Being right

‘You can’t be right and happy’.

It’s a well worn cliché but if I had to pick the single idea having the biggest impact in my life, this would be it. I’m not perfect, I don’t know everything (plus I never will) and I make mistakes. This didn’t come as a sudden revelation but as a growing realisation. When I give up my attachment to being right, life flows more easily, apologies come from the heart, people enjoy being around me more and, yes, I’m happier.

I grew up believing that being right was the most important ingredient to success and happiness. I don’t think anyone actually told me this I just worked it out for myself. I sailed through school, university and postgraduate studies mainly because I was an expert at repeating back what I’d read or been told was the right answer. I wasn’t a rebellious youth or young adult so I never questioned where these ‘right answers’ magically appeared from and I suppose I imagined there were many wise, trustworthy people who decided such things. I equated success in examinations with success in general and concluded that knowing the right answer was the key.

With hindsight this was pretty poor preparation for life and I found an incredible relief when I realised that I don’t have to be right. I can be wrong. I can mess things up. And it’s ok .. I’m human. I was so immersed in the ‘being right’ school of life that it’s still pretty deeply ingrained. If I let my guard down and my awareness dips … ooops … I’m trying to be right at the expense of happy.

I don’t think, in fact, that ‘being right’ is really the problem as sometimes it happens – either by intelligence or by pure chance. The real barrier to happiness is being attached to being right.

Internally this attachment means being hard on myself. Self criticism, self blame, guilt, shame and general intolerance of my own imperfections. This neither feels good, nor is it very healthy. I’d like to learn from life, but not out of this self inflicted punishment. I do it, of course, and am not always as accepting of myself being wrong as I’d like to be! Especially when I seem to be messing up in the same ways again and again. I would like to be more tolerant of myself, gentler.

Externally this ‘rightness’ attachment comes out in many ways. The most extreme example I can remember is a shouting match I had with my ex-wife. (I use this example a lot in my workshops – so apologies if you heard it already). Everyone knows that the right way to cut potatoes for cooking is to slice across the short part and not the long part! That’s at least what I had been taught by my mother. I was so attached to this I was willing to risk my marriage to convince my ex how stupid she was to cut them across the long part. Can you imagine my own stupidity ????

I look back at that with horror, yet see the small ways I still want to prove that I’m right. The gentle corrections (‘actually it’s 11.07 not 11.06′), manipulative questionning (‘are you sure it was in Godfather part 2? Maybe it was in part 1?’) or just a condescending look. At least I don’t fight about it any more. Still, it’s not much fun to be around someone who insists on proving they’re right.

And now I think about it, proving I’m right was never much fun either.

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