Being Right or Being Kind? Love is the Answer!

Love is the answer.

We are all just bumbling around through life looking for love. Many of us have strapped down our emotions.  We are too afraid to love or let love in, because the pain that has been caused in the past has seemed so unbearable that we couldn’t possibly stand to ever experience that again. We don’t know that love is the answer to everything we struggle with on a daily base.

I am not outside of this group of people.

For most of my life, unbeknownst to me, I didn’t love myself. I didn’t realize that love is the answer to everything.

I covered it up with perfectionism, being a know-it-all, and ALWAYS needing to prove that I was right, and win arguments.  Being right was the most important thing.  

It was nearly impossible to be in relationship with me, because my way was the best way.

Which of course, always left “you” (poor human in front of me) feeling insignificant and as if they didn’t matter.

I don’t know if you can relate to that feeling.  I was in denial for a long time.  

I thought, “what do you mean, I don’t love myself?  

Of course I do! I’m awesome! Have you met me!?  I do everything perfectly.  I achieve every one of my goals.  I do everything I am supposed to do!”

 

I Was Always Right

I really thought I was perfect.   What’s not to love? Except that you couldn’t actually see me or get to me.  There was no person in there.  There was just a HUMAN DOING…  I didn’t even know I had feelings… much less, felt them. It wasn’t until my husband at the time started looking somewhere else that I woke up.

Why didn’t he want me?!  I was PERFECT!?!  He must be crazy!!! I didn’t realize that love is the answer to everything.

You see… we want people to see things from OUR PERSPECTIVES, because OUR perspectives are the BETTER perspectives! As my friend says, “I don’t want to go into your bubble, I want you to come into my bubble, because my bubble is prettier than your bubble!”

We all think OUR way is the best way

We are all like that.  OUR way is the prettiest way.  Of course it is!  We thought it out and planned it, organized it and structured it, according to our experiences and what made us feel good!  We want to create MORE of what feels good, and AVOID what doesn’t feel good.  Why on earth would we do it YOUR STUPID WAY?  Your way doesn’t line up with all of my evidence and proof, that my way is clearly better than yours!  Being right about it becomes about survival.

Why would I even consider your way, when I know my way is the way that not only works, but is BEST.

And guess what?  It is the best.  For me.

When we start trying to tell OTHERS how to do their lives, according to the way we have figured out how to do OUR lives, then we make them WRONG.

 

That’s what happens when I am being right; I make someone else wrong. Click To Tweet

 

As soon as you make someone wrong, you hurt them.

How does it feel when someone tells you that you are doing it wrong?

I personally hate it.  I actually hurts me when someone says I did something wrong.  (Which probably has something to do with the way I was brought up in a perfectionist household, but that’s another story).

 

Usually we are being right because we are afraid of something 

We have collected evidence to prove that something is going to hurt, and we are doing what we can to avoid that.  In order to avoid it, we grip so tightly to what we know, so that we can experience some kind of control over our lives.

 

The trouble is, “knowing” something doesn’t leave room for curiosity to see something in a different way. Click To Tweet

 

Healthy relationships are based on listening, validating, empathizing and understanding each other.  Healthy relationships are based on trusting the other person to be able to do it (whatever it is).  

Healthy relationships have 2 people who stand on their own feet, make their own decisions, are independent of each other.  Although they each experience their lives independently, they can at times be interdependent.  They ask each other for advice, and input.  But neither tells the other how to do something.  That would be controlling. Healthy relationships know that love is the answer to everything.

 

When you are being right in a relationship, you lose your ability to be curious.  You lose your ability to listen, validate, empathize or understand.  When you are trying to PROVE your point, the other person does not feel heard, seen, understood or loved.  More than likely, they end up feeling controlled, bossed around, told what to do, lost, or invalidated. 

 

When we do this with children, it can be very damaging.  The child is trying to figure out who they are, then the parent or the authority figure comes in telling them who to be, how to be or act, but perhaps it is the opposite of what the child’s inner wisdom is saying, and the child learns not to trust themselves.  The child sometimes gets punished or beaten for trusting themselves, and this can be very damaging to the child’s sense of self.

A child who experiences being punished, controlled or bullied by an adult or authority figure often is the one who learns quickest how to “do it right,” so they don’t get hurt again.  Of course, this leads to them doing the same behavior with someone else in the future.

 

How do we let go of Being Right?

 

Love and kindness.

I remember learning when I could be loving and firm at the same time.  It blew my mind.  The only way anyone had ever been firm with me was with anger.  How could you be loving and firm at the same time?  Didn’t being firm come from anger?  How could you be angry and love someone at the same time?  It was a difficult concept for me to understand.

 

But the more I played with it, the more freedom I started to experience in my relationships and with myself. 

As I learned to be curious, and let go of my position (let go of being right), I was able to experience more joy in life!  What an awesome experience!

 

I remember a coach saying to me, “what’s the worst that could happen if you let go of your position?”  My answer was that someone would die.  She thought I was blowing things out of proportion, but that was the way my mind had learned to think.  If I didn’t control it and figure out how to be right about it, I could die.  She invited me to explore what awesome things could happen if I let go of my position.  At the time, I just looked at her like a deer in the headlights.  It was such a new idea, I could barely wrap my head around it.  My analyzing, controlling brain couldn’t figure this out.  Let go?!  I would DIE!

But guess what?  I didn’t die when I let go of being right.

I actually started to live.

And my kids say they remember when I “got nice.”

 

I started putting love and kindness ahead of being right and controlling.  I started adding LOVE and KINDNESS to my firm and strict parenting.  I started adding listening, validating, understanding, empathizing and being curious.

It wasn’t that hard.  But it was very, very new.

When I was able to LET GO of my position, and being right about MY WAY of seeing things, everything opened up. Click To Tweet

My boyfriend and I have a couple of tools that we use as a couple to help us hear each other when we get stuck with being right about something.  It’s incredible to go from wanting to scream and rip someone’s head off, to eye-gazing through tears because you realize you just really wanted to be loved and seen and so did your partner.

• Love is the answer.
• Let go.
• Get curious.
• Listen without being right.
• Validate.

Go into someone else’s world.  Your world won’t end, I promise.  You can always go back to your perspective later.  But, for a moment, stop being right about your perspective, and check out the view from someone else’s bubble.  Try to see why they think their bubble is the prettiest and the best.

How do you do this?  Learn to love yourself.  I found that it was IMPOSSIBLE to let go of my perspective, my way of thinking, my way of being, because I was terrified of myself. 

Once I learned to love and accept myself, just the way I am, good, bad, ugly, scared, angry, whatever… I was able to see that, be with it, and still choose to love myself.  When I was able to do that for me, I was able to do it for others.

Try it out.

If you can’t figure it out, I have a coaching program for you to learn to love yourself.  If you want to know more about it, let’s have a breakthrough session to see if it’s right for you.