Being right isn’t helping you

How to embrace being off the mark

I have a desperate desire to be right all the time.

And it used to dominate my life.

I was a master at transforming even the most pleasant conversation into a heated debate.

I was aggressive and confrontational, even if I thought of it as being ‘driven’ and ‘passionate’. 

Wanting to be right all the time meant I was always looking for an argument, reducing every conversation to nothing but right and wrong.

Instead of deepening my relationships, with every conversation, I pushed people away.

Sound familiar? If so, you might have the same problem I had.

Relationship repellant

Walter: ‘Am I wrong?’

Dude: ‘No, you're not wrong’

Walter: ‘Am I wrong!’

Dude: ‘You're not wrong Walter, you're just an asshole.’

— The Big Lebowski

Believe it or not, most people don’t like conflict and they’ll start avoiding you if you keep cornering them into a debate every time you talk to them.

While some may verbally fight back and engage in your screaming contest, most will pull back in disgust.

Either way, it’s a great way to become unliked and it will lead to many problems.

• Existing relationships become strained and distant (let alone being able to make new ones)

• You feel misunderstood, undervalued, and frustrated all the time

• Your original intention (of wanting to help and bring clarity) isn’t well received

• You’re not open to learning from others

Wanting to be right all the time perpetually puts you into problem-solving mode. Even if there aren’t any problems to solve. Sometimes (read: most of the time) people just need you to listen to them.

But what if you can’t stop?

Putting down the hammer

I know how it feels to be in that space.

Being argumentative had been my default state for years and I had conditioned myself into believing that arguing was an important and necessary part of my personality.

Similar to my ‘love’ of things like coffee and carbs (two things I’ve come around on), it was mostly addictive and unhelpful.

Even if I could have seen my faults back then, at the time I had no clue how to behave differently (and what was on the other side). I only had a hammer, and every conversation looked like a nail.

It took me years to realize that my desire to be right was masking a deeper desire to be understood. To be heard.

But I was pushing too hard.

Ironically, the best way to be understood by others is to seek to genuinely understand them first. When you do that, they will reciprocate.

To understand others you need to change your conversational habits.

I’m not saying you suddenly have to change your whole personality, it just means that instead of trying to convert people by force, you simply share what you observe, feel, or intuit unconditionally.

By using reflective statements.

A bold statement

I’ve learned a lot of tools, techniques, and frameworks for better conversation in my coach-training, but if I could choose only one, it would be this one.

The Reflective Statement: Repeating back what you understand someone has just said.

Practicing this technique alone, will improve every existing relationship you have (not to mention the new relationships you’ll form).

And most importantly, it will break your addictive, wanting-to-be-right-all-the-time pattern once and for all.

A statement is a kind of declaration. A ‘this is how I see it’-type thing. There’s no question mark. You simply state something, like it is the truth.

But the trick is not to care if it actually is the truth or not.

It shouldn’t matter to you at all. Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong, you simply don’t care either way.

Communicating unconditionally like this, you’ll quickly realize that being off the mark is actually way more useful than being right.

Be unconditional about it

When you unconditionally reflect, it feels to your conversation partner as if you’re just taking a guess (which you are) and they can respond freely.

Implicitly, you’re inviting them to correct you and in the process, get clearer on what they actually mean.

Unlike your previously obnoxious attitude, your new disarming tone encourages them to disagree, refine, or totally replace your statement with something that feels right to them.

Sometimes you’ll hit the mark and sometimes you don’t, but it doesn’t matter because their refinement is the point. Either way, you don’t care. You don’t have a dog in this fight, and they feel that.

The technique works so well for you because it redirects your mind away from right and wrong and towards understanding them.

You stop giving a shit about being right and start caring about what they are going to say next.

So where to begin?

Practicing this technique will hone your attitude over time, just like a musician practicing their scales.

In the beginning, it will feel like something you actively have to concentrate on and prepare for, but in time, you will become a natural.

Some practical steps you can take in your next conversation:

• 1) Take a guess

  • Take a guess at what you think they mean and pose it as a statement. An easy way to start the sentence is ‘It sounds like you…’

• 2) Realize it’s a guess

  • Since you’re guessing, you won’t know how close to the mark you’ll be. Decide you don’t care and radiate it. That way they’ll feel free to respond freely.

• 3) Compare the answer to your guess

  • Listening to their response, how close were you? How does this new information change your belief about what’s going on for them?

• 4) Double check & clarify

  • If you want to be extra thorough and supportive, wait until they’re finished explaining themselves and then double check (‘So you mean…’). This will help them to find their right answer, which is 1000% better than anything you could have come up with.

Being off the mark means they can show you the mark. And that’s the whole point.

The other side

When you begin unconditionally reflecting, conversations usually don’t go where you originally would want them too, but don’t be bummed about that.

It’s a good sign.

It means that you’ve got the wrong assumptions. Once you know that, it allows you to be empathetic, it allows you to show that you care, and it allows you to realize that the whole situation is different than what you imagined beforehand.

The importance of being right easily fades into the distance.

Nowadays, I love being wrong.

Understanding that people carry their own solutions means I don’t have to have any for them. It’s actually a weight off my shoulders not having to know it all. Not having to be right all of the time.

It’s rare in our society to be listened to conditionless, so if you can do it, you’ll easily stand out from the crowd. You instantly become friend material.

I’m able to support the people around me, strengthen (and repair) existing relationships, and build new ones with ease.

I’ve become calmer, more relaxed, and I’ve embraced letting conversations unfold as they may. It is how I got rid of a life-long arguing addiction that has never helped me (or anyone else).

As people begin to fill the space you give them, they'll naturally invite you in to give your perspective. Now they can finally hear you.

Because you can finally hear them.