*** How to Let Go of Being Right to Get What You Want

Your Inner Critic, that nagging internal voice of self-doubt and fear loves to be right! Being right, to that egoistic nagger, is associated with being worthy. In order to feel worthy you have to be right! At the expense of everything else you want in life. Would you rather be right or happy?

Being right is an either/or equation for most. “Either I’m right or your right? If you’re right then what does that make me?” And the Inner Critic responds with “not good (or smart) enough”. So you fight for your rightness to feel better about yourself. You see people fighting to be right in your personal and professional life. Heck, turn on the television and you’ll find lots of people pontificating on their rightness on talk shows and news programs. Much of the comedy programming you see is based on a character trying to prove he is right about some inane thing.

"Don't find fault. Find a remedy." - Henry Ford

The truth is, it isn’t an either/or world. It’s an AND world! You can be right AND let the other person be right too! You can get your viewpoint communicated effectively without making the other person wrong. This ability is one of the key secrets to turning your dreams into reality. Here’s an example.

A man runs to the local FedEx station with three golf clubs tied together, wrapped in brown paper, with a proper shipping label pasted around the middle of the package. He’s rushing because the last pick-up of the day is in another minute or two and he has to get these clubs to his brother in another state no later than tomorrow morning.

The FedEx employee says they can’t ship those clubs packaged this way and he will have to bring them back in packaged in a proper FedEx box. So the man screams and yells at the employee “These clubs are very securely wrapped and you can easily read the label to see where they have to go! You’re just wasting my time over your stupid rules! I’ve got to get these clubs to my brother tomorrow morning or he won’t be able to play in the tournament! You’re going to ruin his life! FedEx s*#ks!” Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration but you get the idea of where this conversation is going.

As the two men continue to argue, the last scheduled pick-up of the day comes and goes without the golf clubs. The man was right; it would be easy to ship the clubs as they were. So, who won? Nobody. The man didn’t get the clubs shipped to his brother on time. FedEx lost a customer that day.

How else could this scenario have played out that would still allow the man to be right AND get the clubs shipped out with the last pick-up?

When told that he needs to have the clubs packaged in a proper FedEx box he could have responded: “I understand (allowing the FedEx employee to be right) and here’s my problem. If I don’t get these clubs to my brother by tomorrow morning he won’t be able to play in the tournament he’s dreamed about his whole life!” With the acknowledgement that he was right, the FedEx employee now has good feelings about the man in front of him and wants to help him. People do want to help others when they can. He replies “I see, fill out this new shipping label while I run out back and tell the pick-up guy to wait a minute. I think we have an extra box in the back somewhere that you can use.”

FedEx employee is right. Man gets the clubs to his brother on time and is happy, goal accomplished!

“The first duty of a wise advocate is to convince his opponents that he understands their arguments, and sympathizes with their just feelings” - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Let go of being right. It is your ego, your Inner Critic, that thrives from being right all the time. Focus on what you want. The man in the above example wanted to ship the clubs to his brother that day. Without making the FedEx employee, or himself, wrong he got what he wanted. He allowed them both to be right!

Try this approach in your daily life. See how letting go of being right by making others wrong delivers more of the good experiences you want to have and less of the bad experiences. Allowing others to be right, too, empowers you!

“Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument is an exchange of ignorance” - Robert Quillen