When being right could be wrong

We often surround ourselves with people who think like us. In general, this makes life more pleasant. Then there are times when we hear from people who have differing views or who approach things from a completely opposite way than we do and it shakes us a little. Our reaction may be to close down and become defensive or assume they are “idiots” for thinking as they do however, we can often learn much from these experiences.

Just this week I spoke with someone who made me listen to how she felt about an area of the arts she was deeply involved in and how she felt it was not respected and overlooked by the “powers that be.” My first thought: “you’re off-base,” but… she had many good points, some of which I’d not heard before, so I learned something from her and realized that she was coming from her place because she cared about what she did.

But what I also took away from this was how foolishly closed off she was. In her own strident stance she was hurting herself by not being able to understand the very people she accused of being incapable of comprehending her organization’s plight and purpose.

She’d made up a story that there was a political plot against her organization. There was no possible way in her mind, that just maybe she wasn’t completely right.

I realized how we often do this with many aspects of our lives, work, play and otherwise. We get so blinded by our passion that we don’t see from anyone else’s point of view. We become hysterical and we lose when this happens.

The real danger of thinking that we are clearly, the only person or group who “gets it” is that we become as ridiculous as those we criticize.

I’ve been ridiculous a few times. How about you?

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UPDATE: The day after I wrote this, I read this post by Seth Godin that covers an aspect of this, namely, how to deal with emotionally immature responses.