We’re afraid of being wrong. But we’ve got it backwards. Why wrongness gets a bad wrap and how being wrong actually activates our righteousness.
Wrongness is something we seem to dodge at all costs. We make an excuse, create a justification, redirect the responsibility to someone else…or even flat out lie. We associate wrongness with the pain of imperfection. We’re afraid of being wrong because we mistake it for failure.
But that’s where we get it, well, wrong. Making mistakes and being wrong aren’t disadvantages. Quite the opposite. In fact, hiding from your wrongness is a missed opportunity. Because all of your opportunity to learn, grow, and change rests in your willingness to be wrong. As Seth Godin puts it, “there’s a stop on the road to being right and it’s called being wrong.”
When we own the fact that we don’t know the answer, or we made the wrong move, or said the wrong thing, or even admit that there might be another way, we create an opportunity for growth.
If you never admit you don’t know, how can you ever learn more? If you never do it the wrong way, how will you ever figure out the right way? If you never break the thing how will you uncover the ways to build it better?
So stop hiding from being wrong. Being wrong is all right. In fact, admitting we’re wrong actually activates our righteousness through the grace of curiosity. Curiosity helps us see things with fresh eyes. To find solutions. To create a better way. To innovate, improve and maybe most importantly, to unify us (curiosity and empathy go hand in hand after all).
In short, curiosity unveils the path to healing, learning, growth and improvement. Also known as the road to being right. So stop fearing wrongness and start inviting it. Be teachable. Be curious. Be willing to be wrong.