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Transcript

The Need to Be Right is the Devil · “I” Of The Hurricane

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: And trust me when I say I know what it's like to make your own life difficult.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Does your life feel like Groundhog Day on repeat?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Eye of the Hurricane Podcast.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine doing something that's ruining our days and our weeks.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: It chips away at our health and our overall life happiness, and we don't even know we're obsessed with it.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: So picture this for a second.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're at a four-way stop.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: We pulled up first.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's clearly our turn.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the other driver just ignores us and rolls right through the intersection.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: They act like we're not even there.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: We slam on the brakes.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden we're laying on the horn and we're yelling terrible things at this driver who obviously is an idiot and is totally in the wrong.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then something strange happens.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: He drives away and he's forgotten about it before he reaches the next block.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: But you and I haven't.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's two hours later, we're in our kitchen telling the story to our spouse.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Our voice is getting louder, our face is on fire, our hearts pounding against our chest almost like we almost got in an accident.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we're saying things like, it was our turn.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he was wrong.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Who does that?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and what's wild is we're still sitting in that intersection instead of moving on with our day.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the truth of the matter is the whole event lasted like three seconds, you know, and we've allowed the suffering to last for hours.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's other situations where we allow the suffering to last for weeks, months, and even years.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: But in this particular case, the suffering didn't come from the other driver.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: We try to convince ourselves that that was the source, but the truth is it came from the part of us that needed to be right.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a part of our mind that just feeds on being wronged.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: It loves a grievance because as long as he's wrong, we're right.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're right, that gives our ego a solid, satisfying sense of kind of who we are.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is it's not a piece of ourselves.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a story the mind continually replays.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And once we see it in ourselves, we start to notice it everywhere.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So if we took a 20-year married couple and they're arguing about a simple miscommunication they're having, within 10 minutes, for a lot of couples, there's all of a sudden no communication.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're talking about who always does this, who never listens, who's been wrong since the day that they met.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the remarkable thing is, physiologically speaking, they feel the same way.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Both have tightness in their chest, they both feel the heat, they both have the same core need.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the big core need is they want the other person to stop and say, you know what?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was wrong, you were right.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: But you and I both know one thing, and that is that sentence is never coming.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So many couples will end up night after night and they'll build up this resentment, always trying to be the one that wins the argument.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, one more example, and this happens especially right now, and we've all been guilty of it.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: But you're on your couch at midnight and you're reading posts, and all of a sudden you read a political post and you read one of the comments, and suddenly your blood pressure is through the roof, and you're typing a reply to a stranger who you'll never meet, and you're gonna express an opinion that doesn't have the slightest chance to move the needle with that individual.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not saying that we should always be passive, not at all.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: When someone is being hurt, we need to speak up.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: When something is cruel or unjust, we need to act.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: So standing up for what matters is important.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: But there's some things that deserve a strong response, and there's other things that simply are ways to stress yourself out that have no upside to them.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a huge difference between responding and reacting.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about what those are.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: A response really comes from a place of clarity.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it deals with what's in front of us, and then it's finished.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: But a reaction comes from a different place inside of us.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: For a lot of us, it comes from wounds or insecurities or the need to be right.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And those reactions tend to replay, it ruminates, it needs the whole world to admit that we were right.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the one protects people, you know, the other one kind of protects our own sense of self.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Once we're tuned in, what do we do when that need to be right arises?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's at the four-way stop or it's that political post that we read.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the healthiest thing might be to do nothing, just to feel what we're feeling and to notice it and not act upon anything.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we're prioritizing our overall peace compared to that insidious need to be right.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Try it and see if you find yourself in a position to where you just feel better.