Do You Want to Be Right or Be Happy?

I’m working on letting go of the need to be right.

Darn it.

Right just sometimes feels so good!

The world is as I think it is. 

I have a picture in my mind of how things are, and that picture is proven true.

Some of the things I get stuck on being right? 

Best practices in leadership are “best” for a reason—we should strive toward those as much as we can. You should bring a gift when you are invited to someone’s open house. There is a right way to put toilet paper on the holder (with the end on top). 

But one thing I’ve learned about being right is that it’s all about control. It’s about wanting to feel like things are in order and the way they should be. It’s about preventing something we are afraid of.

Or sometimes it’s about living someone else’s rule that you now cling to because the person is no longer there.

And let’s admit it—being wrong feels terrible.

It can be uncomfortable. 

It’s a feeling like “I thought things were a certain way and they aren’t that way at all?” 

The ground might as well be shaking under our feet.

Sometimes being right comes from standing for something that aligns with our own values—which reinforces that our values are the right ones. For example, I find it challenging that some diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are being defunded. 

I ask, “In what world is diversity and inclusion wrong?” 

I once said to my team, “I am trying to embrace others’ perspectives…but I really believe in DEI. What view is more right than that on being human”? 

Even in my primary relationship, when I’m convinced that I am behaving just fine and my partner is the one who is not acting gracious or generous or empathic, I’m still focused on being right and making him wrong.

Here’s the thing, though, about being right in relationship: John Gottman, expert on marital stability, says that 69 percent of relationship problems are perpetual. This means that most conflicts are related to personality differences or different needs, and they will continue to show over time no matter what you do. So, it’s likely that these differences will never be cleared up. 

People want different things. 

And because we are different human beings, we get to.

(Darn it again.)

I’ve had a few tough professional learnings over my career—which are engraved in my mind. When I was first learning about book publishing back in my 20s, I had a book printed without text on the spine (Really? You need to know the title of a book when it’s on a shelf?). 

I have spoken up in a meeting in a way that I was later admonished for and regretted. 

I have made missteps with a client and lost a project.

In these cases and more, I was not “right.” 

But all I could do in those moments was grow, right? Practice humility. Apologize where I needed to. Reflect, identify what I learned, and move on.

Get over having to be right.

And this is challenging for a person who tends to have perfectionist tendencies!

I was leading a workshop recently on how to be a great manager. A participant said his supervisor taught him that when conflicts come up, “It’s not about being right, it’s about making it right.”

It’s not about being right; it’s about making it right. 

And the group said, “Ooooh!” 

We all got it. 

Focusing on being right—no matter how right a perspective seems—sucks the energy out of a room. It closes doors. It gets us stuck. And it shuts other people down. 

Focusing on making something right opens up possibility.

Rather than focusing on winning an argument or being in the right in something, turning to questions like:

• Where do our perspectives meet? What do we agree on?

• What is important about this? Does it even matter in the grand scheme of things (think toilet paper example)?

• And what is needed to make things right?

In the end, to move through those perpetual disagreements, we must prioritize the relationship and our larger shared goals over the satisfaction of being right in the moment. 

We can ask ourselves what is most important in the long run.

We can focus on where there is synergy—and go there.

We can ask, where is there forward movement? Let’s focus on that.

Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “There is nothing noble in being superior to [others]. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.”

Yes, there’s that, too! Life is not about being right but about growing and evolving and becoming more of who we are over time. It’s about growing into the most amazing and brilliant you—with all of your crazy misperceptions and beliefs and thoughts about others and about how the world works.

Go out there and make those mistakes and try to figure out what is right in the world.

Go be your most magnificent self.

But above all, be your right you.

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