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“being right is highly over-rated, even a stopped clock is right twice a day” - unknown
Remember the last time that you were involved in a “conversation” in which the person you were talking to just had to be right?
Or was that someone was talking to you and YOU just HAD to be RIGHT!
The quote at the start of this post makes an important point…….even a stopped clock is right twice a day…..but what value is a stopped clock to us in living our lives.
The stopped clock only serves to confuse us. Unless we have another time piece to measure it by, we never know at which two points in the day the clock is actually right, and the sad part is that despite the clock being right for two minutes every day, it is wrong for 1338 minutes a day.
By anyone’s mathematics that is not a great ratio of rightness to wrongness.
The stopped clock does not help us to measure time or to know when to do things, in fact it does not help us do anything except collect some dust.
When we reserve all rights in our interactions with others we are acting like the stopped clock. We are stuck in a place / time /position. The problem with acting like a stopped clock is that we have no way of measuring at which point or points we are ACTUALLY RIGHT?
Holding our place / time / position means it leads us be wrong for the other 1338 potential opportunities in the day. So being RIGHT for that proverbial two minutes represents a proverbial 1338 minutes of lost opportunity. It also means that we are adding NO value to the interaction, and the dust that we collect is that of lost friendships, shrinking relationships and a heap of lost potential.
Do you want to be RIGHT, or would you rather have another 1338 opportunities to add value?
image by no3rdw
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Yeah good point Mick,
Missed opportunies are exactly that missed, they never come back in the exact same way, grab what you can when you can!
with both hands…. and run!
Pretty thought provoking – maybe it will sink in deeper later today. Hopefully I’ve added value with this comment and you have added value to my life with your post.
Thanks… It looks like this one is going to rattle around in the back of your brain for a while
which is a good thing…. I’d love to hear what happens when if and when an AHA moment occurs based on this.
Thanks for the comment.
Mick,
A very thought provoking post; I love how you’ve linked it all to lost opportunities and the ratio between the few minutes of being right to those of being wrong.
Learning to realise the number of lost opportunities could be of great benefit to the stubborn people we meet.
Regards
Paul
Thanks Paul… letting go of the stubborn need to be RIGHT does free up a lot of opportunity and it is a scary ratio when you think about it.
Thanks for the comment Paul.
Great post Mick!
I love how you say we can add value in 1338 different opportunities a day! An excellent point well made!
Thanks Ben, 1338…. lots of opportunity isn’t it (if we take it)