Why Do we Need to be Right?

Today I want to talk to you about us as human beings and our obsessive need to be right. These last two years have been particularly interesting for me and the growth potential that has been afforded me, is just so amazing. I am eternally grateful for the challenges that have been presented to me and am grateful that I have been able to take my interactions with the many people with whom I have had contact, and learn from them. I have been fortunate enough to share some of these experiences with a lot of you, so I’m hoping you can relate to what I’m making reference to. And why I’m mentioning this is that….

I have come to the realisation that everyone is very focused on the need to be right, rather than trying to see things from everyone’s perspective and understanding that everyone has a story. And sometimes you may just have chosen a bad moment in someone’s day. It could be that they are having difficulties at home and your interaction with them triggered something within them that actually has nothing to do with you, but you were, at that particular moment in time, the closest person to them. Understanding rather than being a right-fighter makes us the bigger person.

Whilst sitting at home recently I just happened to catch a Dr Phil show on SABC TV. Here was this couple who had been married for more than 10 years. He had convinced himself that she was having an affair with both her ex boyfriends to the point that he bugged his own house. He then played back one of the tapes, which was clearly a conversation between him and his wife, in their bedroom, talking of every day mundane things. But his interpretation of that conversation was of her with another man in his room having sexual intercourse! You may agree with me that it’s a bit bizarre but in his mind, he had caught her and he became completely convinced of what it was that he thought he had heard on the tape.

She eventually took two separate lie detector tests, both of which came back completely conclusive that she had never had any kind of irregular relationships outside of her marriage – and he still didn’t believe it. Now, to be fair, this is extreme and thank goodness we’re not all like this. But…. we do play things out in our heads, put our own spin on them, come out with our own interpretation and sadly it becomes our reality.

So this is something that we need to be extremely aware of. Knowing that it is human nature to want to be right, we need to make sure in our own minds, that we are. We need to question our thoughts and our motives all the time. And what you need to ask yourself all the time is….. is what I’m thinking or about to say, going to be of benefit to both myself and the person that I’m interacting with? And of course, we all know that if the answer is no, then we should just let it go people! If there is no personal benefit to both parties to me commenting say on what Chris did yesterday afternoon, or whether or not the way I would have handled the situation would have been better, because of course, I have this need to be right – then what is the point? I remember my mother always saying this and of course I used to say the same to my children all the time – if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

We spend so much time bringing each other down instead of working together to build each other up. Why do we find it so hard to be happy for someone else when they achieve something or do something extra-ordinary – instead we find it easier to question their motives and to ridicule, because somehow it makes us feel better about ourselves.

I know I often use my grandchildren as examples in my teaching – but you must understand, that these children have come to this earth to be our teachers, and boy are they all doing such a wonderful job. As many people know, I have twin grand-daughters. They are almost now 17 years old but at age 11, they were crazy about Monster High. Monster High is a series with very different-looking characters, all very beautiful and very smart with names like Draculara, I leave it your imagination if you’ve never seen them – they’re even pale blue and pink! Anyway, one day they were on their grandfathers computer printing out these wonderful interactive books from Monsterhigh.com and I was just sitting with them, watching them and enjoying the interaction. Now the one is very academic and the other is very creative and Monster high allows you to be both. So once they had printed out their books, they started making them up, pasting them together, creating colourful covers and individualising them for themselves. So for the creative twin, this is just down her alley and she managed to whip something together really quickly, covered with glitter, fancy little added extras, textures and all sorts of really arty-farty things for her book. But when she had finished, instead of boasting about how much better she was able to do, she set about helping her twin to create something equally as beautiful. Then, when it came to doing all the puzzles, the maths calculations and word searches, she was able to ask her academically minded twin, for her help and guidance.

What had played out there, was the two of them, understanding where each others strengths lie, and capitalising on them, rather than working separately and feeling the need to prove to each other which one knew more or could do better. And I really wish we could all be like this – instead, because of this obsession (and I continue to call it an obsession, because I believe it is), to be right, we don’t let other people in and we try do things on our own, and nine times out of ten, we fail miserably.

It’s all to do with learning to understand that we are all the same, yet different. Just because I do something differently to you, doesn’t make me right and you wrong, it just means that we are different and we do things differently. Every single one of us wants the same things – these are love, acceptance, tolerance, validation and because we don’t give it to ourselves, we cannot give to anyone else either. So we need to break down all those barriers that we have built up around ourselves over the years, which have only served to isolate us from each other. Life is meant to be simple and uncomplicated – let that be your goal for the rest of this year. Simplify your life, your belief systems and uncomplicate what you have created – your health will benefit, I guarantee you’ll add a few extra years on your life and everyone else around you will also benefit and with a bit of luck, stress and negativity will be something we no longer have to deal with.

I thank the guides for the inspiration to put this article together and for allowing me to walk this path of discovery so that I can share my experience and insights with you today. God Bless you all.