How do you feel about being wrong?

If you're like most people, you don't like it very much. But I'd like to offer you a different way of seeing things (of course I do - that's pretty much my whole thing).

First, let's define the terms. When I say "being wrong," what do I mean? I am talking about the kind of being wrong where you believe something to be totally, completely true, and then you find out that it is, in fact, not. 

In a way, I'm actually talking about being surprised, but being surprised specifically in a way or an area where it goes against a strongly held belief. 

Here's an example. I used to work in a coffeeshop when I was in college. One of the things I learned there was that microwaving your coffee to reheat it is gross. I was young and impressionable and I wanted to fit in and microwaves really do heat unevenly, so I decided that this idea was right and that microwaving coffee was wrong.

Y'all. This means that for many, many years of my life, if my coffee wasn't as hot as I wanted it to be, I would either 1. add something hot to it to heat it up (but this threw off the ratio of creamer to coffee and involved me developing a whole system for how to keep my coffee hot longer without destroying the integrity of its creaminess) or 2. throw it away and start over. Or sometimes 3. drink it at the temperature it was while also being annoyed that it was not piping hot. On the rare occasion that I would microwave the coffee, I'd do it before I added the creamer, because I also believed that microwaving the creamer made it gross. 

When my parents visited a few weeks ago, they microwaved their coffee with no concern whatsoever. I decided to try it. You know, just to see. And y'all, my then-satisfyingly-hot coffee tasted AWESOME. It was not gross. It was not ruined. And my brain said to itself, "omg being wrong is the best!"

Even one year ago this never would have happened. I used to be the kind of person who is MARRIED to her ideas and opinions. I had thoughts like, "I know how I like things" and " that would never work for me" and "it just shouldn't be like that." And I thought that these thoughts were helping me. I thought that they were allowing me to do things my way. 

This is the thing about thoughts. They can sound good at the surface level, but the truth is in what they create in your life. And my thoughts created a lot of rigidity and stubbornness and sometimes big episodes of stuckness.

And we're not just talking about coffee, y'all. 

One of my old thoughts was that I was not the corporate type, but then I needed a job and my contracting agency rep insisted I'd be a great fit for this one role, even thought it was corporate and tech and I had experience in neither. And surprise - not only did I get the job, but I loved it and had tons of fun there FOR YEARS (and made more money than I'd ever made before). But I spent so many years being sad about my job prospects because I wasn't willing to see things differently. 

One of my old thoughts was that I was straight because in the past I'd mostly dated men (see the mostly there? Even though I had dated womxn before, my brain was still trying to hold onto its old thought). Surprise - I am queer! My girlfriend and I have been together for more than two years (and it's my longest and happiest relationship to date!). But I spent so many years continuing to date men because it's what I'd done in the past. 

One of my old thoughts was that networking events are the worst, and I made that thought come true by believing it. Surprise - when I choose my thoughts on purpose, I love networking events, because they're just me meeting new people and making connections. But how many amazing events did I skip because I was so certain that I wouldn't like them? And how many events did I go to but not enjoy because I believed my thoughts more than I believed in being present in the moment and being willing to see what could happen?

Here's the thing, y'all. Sometimes it's fairly innocuous, like me refusing to microwave my coffee. But sometimes it's not. And the more we don't want to be wrong, the more we hunker down in our familiar ideas.

But our familiar ideas only create more of what we already have. And while our lives do have things that are going well and things that are working, and it's important to pay attention to them, being willing to be wrong (and if you want to get really crazy, being willing to ENJOY being wrong) can radically transform your life in really fun and fascinating ways. 

I know it's transformed mine. 

I enjoy my life a lot more now, and I'm more willing to be curious about EVERYTHING.

Here's what's neat about that. In some ways, my life actually is completely different now, because I'm willing to be wrong. I try things I used to be unwilling to try (like microwaving my coffee).

In other ways, my life is completely the same, but my experience of it is so different that it seems like my life has changed. I spend time with people I've known for years, but I can see them anew. I can be more curious about them than I've been in years. I can just love them as they are, even if I couldn't do that in the past. This is the gift that being willing to be wrong has given me.

What gift could it give you? What relationship or situation could it completely transform?