I'd Rather be Wrong and Happy

Have you ever wondered why we put a premium on being right and being the best? Most of our upbringing, in the culture I know anyway, we were measured under these metrics. School and education tested our value by asking if we knew the correct answer, then pinning us against each other to compete for the top rankings. Everything from our sports teams and academic clubs to music endeavors and art shows taught us the value of striving to be better than our competition. Our enrichment programs showed us the merit of being right and being the best and our systems were set up in such a way to reinforce these as goals to value.

Yet there’s a time when we’ve outgrown them. There’s a pivotal moment to recognize when being right or being the best are no longer serving us. In fact, they may even be exactly what’s getting in our way, impeding us from accomplishing what truly matters to us now: peace, equanimity, ease, relaxation, harmony, inspiration, love. Where can we begin to let go of the reinforced notion that being the best and having the right answer are going to get us to where we want to be? Take a moment to consider where that might be causing more friction than fluidity. On one of our first retreats with RhythmetriX, we joked about our new hit single “Wrong and Happy”, with imaginary lyrics that we’d rather be wrong and happy than right and in a fight. Well, try it on for size and see what happens. Maybe being right and being the best aren’t as necessary as we believed them to be.