter to improve the water’s taste. It also has an interesting design characteristic, which might even be a flaw. When one swings the filter over to the bypass the filter flow position, there is no indicator mark to say that it is all the way over into that position. It is easy to swing it most of the way and think that it is all the way. If it is not swung all the way water only flows at a reduced rate, out of one hole.  You don’t get some water coming out the filter and some out the bypass hole- you only get reduced water coming out the bypass hole.

All I had to do was swing the filter unit over a little more, perhaps a centimeter (half inch) or so, and the water happily gurgled out at full force. In hindsight, the answer was simple as could be and I went about my dish-washing with nary a further problem.  Of course, hindsight is usually best anyway.

What saved me from spending up to 20 minutes searching about the house and perhaps even prematurely replacing the main sediment filters? Not jumping to the conclusion that I knew what the problem was and examining the environment again to ensure that I had all the data before drawing any conclusions. And my stress over potentially wasting time on an undesired and unplanned activity faded to nothing seconds after it started to pop up. (Of course, if I had started to get truly stressed, I could always use AER to release it.)

I encourage you to try this next time you face a situation – ensure that you have all the data before you do anything. You may be surprised at what you discover and how your stress load diminishes. 🙂

I wish you well on your journey.

Copyright 2009 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved