The hardest type of critical thinking is not evaluating other people's arguments. It is examining your own. Your assumptions are the beliefs you treat as so obviously true that you never think to examine them. They shape what questions you ask, what options you consider, and what conclusions you are capable of reaching. In Nigeria, some assumptions are deeply embedded in culture and community in ways that make them almost invisible: assumptions about what careers are legitimate, about how wealth is built, about gender roles, about who deserves trust, about what is possible for someone from your background. These are not necessarily wrong — but they are worth examining. The technique for examining assumptions is to trace your reasoning backwards. Instead of asking whether your conclusion is correct, ask: what would have to be true for this conclusion to be correct, and am I confident those things are actually true? If you conclude that starting a business is not realistic for you right now, trace backwards: what assumptions underlie that? That you lack resources? That the market is too difficult? That failure would be catastrophic? Each assumption can be examined, questioned, and tested against evidence. Some will hold. Some will not. The ones that do not hold are where the most significant opportunities for new thinking tend to live.