Finding Love And Happiness By Overcoming Our Need To Be Right

Striving To Be Right

One of the most mind-boggling ideas out there is that other people value you based on how often you are right.  Being right makes people feel confident, and at ease in their relationships, while being wrong causes people to feel unsure and anxious.  It makes sense that we feel more comfortable in an ever-changing world, if we feel that we understand it.  Somewhere deep down inside we know that we cannot understand everything, so we opt for the next best thing: to know more than everyone else.  It’s ok to think it.  Yes, we desire to be know-it-alls. 

The Know-It-Alls and The Know-Nothings

But, despite how great being right feels, it blinds us from what the experience is like for the person, who is wrong.  They feel incompetent and helpless.  If we follow this logic, the know-it-alls, by their very nature, make others feel like know-nothings, and know-nothings feel bad about themselves, which makes them not want to hang around with the know-it-alls.  If a good life is judged by the company we keep, how do we judge the life of someone, who cannot keep any company at all?  My guess is that we find it to be a sad one.

Learning To Choose Relationships Over Rightness

If you learn nothing else from this blog, savor this invaluable piece of relationship insight: people will often feel about you the way you make them feel about themselves.  If you make them feel like losers all the time, they will feel sad, and they will identify you as a sad person.  If you make them feel like winners all the time, they will feel happy, and you will be recognized as a happy person.  Despite this seemingly impossible dichotomy, you really only need to make them feel appreciated, which requires just the occasional win.  So, do yourself the kindness of letting go of your need to be right all the time, instead making room for the love, compassion, and ease people will naturally feel in the presence of someone, who prioritizes these characteristics themselves.

Click here for more information on self-compassion psychology.

365 Days Of Self-Compassion.  Day 272.  In The Books.