The Most Helpful Conversation You May Ever Have

Have you ever noticed that most conversations are, in essence, an exercise in who’s right and who’s wrong? Whether it’s at work, at home, with friends, in politics, at school, etc., the driving force behind what is said and not said is an attempt to be right and avoid being wrong. And it’s so primal, most of us aren’t aware it’s even happening.

 

If you’ve ever watched Dr. Phil, you’ll see he often asks guests, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” Honestly, when I first heard him ask that years ago, I was confused. Aren’t they one in the same? To be right is to be happy, right? Nope. Ever know anyone that is right and miserable? Of course you do. We all do. Ironically, the most right people tend to be the most miserable. So what’s going on here?

As a society we reward people for being right and punish them for being wrong, so we learn early which to seek and which to avoid. The need to be right and the avoidance of being wrong is all survival brain activity, aka Lizard Brain. Being wrong occurs like a threat to the survival brain, and once identified as a threat, the survival brain mounts its defense against it. The most common defense is to make the other person or situation wrong. But consider this: making something wrong actually gets in the way of dealing with it effectively.

I know this may sound strange, and so counter-intuitive. From birth we are steeped in the conversation of who is right and who is wrong. And we have no idea how much it is shaping our experience with each other because it’s constant, like the air we breathe. We are already always listening and looking for it. Until now. Here is an opportunity to enter a new conversation.

It is the conversation of workability.  When I focus on the need to be right and to make others wrong, it distracts me from what’s actually happening. But when I suspend the judgment of calling it/them wrong, I can get a sense for what’s working and what’s not working.  It gives me a direct experience with what’s actually happening. Workability does not occur like a threat to my survival brain. When the situation no longer occurs like a threat, I see things that I’m otherwise blinded to by  my concern for being right.

Being right and avoiding being wrong is a miry pit of stuckness; it just is not an effective position from which to operate.  The conversation of workability transcends the pit.   It’s a higher position to operate from that gives me options I simply won’t have as long as I’m living from my survival-brain threat response.  Without the concern for being right, I can access true power to deal effectively with what’s in front of me.

This is similar to living from the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. The conversation of workability renders the need to be right and avoid being wrong obsolete. It just becomes unnecessary. I don’t want you to believe me. This isn’t a concept to be believed. It’s a possibility to be lived. Try it out for yourself. Notice what becomes available to you when you’re willing to suspend the conversation of right/wrong and engage at the level of what’s working and not working instead. You can always ask yourself, “If nothing’s wrong here, what’s the actual impact/result of what’s happening?  What’s working? What’s not working? What needs to happen next?”  You will begin to see things you never saw before.

So test this out, keeping one more thing in mind: workability is not the right position to live from, and it’s the most helpful conversation you may ever have. Enjoy!

Be Great!

Becky