Listen, don’t be right

What if we stopped trying to convince and started listening?

The current situation is mad, every story, every movement generates a debate, and with it, a rain of irrational arguments thrown out with only one goal: to overwhelm the “opposing side”.

I remember seating in history classes, learning about Christian wars, absolutely confused by how the same people that encouraged love and acceptance would be willing to torture and kill people to have their ideas adopted.

Here is the deal though, once we try to convince, the idea no longer matters, being right does.

Today I am amazed by how much we want to, strike that, need to be right.

Even more so, I am amazed by how our strategy has not evolved. We use fear, we use overconfidence. We use misused, out-of-context data or information, because we need people to adhere to our ideas.

How dare they think differently?

We do not welcome opposing ideas as a way to expand our thinking, we see it as an insult, an affront against who we are and our values.

We all fall into the convincing pitfalls. Some want people to experience the world the way they do, others want to be acknowledged. Blinded by this excitement, we forget that everyone is different, and experience things through a different lens.