What’s Wrong with Being Right?

In my relationships, my default programming also directed a lot of my thoughts and feelings in support of my being “right.” Sometimes the desire to be right makes us attempt to make the other per­son wrong; sometimes it makes us withdraw into ourselves, as I did when I’d back off from taking a stance to get my needs met. With­drawing into ourselves can allow us to feel that we’re “right” inside, even though we’re not getting what we want, because internally we can judge the other person as wrong for not giving us what we want.

Now I know what I didn’t know then: The desire to be “right” is always the objective of your machinery and programming, not of your being. Your being doesn’t need to be right; to your being, there is no right and there is no wrong. To your being, there is just what is. Right and wrong are judgments and interpretations, and they come from your past and keep you in the past. When you are mindful and dissolve the judgments and interpretations that arise in your mind, you are left with just what is.

An excerpt from my recent book, Your Mind Is What Your Brain Does for a Living, now available at Amazon.

photo credit: Dave Schumaker via photopin cc