The magic of disempowering language - Presuppositions

Define presupposition.

If you walk into a situation with a belief that you are ‘going to fail’, then you are supposing in advance what is going to happen, leading to a higher likelihood that you will fail.

If you walk into that same situation with the belief that you ‘will succeed’, then you will have a higher likelihood of success and positive achievement.

This focus, whether good or bad, is referred to in linguistics and psychology as a ‘presupposition’… because you pre- suppose something to be true, before its had a chance to happen in reality.

I hope you can agree that pre-supposing things, can have a powerful effect on life outcomes and is worth understanding as a phenomenon.

Lets have a look at a typical statement that I might hear from one of my coaches.

“I am awful at playing games, I never win”

What is being presupposed here? What has to be true in this persons world for this sentence to make any sense?

1.        They are pre supposing that they are awful in this context

2.        There is a concept such as awful, therefore the opposite must be true, even if not for the speaker

3.        Never… presupposes that this generalisation extends to all contexts

Now as a coach, it is important for to hear these sorts of statements in my client’s language and challenge in where necessary, because beliefs like this cause problems for the client and lead to a life filled with negative experiences due to their constant pre supposing in advance as if statements like this are true.

#Presuppositions

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