The divine wisdom of not needing to be right
Releasing the need to be right feels, to me, like being in a sweat lodge. Have you ever done that? You first enter the lodge and immediately think, “Oh helllllllll no. No way. I can’t do this.”
But you take a breath and decide that you’re going to give it a go (mostly because someone has sold you on the idea that this has a spiritual element to it, and while you’re dubious, you’re also hopeful).
And five minutes later, as more hot rocks and steam are added, you’re again convinced that it is impossible, not to be born. But if you can stay, you do stay.
You stay until you absolutely must leave, or until the ceremony is complete–whichever works for you.
No matter how long or short of a time you were in there, bearing down under the heat, it is always true that as soon as you step out into the cool, clean air and take a breath, you are grateful, for everything. Relief washes over you.
This is what it’s like to release the need to be right.
Releasing the Need to Be Right
You notice that you are really sure you’re right. (You also notice, somatically, a defensiveness—they are wrong!).
You feel the impulse to tell them how wrong they are.
But if you are trying to release the need to be right, you decide to put another step into practice. You remind yourself: “I want to practice not needing to be right.”
Something in you fights for it, for being right. It feels so good to be right! This person is so wrong! Don’t they realize? Maybe if I just explained it one more time…gave another example to bolster my argument…
You hold back, though. Bear down. Again, you remind yourself: “I want to practice not needing to be right.” Mostly, you do this because…well, because someone has sold you on the idea that this practice has a spiritual element to it (and again, you are dubious, but you’re also hopeful).
You just keep coming back to not needing to make someone else wrong, and releasing the need to be right.
“I notice myself wanting to defend myself and try to be ‘right’,” you might even say to the person, because it’s true. Then you might let that hang in the air for a moment.
To stop making people wrong, you’ve got to stop needing to be right. It has to stop being a need. It has to stop being a thing where, if they don’t see your perspective, you are agitated—you have to accept them not seeing, not agreeing, not being willing to change.
Again, this does not mean that you quit stating what is true for you, that you throw up your hands and do nothing since they don’t agree, or that you stop taking action in the direction of what you believe is right. It just means you stop needing them to be different, as a condition of your own peace.
One more time: you stop needing them to be different, as a condition of your own peace.
What You Win When You Stop Being Right
You stop the argument. When two people both need to be right, it’s an argument. Nothing productive happens in an argument. You are not changing anyone’s mind in an argument. When one person decides that she doesn’t need to be right, it’s impossible for the argument to continue. Arguments are fundamentally based on two people both trying to get their perspective to win, locked into fighting for their side. This is something I try very hard to remember when I’m talking to someone with a different political perspective than my own—that arguing with them does not in fact change their minds. Trying to be right will only ever make them dig in harder with their own position.
You get sanity. It is insanity to do the things that don’t actually work. If arguing with someone on the internet to try to change their mind does not work, let’s stop doing that. If I am really interested in shifting someone’s perspective, I need to find the options that might work, not the options that are about how ‘right’ I am.
You understand that being ‘right’ is not a win when it comes at the expense of shaming someone else into being wrong. If you are a person of integrity, if you are someone who does not want to dehumanize or traumatize someone else, then you will not have an interest in winning an argument at someone else’s expense. Fighting to the point where you win because you really drilled into someone how wrong and awful and bad they are? That’s dehumanizing.
You can know that you aligned with your own integrity. Perhaps the reason you fight to be right is because you see that their perspective, their political view, etc., is fundamentally dehumanizing to you or others, therefore the fight to be right is justified. But is it? When people throw around insults and arguments and critiques to the point of dehumanizing someone because they were dehumanizing…I mean, Jesus. Literally—JESUS. Let’s take a page from him as the archetype. Or, let’s just invoke basic social-emotional lessons from kindergarten: just because someone hits you dose not mean you hit them back. Or let’s remember the wisdom of Michelle Obama: When they go low, we go high. “But they started it” as a justification for enacting on others behavior you wouldn’t want enacted on you, is a poor excuse.
None of this is an exhortation to silence your voice or simply play nice in the face of injustice. Speak up, please—but just keep in mind the toll it will take on you to fight in ways that only wear you down and that have no effect on changing the situation.
The simple desire to drop the path of warring on behalf of your position will feel difficult at first, but when you have your first encounter with truly and honestly knowing in your body that you don’t need to be right, it’ll feel like that cool relief, that fresh air.
Thank god, you’ll think. Thank god I found this place! Why in the world did I ever think that I needed to be right, so badly? This feels ten times more amazing!
You’ll also start seeing something startling—the ability to engage, talk, hear a different perspective, and not push someone else to change because you’re fighting them to change or because you’re needing to be right? That will make it more likely that they’ll consider your position.
You’ll also be human, and falter again, but that one brush with the divine wisdom of not needing to be right will be enough to show you that there is an alternative.