“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?