I grew up with a need to be right – at all costs. I’m still struggling with this. If the thoughts I share are dismissed, or rejected out of hand, it spins me out. It’s one of my deep push-buttons. I take it personally – as if you aren’t just rejecting my ideas but are rejecting me. So sometimes I get stuck in what I call “right fighting.”
Right fighting is where I defend to the death the idea I just put out there. My experience is that I live or die on that “hill” defending my right to exist. And that’s how it plays out in my mind too. As irrational is it sounds, in my mind, I’m thinking that if I’m wrong, then I’m an idiot, and I might as well not exist.
I grew up in a family of “right fighters”, so I fit right it. And it makes for some really exciting holiday gatherings – except my wife wants to go back home after the first few hours.
If I hang out with people who don’t get into right fighting, it all works out just fine. I defend my “hill” and everyone else just backs down. Well, … actually it doesn’t work out just fine. It produces strained relationships.
I’ve discovered that right fighting just about always causes strained relationships. That’s why I’m working on changing myself in this area. I’ve been working on shaking this off for a while now. I feel like I’m getting better at it. I now am much pickier about which “battles I fight” – I “battle” only when I know that I know that I’m right and the outcome is affected by it. Otherwise, it’s not worth it.
Only sometimes I get caught off guard. I’ll share something with someone and their response triggers my right fighting button, and down I go. Grrr. I’m still working on ways to avoid the situation in the first place by steering the topic of conversation to matters of the heart where it doesn’t even make sense to disagree. I’m also working on better ways to respond even when my right fighting button gets pushed.
Can you relate? Can you see how this affects our ability to succeed and live a legacy? After you’ve been in a right fighting battle, how do you feel? What do you do avoid the fight or respond in a more productive fashion?
