Last week I wrote about the stories we tell ourselves and how they shape our lives. This week I invite you to look at how we gather evidence to support the stories we tell. Gathering evidence takes time and energy. When we invest those resources in support of our stories we either advance or defeat our purpose in an extraordinarily effective manner. That is how stories become self-fulfilling prophecies for good or for ill.

Consider these examples of how evidence can be interpreted in more than one way.

1. We assume we know someone else's motives and attributing a negative cast to them. "She drives because she's too stuck up to take the bus." (Or "She's allergic to many chemicals and gets ill when she rides with us, even though she would like to.")

2. We assume that someone else is aware of everything we are aware of and that they attribute the same meaning to it. "He just ignored the alarm even though he knew I would be late." (Or "He did not notice it, or did not understand its significance.")

3. We assume that someone else anticipates the effect of their actions on our plans. "He got tickets for Friday even though he knows that I have a meeting on Saturday morning." (Or "He forgot, or that was the only night for which tickets were available.")

4. We assume that when things go wrong we are going after the wrong goal. "I didn't get accepted into the art show. I guess I'm not meant to be an artist." (Or "Art juries are notoriously hard to predict; I'll try another show or this show at another time.")

5. We assume that feeling overwhelmed means that we don't have what it takes to move forward. "I get so scared, I'm just not cut out for working for myself." (Or "It sure is scary working for myself. It's important to have a support system to help me get my bearings back when I get overwhelmed.")

6. We assume that others hold us to impossibly high standards, sentencing ourselves to recurring experiences of shame. "Since I printed the wrong dates for my teleclass everyone will think I'm an idiot." (Or "Everybody makes mistakes. I'll correct this one as simply and directly as I can and move on.")

Notice that every one of these pieces of evidence in support of a bad-news story begins with an assessment that may or may not be valid, and that often is subject to considerable interpretation. Like stories, we can't live without making assessments and sometimes it is hard to live with them!

Fortunately, we can become more aware of the assessments we make and we can cultivate a critical detachment that allows us to test our assessments before we employ them as evidence in service of our stories.

There are a number of ways to test or ground an assessment Here are some of them.

1. Define the scope of your assessment. Is the assessment relevant to a person's work performance? Their reliability as a partner? Their suitability as an investor? Not all assessments are relevant in all domains. (I evaluate a spiritual advisor and a taxi driver on different grounds.)

2. Look for facts (measurable and easily affirmed by a third party) that support or disprove your assessment. Example: It is a fact that your watch alarm chimed. It is not a fact that your partner heard it.

2. Notice your mood and how it affects your assessments. For example, when I am anxious I tend to be impatient and my assessments reflect that. When I feel uncomfortable it is easy for me to assess that other people do not find me attractive.

3. For the sake of what am I making this assessment? Sometimes we make assessments for the sake of our stories. We may not like the story, but we like believing it is consistent. An assessment that tends to close more possibilities than it opens should be very carefully grounded.

4. If I am unwilling to clarify or corroborate this assessment, am I willing to let it go? You may find that you cling to an assessment even when you can't ground it. This is often an indication that you're stuck in a mood.

When we are willing to examine the assessments we make with critical detachment we can readily uncover the falsehoods, bad-news scripts and crisis-oriented story lines that keep us stuck. Then we can powerfully choose to let go of false evidence and free our energy to move forward.