Thirty years in the newspaper business taught me the value and necessity of admitting my mistakes. It’s pretty easy to do when ignoring your mistakes can mean a hefty lawsuit.
But I’m still stuck, way too often, on being right.
I’ve had a couple of recent run-ins with this mindset and I don’t mind telling you, it bugs me.
The first came up when I was doing a job for a client. He pointed out a couple of typos (I hate it when that happens — the typos, not pointing them out) and I was quick to admit my errors, as embarrassing as it was. But when he criticized me for doing something exactly the way he asked, the needle went all the way over to the red zone.
I spent way too much time and – more importantly – energy proving that I was right. I went through an entire range of emotions, including shock and outrage, at the unfair criticism and was stuck there for too long.
Riding that wave of outrage, first I went through my emails multiple times until I found his instructions. Then I spent another chunk of time crafting an email response that wasn’t defensive. Finally, when it was as good as I could make it, I hit the “send” button and off it went.
I still don’t know if it was the right thing to do. I never heard back from the client. (Or maybe it’s “former client” at this point.)
The second instance came up during my visit home to Minnesota, to be with my mom during the end stages of her losing battle against cancer.
My siblings and I had a conversation about how the cancer in her brain sometimes made her say things that are patently incorrect and we all agreed that the best thing to do was to just let it go. After all, what’s the point of arguing with an 83-year-old woman who is living out her final days? And if it was the cancer causing these “outages” in her thought-process, it was even more important to just nod and agree or say nothing at all.
So far, so good. And then came the day when Mom asked me to trim her fingernails and file them down. Got the trimming part done and then she started sawing on the remains.
“Mom,” I said, “sawing back and forth on your nails makes them weak. Just start at the outside and file toward the center, in one direction at a time.”
“I was not sawing!” she declared.
The old habit kicked in. Hello! Yes, she had been sawing, I insisted – not more than 5 seconds before! Back and forth until one of my brothers finally stepped in and made me realize I was going back on our “agreement” about not arguing with Mom. I stopped.
Both combined were pretty aggravating instances and I’m self-aware enough to realize that when something bugs me, I need to take a deeper look. What the heck was driving that “gotta be right” attitude?
My research suggests that the need to be right is based in the fear of feelings and the inability to process them. Hmm. That doesn’t feel “right” (haha!) but I’ll stick it in the back of my head and let it ripen.
What did resonate with me was this question: “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?”
Why people need to be right
Here are some hints that you may fall into the “need to be right” category:
- An insatiable need to be right which masks a deep fear of being wrong
- A high need to expect others to see it your way
- An inability to say, “I don’t know” and “I was wrong”
- Feeling threatened when new ideas come from other people
- Fear of hearing new information that threatens your beliefs
- Fear of letting go; need to be in control of self at all times
- Preoccupation with winning approval from others
- The need to always be seen as tough, powerful and strong
- Pride at always being rational and logical
- Uncomfortable with expressing sensitive feelings
- Shame and fear of being vulnerable and insecure
- Fear and severe discomfort about having bad feelings
- Believe that others who disagree with you are wrong and should “just get over it”
- Use charm, anger, withdrawal or blaming to settle arguments
I do see myself in some of these points, and others (thankfully) I don’t. How about you? Where do you fall on this spectrum?