Lvl 138: Everybody's Just a Dude with an Opinion Man

Opinions. We all have 'em. I'm a dude with an opinion. You're a dude with an opinion. We're all just dudes with opinions, man. (Dude. By the way, that's a gender neutral term. I'm a dude. He's a dude. She's a dude. We're all dudes, dude. No doubt opinions are quite a common commodity o come by. And what do we like to do with our opinions? Insist on being right. Insist on proving the other person wrong. We have this belief that the way we see it is quite frankly the only way to see it, and when someone disagrees with us, what happens? We argue. We fight. We stir up some conflict. Man, that ain't the lazy way at all. You have to be willing to accept differences of opinion. You have to be willing to agree to disagree. Think of all the time and energy it takes to wrap yourself up in some sort of debate in getting another person to see it your way and vice versa. It's better to seek understanding over getting someone to admit that you're right. I mean even if they do, what's the prize here? Being able to stick your tongue out and openly mock them for being wrong? C'mon now. It ain't worth the effort, man. It's better to see where they're coming from, even if, even if, at the end of the day you don't necessarily agree with them. After all, it's understanding each other that builds strong relationships, not having one say the other was right. Be willing to listen and hear another person out. You may not like what they have to say, yet alone think they're right. But at the end of the day, offering understanding is much more powerful than offering to correct their skewed opinion. And remember, it's just that. An opinion. It really holds no barring to the friendship and what it's about. So don't let it. Relax man, ain't everybody gonna agree with what you have to say. You can't change their mind, and even if you do, you're not letting them be any different than you. Insisting on being right is fundamentally the inability to accept that other people are different. That other people have a different background and set of beliefs than you do. Look, we don't have a hive mind. We're all individual thinking creatures. Allow a person to be an individual, allow them to express themselves, open, honestly, by having an opinion you utterly disagree with. See, harmony is achieved through understanding one another, not so much one admitting defeat to the other. There's no true winner when someone gets to be right. Both people lose the opportunity to create a deeper level of connection (and understanding) with another human being quite different from who they are. You may disagree with everything I've said so far in this e-mail, and that's okay. That's just like, your opinion man. Find out more about refusing to be right all the time in today's episode. I ain't saying it's the right thing to do, but you totally wouldn't be wrong by listening ;) Read the full blog: http://www.procrastin8r.com/blog/right Subscribe to the newsletter: http://www.procrastin8r.com/subscribe