It’s Okay to be Wrong

One of the hardest things for some egos to accept is that they may be wrong, that what they strongly believe or the way they perceive things to be may not actually be the way things really are. As it turns out, there is tremendous freedom in allowing yourself to be wrong, and in fact that willingness allows something deeper to awaken, something that simply knows and exists outside the game of right and wrong entirely.

Below is a video post I recently created on the topic of being wrong.

Note: I’ve set it to play in HD quality by default, so for those of you who are on a low-bandwidth connection, when you hit the play button, fiddle with the HD button and make sure it’s black (off) so that you download the faster and lower quality version. (If you could let me know in the comments what you did to play the low quality version, that’d be awesome. You may need to turn it on and off. Thank you.)

For those of you who prefer reading, let’s summarize what was covered in the video here.

Smart People Take Note

For those people who’ve grown up being told “you’re so smart” and derive a sense of self-worth from how much they know and what they understand, there may be an association between being right and self-worth. Thus, it may be harder for smart people to say “I don’t know” or “I was wrong.”

For example, growing up I really liked getting things right. When someone would ask me something, it really boosted my self-esteem to know something. When someone would ask me something I didn’t know, instead of saying “I don’t know,” I’d make up an answer that was completely absurd, something that was obviously wrong and off the mark. For example, even something as simple as “What time is it?” If I didn’t know, I might say something like 25 o’clock. It was a fun way to basically get admitting that I didn’t know something, which to my ego was perceived to be a tremendous blow.

There’s a saying I really like… “I’m not young enough to know everything.”

Misperceiving What Is

How many times have you seen someone misinterpret or misunderstand someone else? One person says one thing, but the other person actually understands something else entirely.

Quick and easy example: “I love you.” That statement can mean a hundred different things. A thousand. It’s so easy to think a person is saying one thing when really they’re saying another.

Growing and Learning

Have you noticed that as you develop over the course of your life and you learn new things, your perspective of the world changes?

There’s another saying I really like… “Show me a person who believes the same thing their entire life and I’ll show you a person who’s learned nothing.”

As we develop and evolve, very often our understanding of reality changes and what we used to perceive to be “the truth” is later seen to be maybe part of the truth or perhaps completely false entirely. Seeing that what you have said before can be very scary, particularly for teachers and educators, or for anyone who bases their life on a certain set of rigidized teachings.

Eventually we may see beyond the limits of our previous understandings, and this is a natural part of the process.

What Then of Our “Old” Understandings?

Something I’ve seen with some authors is that they’ll write a book during their own personal transformation. The book is awesome and useful and very helpful. Yet what may happen by the end of the book is that the person who started writing the book is not the same person who finished the book. They transform so much that the energies that are discussed in the book may no longer even be present within them. They’re no longer “in it” but beyond it.

Quick example. Let’s say a person writes a book on forgiveness, on how merciful and forgiving God is and how we can develop our abilities to forgive as well. Then the author later comes to the realization that if nothing wrong could ever happen and that God could never actually be hurt and thus feel that He has been wronged, what then is there to forgive? If forgiveness was never actually necessary in the first place, is the book on forgiveness still applicable? On one level, yep. On another level, not anymore.

It Ain’t So Black and White

Instead of seeing truth as a right and wrong thing, a better model may be that of rungs on a ladder. Certain things may be up above you on a higher rung on a ladder. You climb and eventually get there and stabilize on that rung, only to later keep climbing and leave that rung behind altogether. That rung and the lessons you learned there may no longer be appropriate for you now, but those lessons may be appropriate for many others.

Thus, even if we outgrow a certain realization or understanding, it may nevertheless be useful for others if they’re on that level now.

This has been interesting for me looking back over some of my old blog posts and see that I’ve grown since I started writing posts here 2 years ago. Some of what I’ve written before, I can now see beyond where I was then and see that where I was then and, well, it’s not necessarily that I was completely wrong by any means, but it was just that I was only seeing a small part of the bigger picture. If I were to talk about a subject today, I would likely approach the topic differently and explain things in a new (and hopefully better) way. In fact, I may even mention that what I am seeing today I may negate tomorrow. I may realize something tomorrow that will completely turn all my current understandings on their ear. There’s a sense of flexibility and non-attachment here now. Freedom.

So yeah, we grow, we develop, we expand our awareness and understandings, and as a result what we say may contradict something we’ve said in the past. Oh well!