Padraig O'Morain's guide to managing life
Being right about everything is a terrible burden. You would imagine it would bring peace and contentment but all it does is make people mad.
Listen to any radio phone-in show, with the possible exception of Ask About Gardening, and you will hear the people who are right. They are right about asylum seekers, the banks, young people today, criminals, the Government, the health services, single parents and a slew of other issues.
Not only are they right but they are angry and disappointed. They are angry and disappointed at all the people who are not right and who, they suspect, are having more fun than the righteous ones.
These paragons don't just ring up the radio. They write to newspapers. Heck, some of them write for newspapers. Many of them drive taxis.
It doesn't really matter if this mania for being right is confined to things like the port tunnel, the smoking ban and the influence of Britney Spears on tweens.
But bring it into the home and the stage is set for serious conflict. Then, an insistence on being right can make a war out of a low-level conflict about whether to watch the Olympics or Coronation Street.
If a family member chooses a relationship or job against the advice of the one who is always right, the bickering, sneering and arguing can go on for months or years and cause a great deal of pain.
In a lecture given nearly three quarters of a century ago, the American psychiatrist Dr Abraham Low noted that many of his patients came from homes in which siblings and parents absolutely insisted on being "right" and on the patient being "wrong".
In a lecture to relatives - reproduced in his book Lectures to Relatives of Former Patients - he remarked that on meeting patients' families: "I was startled by the vehemence with which you currently emphasised your being right and your son or daughter being wrong."
Dr Low was the driving force behind Recovery Inc, a self-help movement founded in Chicago in 1937 which has spread all over the world.
He recognised that, while we all have this need to be in the right, some people are plagued by what he called a "wrong-fearing" attitude. In other words they cannot bear to be "in the wrong".
The only way they can be right all the time is for anybody who disagrees with their way or doing things, or with their opinions, to be wrong.
As I said earlier, we all have this tendency to some extent. I have found myself locked in the most ridiculous arguments over the most trivial things because I wanted to be right over something that didn't really matter. And, let's face it, most arguments consist of a variety of ways of saying "I'm right and you're wrong" and involve no attempt whatsoever to understand the other person's point of view.
Low suggests we can bring peace into our lives by dropping this fear of letting the other guy be right.
In his book, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff...and it's all Small Stuff, Dr Richard Carlson suggests that life can be easier if we allow other people to be right most of the time.
Does that sound scary? Well, you don't have to try it for a lifetime. Just try it for a day or two and see how it feels.
As some Recovery people say: "There is no right or wrong in the trivialities of everyday life."
When it's wrong to be right
The insistence on being right and the fear of being wrong, even in unimportant matters, creates unnecessary stress and conflict.
In extreme cases it can damage the mental and physical well-being of others. Give yourself and everyone else a break - drop the insistence on being right and allow yourself to be wrong in minor, everyday issues.
eblink: http://www.recovery-inc.com/
(The Forums section of the Recovery website is particularly helpful)
• Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.