Being Wrong

In 2011 my good friend Ed told me about TED talks. I soon got hooked and would watch them while eating lunch at my desk. I didn’t know a couple of them would alter the course of my life. In March of 2011 Kathryn Schulz gave a talk about being wrong. It changed the way I see the world and myself. 

In her talk she explained beautifully why I hated being wrong and that it’s dangerous for myself and society. She also described that being wrong feels like I’m right, until I realize I’m wrong. It’s like Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff after the road runner in the old cartoons. He’s fine until he looks down, realizes he’s in midair and falls. It was as if she knew exactly what I’d been thinking all those years. 

Here was my thought process when someone disagreed with me, prior to seeing the video. First I just figured they must not be well informed. They just didn’t know any better. After I explained things to them and they still disagreed, I thought they weren’t smart enough to grasp the information. Once I saw they knew the material and were smart, the only other possible explanation was that they were evil and/or selfish. The idea that they may be right wasn’t on my radar.

She described how I was living in a “tiny terrified space of rightness.” She was 100% right. I was scared of being wrong. I realized I was getting my personal value from “being right”. I’d get upset when anyone challenged my “rightness” because in my mind they were challenging my value as a person.

I thought about my life and the immense amount of energy I’d spent on being right. It was exhausting for me physically, mentally and emotionally. Most other people I knew seemed to be living similar lives. I decided it was time to look beyond the obvious and see if my value might come from somewhere else besides being right.

I started my search by trying an experiment. I practiced letting go of being right on small things to see what happened. Instead I would admit being wrong or entertain other possibilities. It was uncomfortable at first, but the more I did it the better I felt. So I did it with bigger things and that got easier too. After a while it became a habit. As often happens with experiments it had unexpected results. I was more at ease and my general quality of life improved. My sense of self-worth was actually enhanced instead of being damaged, because I wasn’t constantly defending it. That resulted in me being more comfortable just being myself.

It also had another side benefit. Before I was holding on to ideas tightly because I didn’t want to entertain the possibility that I might be wrong. Now I was free to look at new ideas more objectively. I felt like Galileo discovering the telescope. All kinds of things came into my view that I had missed previously. By letting go of being right it was easier to find the truth on many subjects.

Where my value comes from is a huge topic. What my experiment taught me is that mine doesn’t come from being right. That’s opened up a universe of possibilities for me. I’m glad I saw the TED talk and tried the experiment to learn this valuable lesson. Who would have thought that learning I might be wrong, would be the right thing to do? Nothing more complicated than perception.

May you have enough today, one moment at a time.

Let your Vagus nerve help.