Start with a question, not a proof
Abductive reasoning begins when something needs explaining. You do not start by proving a conclusion from premises. You start by asking which hypothesis would make the observations most intelligible. The guiding question is 'what would make sense of this?' rather than 'what does this prove?' This distinction is fundamental: abduction is driven by puzzlement, not by axioms.
That is why abductive reasoning feels different from deduction. Deduction tries to show that a conclusion must follow from the premises. Abduction tries to show that one explanation currently does the best job of accounting for the evidence. The abductive conclusion is always provisional — new evidence may point to a better explanation. You are never proving that something must be true; you are arguing that one candidate currently outperforms the alternatives.
Consider the difference in everyday life. When a doctor examines a patient, she does not deduce a diagnosis from first principles. She observes symptoms, considers several conditions that could produce them, and selects the one that best accounts for the full clinical picture. When a detective investigates a crime scene, she does not generalize from a sample. She examines particular clues and asks which suspect's involvement would make all of those clues intelligible. Both are reasoning abductively.
The trigger for abductive reasoning is a set of observations that calls out for explanation. Something surprising, puzzling, or in need of accounting launches the process. Without that initial puzzle — without observations that need explaining — there is nothing for abduction to work on. Keep this in mind: the observations come first, and they set the agenda for everything that follows.