Fact or Opinion
This fact or opinion worksheet trains one deceptively hard skill: separating what a camera could verify from what a mind concluded. Sort ten statements, then use the skill on a self-judgment you've been treating as settled fact.
Two kinds of sentences
A fact is something you could verify - with a camera, a record, or a witness who has no stake in it. 'I turned the report in two days late' is a fact. Anyone with the timestamps would agree. An opinion is a conclusion a mind has drawn: an interpretation, an evaluation, a prediction. 'I'm unreliable' is an opinion. No camera can film unreliable. It's a judgment built on top of facts, and different minds can build different judgments on the same facts. The trouble is grammar. Both kinds of sentences sound identical - 'I'm a burden' has the same confident shape as 'it's Tuesday.' Your mind delivers them in the same tone of voice.
Why the sorting matters
Facts and opinions call for different responses. A fact asks to be accepted and worked with. An opinion asks to be examined - and it can be revised without arguing with reality. Most painful self-talk is opinion wearing a fact costume. When you re-label 'I'm failing at this' as an opinion, you haven't denied anything true; you've filed the sentence correctly. Quick tells that you're holding an opinion: evaluating words like lazy, boring, or failure; predictions; claims about what other people are thinking; and almost any sentence with should in it.
Sorting practice
Ten statements below - half are verifiable facts, half are opinions dressed as facts. Check only the facts: the ones a camera, a record, or a neutral witness could confirm.
Your sticky self-judgment
Check your sorting: the five facts were the late report, the unanswered emails, the three people leaving, the two late arrivals, and the missing text. Everything else was a mind's conclusion - including 'fed up,' which claims to read someone's insides. Now write one harsh statement about yourself that you usually treat as settled fact.
How factual does it feel?
Rate the statement as it stands right now.
The camera footage
List the verifiable facts sitting underneath the judgment - the actual events it was built from. Dates, actions, words said. If a neutral stranger couldn't confirm it from the footage, it doesn't go on this list.
The added layer
Now name what your mind added on top of the footage: the interpretation, the evaluation, the prediction. Then rewrite the whole thing with honest labels, in this shape: 'The facts are... My opinion about those facts is...'
Re-rate the sentence
Read your relabeled version, then rate the original statement again. You're not being asked to believe the opposite - only to file the sentence where it belongs.
Your usual costumes
Which opinions do you most often dress up as facts - about yourself, about other people, about the future? What would change in your next hard moment if you caught the costume early?
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