Choosing to be wrong is a mind-expanding exercise. It’s a conscious practice in taming your ego and allowing time for your true self to shine.
Search for the phrase
“Why do they always need to be right?”
and you’ll receive, literally, billions of results in less than a second.
Being right is a problem.
In business our drive to be right is mostly kept in check by organisational structures, like a meeting agenda or chairperson.
But there’s no such restraint in our relationships.
Recognise you like to be right?
Feeling right makes us feel good. It sparks a dopamine hit and fuels our self-worth but it has a downside. It requires an other person to be wrong.
This need to be right wouldn’t be so damaging if we could just admit “I like to be right”. But we don’t, in fact we stand our ground, insisting it’s not about ‘needing to be right’ it’s just that we are right!
- This is the right way to stack the dishwasher
- The right way to make the bed
- This is how the vaccine rollout should work
- This is how things should have been done in Afghanistan.
There are very few hard facts in life. This is where I use the law of gravity as an example. Everything else is a matter of opinion.
It’s just an opinion
So if it’s just an opinion, why do we fight so hard to defend it?
- Habit.
- It’s so ingrained you don’t recognise it.
- Everyone else is doing it so join the club.
- Or perhaps you’ve never thought about it.
In my experience, very few people know what they’re defending or why. So one of the first tasks I set clients is to go find out.
Imagine if …
Everything you believe to be right is wrong.
And everything you believe to be wrong is right.
Then sit back and observe.
- Does it open or close your conversations?
- Do you feel more connected or further apart?
- Are you more stressed or relaxed?
- What do you notice about your brain chatter?
Try it. For a day. Or 7. And next time you feel stuck, frustrated or misunderstood roll it out again.
You can know stuff but it means nothing until you do it.
Bill Crews
