“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
-Rumi, Sufi poet
When we name things as right or wrong, we leave no room for a meeting of the hearts. When I find myself in disagreement with someone, I can get into a place of fierce self-righteousness. Instead of focusing on ways I can connect with the other person through common ground, I focus only on what makes sense to me and on trying to convince the other person to see things my way.
This leaves neither room for self-growth, nor room for a heart-to-heart connection. When, instead of being self-righteous, I am able to focus on what is important to the other person, I find I can not only better understand the other person’s perspective, but can find that there is ground on which we can connect.
Reflect on instances in which you have been in disagreement with someone from work, home, wherever. Did you approach the disagreement with a need to be right or with a desire to better understand the other person? What would happen if you allowed yourself to let go of the need to be right?
Take five minutes to quiet your mind and look inside. What does your inner wisdom want to tell you about the need to be right?
Hi Deb
Right/wrong or good/bad is a digital either/or type of response. This is the world of judgments, however most of life is analog rather than digital. The digital judgment response is helpful and necessary in life and death situations, but in most cases it is more helpful if we live in the analog world.
The problem with judgment is when it leads to alienation. The answer is not to give up judgment (assessing something with respect to our values) but to notice what we need to do to make a judgment alienating. You mention self-righteousness and that also requires that we do something than simply being self-righteous. The extra step is to add contempt to our judgment, then we will create alienation.
To create an alternative open compassionate response we can keep our judgment and add curiosity rather than contempt when someone’s thoughts or actions are inconsistent with our values.
I have an article and two exercises on transforming judgmental thinking in my book Restoring Hope: Appreciative Strategies to Resolve Grief and Resentment. You can find the article at:
http://www.appreciativeway.com/hope/TransformingJudgment.pdf
Rob
Thanks for those resources, Rob.