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Hi there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 156, "The Benefits of Being Wrong." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:22 

Alright, hello there, my friends. So happy to have you here today. Thanks for joining me. If you are brand new, glad to have you. I hope that you find things here that benefit you, that put you on a path to becoming more the kind of person that you want to be. If you are a return listener, thank you so much for coming back. And I'd like to encourage you to please go on to 

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00:53 

Alright, today we are talking about being wrong. Eek. Now I know that not everybody has issues with being wrong, but I have spent my life with so much resistance to being wrong. I just have always, from the time I can remember, always liked to be right. And I don't think that's completely abnormal. But maybe I've been that way a little bit more than other people. I kind of built my identity around being right, and because of that there was a lot of emotional attachment to being wrong. So when I would be challenged, I could feel my ears getting hot ,and kind of that that muffled kind of sound going on, I could feel my heart rate pick up, I could my brain would start racing. I would feel my my pulse because of my heart, right? And it was very similar to a fear or a trauma response as I look at those physical manifestations. Now, Brené Brown taught me that that is also similar to a shame response. I was equating "being wrong" with "something being wrong with me," and that turns us in to shame, right? Having a wrong idea, having a wrong answer or something like that, became shameful for me. Being wrong can also often be associated with losing control or losing power over the situation. 

02:26 

Now, these things don't feel good. Okay? Our primitive brain responds in a way to protect us from pain or from danger, and pain equals danger. So it's really fascinating that our brain responds to being wrong as though we are in danger and it creates this trauma, fear, danger, shame response physically manifested in our body. But the thing is, when we are wrong, we are generally not really in danger. It's just perceived that way by our primitive brain. Okay, just like getting up in front of a crowd to give a talk, we will have a lot of those same physical manifestations. We are not really in danger if we're getting in front of a crowd to give a presentation. But our brain perceives it that way and responds as though we are in danger. And it gives us all of this feedback. And if we're not aware and we're not paying attention, all of this feedback that we're getting from our brain and from our body can cause some problems. We can get defensive. We can get angry. We might get aggressive. These are all the kind of physical manifestations, fear or trauma or shame responses, to being wrong. 

03:47 

Now it's interesting to me that we can equate being wrong with being in danger. But here's where my brain would go when I would be challenged. And sometimes still does go and probably will go for the rest of my life. I'm sure that this is something I'm going to be working on for a long time. But here's where my brain goes when I'm challenged with being wrong...not all the time. I'm getting better. One: I feel like my integrity is being challenged. Any of y'all feel the same way? Like your integrity? What about my intelligence being challenged? Feeling like somebody's telling me that I'm not smart enough. Within myself, my own understanding of myself was being challenged. Do I trust myself? Am I smart enough? I would start to have those kinds of questions within myself. And this is the thing that's interesting as well, is my own view of my stance of where I'm at is fragile. It's not stable. And so I become kind of scared that I'm going to be found out. Right? It's interesting, as I have explored this and looked into this in myself, that these are some thoughts that I've discovered. I would have never said before that I was kind of afraid I was going to be found out to be a fraud. But I see that as I have really done some work to examine my own thoughts behind my feelings of being wrong. 

05:14 

So what was happening was I'm not accepting my humanity and I'm stuck in my false sense of perfection. And so I'm not recognizing that of course I'm going to be wrong. If not some of the time, at least probably much of the time, I'm going to be  wrong. Because guess what? I'm a human. My viewpoint is limited. I'm only touching part of the elephant. Right? I only know what's right in front of me. Part of our earthly experience is to learn from our mistakes and to grow and to move forward. This is something that, as a missionary back in the late 80s, '89, '90, I taught this in one of the lessons. I don't remember exactly which one. But we talked about how our reasons for coming here to Earth were to get a physical body and to learn from earthly experiences. Basically to make mistakes and to grow. And that is implied that that is for our whole life. 

06:13 

But to learn to be wise in our lives, we have to walk toward what we don't understand. We cannot stay in our little comfort zone of what feels good to us and what feels right to us. We have to embrace that we don't know it all and start to question what we do know. This is so important for us with our intellectual growth, with our spiritual growth and with our emotional growth. Politically, there are a lot of very smart, capable, compassionate people on both sides. Right? There's people on both sides. And not everybody, whatever side you're on, not everybody on the other side is an idiot. A lot of very smart people over there. What do they know that I don't know? Why are they taking the stance that they're taking? What if I'm wrong about something? If your spouse has a different opinion, what does he understand that you don't? At church, if someone shares a doctrinal belief, a perspective that differs from yours, why do they believe that? What's going on with them? What do they know that I don't know that puts them in that stance? Seeking to understand all of the other side is the best way to begin to create wisdom and spiritual maturity and emotional growth. 

07:54 

Whereas humility will say, "I have a limited view. I don't understand everything. I have a lot to learn. Teach me." Humility, in the long run, brings more confidence in your ability to discern and think through things because humility is willing to be wrong to understand what we don't currently understand. Humility is staying open to what we don't yet know. And recognizing that as of now, this is my best understanding, but I'm sure there are more things to understand. I'm sure there are things that I still need to learn in order to have a higher understanding. Recognizing that right now this is my best and most honest assessment, but that is limited. It's limited by my experience. It's limited by my education. It's limited by my socialization. Again, I'm only touching part of the elephant. 

08:57 

So the question that that is very helpful for us to start asking is "what if I'm wrong about this? How could this other person be right?" This thought for me really started to sink deeply into my soul last summer during the racial riots and the challenges from last summer when George Floyd was killed. And we had all this rioting here in the United States. A lot of things going on and there was so much political division and then COVID came. Again, so much political division. Everybody on either side and it just seemed to be so polarized and everybody was asking "what is wrong with them speaking of the other side? Why can't they understand this? They're idiots," right? You just would hear so much of this. Social media was just exhausting if you were on there. And I think it's fascinating that we always want to see the other people who don't have our view as being crazy people. 

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But what if we were to take a step back and say, "what am I missing that so many other smart engaging people are getting that they see so differently? What do I not understand? What does the world look like from their perspective?" And then even this question, which can be a little bit painful: "what do I look like from their perspective? What do they see about my perspective?" This is how we can move into a place of solving things, to be willing to see where we're wrong and to acknowledge that I probably am wrong. There are some things here that I know that I'm gonna be wrong at. What are they? How can I find them? How can I figure them out? When the riots happened last summer, I at first took this stance of like, "oh my gosh, like what's going on here? All these people are not seeing things right. They're not doing things right." And then I step back and I'm like, "wait, there's something going on here that I don't understand." And I have two friends who are African-American that are good friends and that I felt comfortable with enough calling and talking to and discussing the issues with them and seeing things from their point of view. And it was really so eye-opening and brilliant to me to move into this space of really honest, open conversations about the riots from their point of view, about racism from their point of view, about what was going on and to see how it had impacted their lives. Some very beautiful, enlightening experiences for me, talking with my two friends. 

11:51 

And I think it's fascinating that this is another one of those situations in our lives that is a paradox. It seems like asking where we're wrong is going to set us back like recognizing that we're wrong is going to make us more wrong, is going to put  us in a worse space. But it actually makes us more right, if we want to use right and wrong phrases, right? It makes us more right because we gain more information. We grow, we see things from another perspective. And only when we're willing to be wrong can we move into more right? Okay, now I'm not quite sure that I'm sold on the terms of right and wrong because, you know, there's, I just think there's more information and less information and and we can see things from so many different perspectives. 

12:45 

Let me give you another example for my own life. In the last several months I realized that that I was not really connection connected to my own sexuality very much and so I have been doing a lot of reading about sexuality. I've been listening to a lot of podcasts, talking to a lot of people. And at first a lot of the things I was encountering I was, I was kind of resistant to like "oh whoa whoa whoa that's wrong," right and then I was like "okay but what if I'm wrong? What if that concept or that idea is not wrong but rather what if I'm wrong?" And so I've had to learn to stop judging new information so quickly, questioning what could be right about the things that I'm learning and about the space that I'm trying to grow into. And it's been a fascinating, incredible experience, and even a spiritual experience if I might say, because I am praying and asking God to help me find the space that's going to be a healthier space for me to be in. A place where I can tap into my sexuality as a woman, which I think is a very vital part of who we are and what we are meant to be and how we can tap into our power and our potential. And so that's one reason why I've wanted to really explore it a lot more and understand how that's a part of who we are. And I've learned some amazing things and I do feel willing to stop judging the information and instead go, "huh, what if that's right?" Not only has it expanded my viewpoint of myself, but it has also given me more spiritual connection to God, as I feel like He has guided me and directed me in this space as well. 

14:38 

So this is back to the paradox. When we can accept where we're wrong, we can actually become more right or more whole. We can embrace more information and see it in a different light. See it, touch a different part of the elephant. And this kind of goes back to podcast number 110, which was titled "The Cost of Being Right." One of the things that happens when we don't look at where we're being wrong is that our relationships begin to deteriorate because we become very judgmental. We become very rigid and we don't take a look at things from the other person's point of view. We're not curious about them. But when we see and are willing to admit where we're wrong, then our relationships can be strengthened because we will look to the other person for more information to understand their point of view. We step into a more compassionate space. 

15:39 

Another benefit is that we learn to trust ourselves more and, in return, other people will trust us more. As I put myself out there to learn more and more and more and to not stay so rigid in the beliefs that I believe are right. But as I open myself up and I see other points of view and I see other things going on, I'm always amazed at how afterwards I'm like, what? Like, look what I learned. Now I'm a bit of a stronger, more capable person. I'm more knowledgeable about where I need to go and what I want to do. And as I step into that place and as other people see that as well, as they engage with me in my willingness to be wrong, those people in those relationships trust me more as well. Because in this space, in my being willing to be wrong and not being afraid to look at it, I can grow in my overall wisdom, my awareness, my tolerance, my acceptance of others. When we do this, we feel better. Because remember what we talked about a few weeks ago: the pain of awareness is better than the pain of avoidance. More knowledge, more truth, will only enhance and bless our lives. Keeping ourselves stuck in our small little bubble of our comfort zone will keep us stuck. 

17:10 

So many people in middle age are wondering, "why am I stuck? Why can't I get out?" This I believe is one of the reasons. Because we sometimes feel like we're so right in how we've done things our whole lives that we are afraid to look at where we might be wrong. So we start to feel better. Seeing where we're wrong also has its foundation in love. We have love for other people because we're seeking to understand them more. We're seeking to step more into curiosity. We also find that we love ourselves more. We have a gift of greater understanding of the world and of other people around us. And the more we step into this love, the more we are also able to expand our world. And it also requires great courage for us to explore our resistance to being wrong. 

18:09 

As I talked about at the beginning of this podcast, as I started to explore why I was so scared of being wrong, I found some thoughts that I didn't necessarily like. Those shame-based thoughts that were keeping me stuck. But there was fascinating  information to be found. And for you, I promise there will be fascinating information to be found. So, as we work into this place of looking to see where am I wrong, some of the benefits, more confidence in our ability to grow, more confidence in our ability to handle uncomfortable emotions, more courage to explore concepts where we were previously hesitant to, because we realized that as we explore new concepts, as we expand our knowledge, we become stronger, healthier, more loving people. Another benefit is that we gain more self-respect as we learn and step into the next best version of ourselves. And who doesn't want more confidence, more courage, and more self-respect? These are amazing traits for us to have, and being willing to look at not only where we're wrong, but our resistance to being wrong. Those things are a great tool for us to use to be able to move forward in the version of ourselves that we really want to become. 

19:44 

And this is part of growing up that I think is kind of fascinating for me is I don't have so much resistance to being wrong. I had a lot more resistance in my 20s and 30s, and even my 40s, and here I am in my 50s and I'm like, you know what, it's kind of like it when I'm wrong. I kind of like it when I'm starting to be able to see what areas I have to grow and becoming aware of my blind spots. It's kind of a brilliant fascinating place for me to be. 

20:15 

Okay, if you want to discuss this more, if you want some help figuring this out, this is what I do as a coach. So if you want to contact me and talk about coaching and how it could work for your benefit, you can go to my website, tanyahale.com. You can book a free 30 minute consult and we can discuss all things coaching and see how coaching can help you move in to a life that you really want to live. Okay, if you're loving this podcast, please take a minute to subscribe, leave me a review and share this with your friends. It's one of the best ways that we can help other people to move forward, is to to share good information. I hope that you have an awesome, awesome week, my friends, and I will talk to you next time. Bye. 

21:02 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.