Do you want to be happy or do you want to be right

Have you ever thought this way?

I have to admit to admit that there have been long, long years that I wanted to be right.... And I never realized that it was costing me happiness.
I listened to an interview the other day with an relationship coach. She stated the remark: Do you want to be happy or do you want to be right. She explained it like this: When she is in an argument with her partner, and she wants to be right, the argument gets worse, and there's no togetherness anymore at that moment. Now, if you want happiness and openness and togetherness, you need to realize what happens if you fight to be right. The moment you find that you'd rather have closeness instead of being right, you suddenly look at yourself from a distance.

I have to admit, it's probably bad for your ego, but my ego can absolutely do with a bit less, if I'm honest.

So.

When I get critical remarks about something I've done, and I find myself automatically shift into defense-gear, I now more and more often realize that that's NOT what I want.

I'll give you an example from my own life, it IS embarrassing... I admit. (I intentionally give examples from my own life, because I want to show you that if I can, you can too!)

A couple of days ago, we were talking about the start of my blogging era. Right in the beginning, i was talking about my own private life, and I would talk about my family too. I never realized that children can be highly embarrassed when they read about themselves online. Even though I am convinced that no one else would recognize the stories, they obviously did, and they did not like it. In the beginning I thought it was just over sensitive behavior from their side, but that did not any good to our relationship of course!

Only after I found the quote about the happy or right choice, I realized that I was busy "being right". The remark my better half made when we talked about that, was: "You suddenly show some humility, I never thought you would".

Now, humility is not my favorite...
But I have to admit, that I think it's a good character trait for others :-)

to match or not to match

People are either matchers, or mismatchers. If you are a mismatcher, you are critical, you see what is missing, you see what is wrong. if you are a matcher, you see what is in it for you, you see what is right, you see what could be useful. Yesterday, I visited a friend of mine, Maria, together with Mike, another friend. Mike and I are extreme matchers, and Maria is a mismatcher. This turned out to be realy funny. Maria had chocolate biscuits for tea, a brand she had never had before, and neither did we. Maria’s first reaction was: “bèh, sloppy cookies, they seem to be old instead of fresh”. Mike and I said almost simultaneous: “Maybe they’re meant to be like that!” The package was divided into several small plastic packages with 5 cookies each, and after the first package we opened the second. The cookies in the second package were crispy…
What we realised, is that being extreme in either direction is not effective. Extreme mismatchers see all the shortcomings of everything, they only see the negative side and generally are not happy with their life. Extreme matchers only see possibilities, they only see the positive side, and they are very happy with their life. Being a matchers sounds attractive to me, I have to admit, but I do realise that much of my potential keeps being underused. It just seldom dawns on me that something could be better!
To read more about balancing your style of matching and mismatching: http://stepfamilyheaven.com