Weekly Nugget: Breaking The Gridlock By Giving Up Being Right
Hi friend,
If you find yourself caught in a fight or getting stuck in a conversation, it is probably because you are “being right.”
What is being right?
Being right is a state where you:
a) take your assessments to be the utter truths,
b) stop listening to the other person, and
c) focus all your attention on defending and proving your position.
Being right is about only listening to what you already know. Instead of letting the conversation reveal what you don’t see clearly, you use your breath to prove your points. By design, what you end up fighting for is what you already know.
What you already know is a prison of ignorance.
While being right, one or both sides cling to a specific and often conflicting version of the outcome they want to achieve. What goes at risk is the future of the relationship and any possibility of a breakthrough in the matter.
In being right, care and respect for each other are the first casualties of the war. Being right turns partners into walls screaming at each other.
Being right stops you from investigating, listening, and learning what you may not yet know. Giving up being right requires letting go of the need to prove your point or dominate the conversation at every opportunity.
The most difficult thing to do in a relationship is to GIVE UP being right.
At this time, you might ask, why should I give up being right, especially when I know that I am?
Here are two things to consider when you feel like that:
If you don’t give up being right, you are likely to lose the relationship. Is that okay with you? Is proving yourself right more important than the relationship? What you must ask yourself here is what really matters in the situation — proving yourself right or creating a space of togetherness, friendship, and mutual respect. Without those things, you are a silo, not a network.
Do you want to remain in the prison of your prior knowledge, or do you want to be liberated and learn something new, something that you don’t already know? When you reason using only your prior knowledge and understanding, you may think you are debating intelligently, but in reality, you are debating from the place of ignorance created by your refusal to consider what the other person might know.
Let’s admit it — being right feels great. You get a load of dopamine from being right. And yes, you may win the battle but lose the war.
If you find yourself at risk of damaging or losing an important relationship, whether it is with your spouse, boss, peer, or customer, try this simple zen-like move: Go to the other person and acknowledge that you have not been listening to them and that you are now giving up withholding, debating, arguing, and proving yourself to be right. With that, you open the space for something new to make sense together that wasn’t possible before. Tell them that you are going to stop being right, stop trying to force an outcome, or stop trying to fix the situation.
And don't just say it—do everything you can to put yourself in a state of curiosity, inquiry, care, and listening. Make this move first, which then opens the space for the other to do the same.
When you listen and learn, you begin to see more clearly what really matters and what needs to be done. Give up being right, be open, and be curious, and you’ll unfold new possibilities for relationship, joy, and co-invention.
Try this and let me know how it goes.
With care,
Saqib