WRONG WITH STYLE

How do you get to be so cool that you can actually be wrong with style?

Do you know what I mean? I'm frequently wrong, and I don't much care for it. It's much nicer being right - you feel smart, respected, wise, looked-up-to. But whenever you turn out to be wrong about something, especially if you were adamant, your pride pops like a balloon and your brain goes into auto-pilot trying to work out either how to pretend that you never cared in the first place, or that there's a precise logic to exactly why you were wrong, which means you can sort of claim to be right after all. Dissonance resolved. And breathe out.

Sometimes we see it coming. We preface our thoughts with, "Now correct me if I'm wrong..." or, "I could be mistaken but..." which is a nifty get-out-of-jail-free card, isn't it? But, like a get-out-of-jail-free card, you can only really use it once per conversation.

Similarly, I sometimes find myself adding "... in my opinion" to the end of a thing I could be wrong about. Again, that's a neat defence-mechanism against anyone with contrary views who might be about to demolish what I've said with their own thoughts. No-one can dismantle my opinion, surely? And even if they could, stating it as an opinion makes it more flexible when the new information I’m about to learn, suddenly deconstructs my opinion for a pile of poo.

So, how do you get to be so cool that you know how to surf in the contentedness of actually being wrong about things, without resorting to these tactics?

Here's another interesting angle. Would you be pleased if someone took your advice but didn't realise that you had advised them to do it, and had subsequently wrestled the solution into being their own idea in the first place? There's a part of me that finds that tough, but the outcome for them is exactly the same, so what does it matter?

Mike asked me a question the other day. He asked me whether it was better to matter to other people, or for what you do for others to matter. I was annoyed because I knew the answer. Imagine that!

Anyway, if what I do for others matters more, then I have got to stop worrying about being wrong, because that's all in the realm of 'wanting to matter' or 'wanting to be important'. And ironically that doesn't matter at all. Not really. Oh! And you know why: because the people who really matter in your life will probably not be bothered anyway, about whether you're wrong. Attitude speaks louder than words sometimes.

So, how do you do it? How do you get so cool that you can handle being wrong when people correct you? That's what I want to be like, instead of arguing about grammar, or theology, or science, or the length of the Amazon, and then having to eating humble pie like a red-faced buffoon?

Anyway, a thing to learn is that being wrong actually has the power to be tremendous. While it might feel like a big old cross-mark printed across your face, it actually means there might be something to learn by listening a bit better. I'm not surprised that I've ended up back there. That is definitely a skill I want to get better at. I'm not a brilliant listener at all.

Then, I could be wrong about that, I suppose.