Ask This Question If You Want To Be Happy Right Now

“Being right is like heroin to human beings,” says Baron Baptiste, one of my teachers.

There is a lot of “rightness” being pushed around right now.

The problem (or perhaps the solution if we can see how this influences us) is that we all are, in fact, right. The beliefs we tightly hold onto came from our life experiences and made them right and true for us. This doesn’t mean they are universal truths, but, as I said, they are true for us. Where you grew up, how you were educated, what your parents modeled, where you traveled to, who you’ve worked with over the years, ALL of your life experiences have contributed to what you currently see as “the truth.”

But remember, just because it’s your truth, doesn’t mean it’s everyone’s truth. Our individual truths and beliefs are as unique as each of our faces and thumbprints. Even if we experience the same situation together, we will all have a different point of view of what happened.

So, as we stand holding onto our individual truths and our addiction to being right, we will remain at a literal stand still. It will be my truth up against your truth. My righteousness up against your righteousness. We will keep trying to push and push and push our truths onto each other until we give up in exhaustion, un-follow each other on Facebook, and go back to talking with people who believe similar things we do.

And nothing will change.

Or, we can give up our need to be right.

I often ask my clients, “Would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy?”

Sometimes it takes them a little time and a lot of inner work to finally choose happiness over being right, but, together, we eventually get there.

And so I ask our world this same question right now: What is more important? “Would you rather be right? Or would you rather be happy?”

Because in order for happiness to be experienced by all, we need to drop our individualized truths and the need to be right, and enter a collective curiosity, inquiry, and assessment of a brand new possibility.

No matter what your beliefs are on the virus and the death of George Floyd, these experiences have shaken up our world. They’ve shined a light on some dark places on both sides of the fence and all the millions of places in between, and have spurred a civil revolution 400 years in the making.

I think it’s safe to say that no matter how you view these issues, our current state of affairs is not joyful, so something’s gotta change.

But, we can’t create something new from something old. We all must be willing to go inward to question our heart, go outward and do what we are called to do, and, at the same time, listen more than we have ever listened before.

Because change can’t happen without communication. Communication can’t happen without understanding. Understanding can’t happen without listening. And listening can’t happen without dropping the need to be right.

Would you rather be right? Or would you rather be happy?

To our collective happiness,
Sara

Sara Mueller
Transformation Coach & Mindfulness Expert
Specializing in Life Balance, Emotional Wellness & Conscious Parenting

P.S. Listening is a critical skill. 100% of participants in my Art of Listening workshop (from yoga students to corporate executives) recognized that their listening had a lot of room for improvement. If you’d like to strengthen your business and personal relationships, as well as your listening skills, let’s talk about coaching that is right for you.

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