Being Right Rarely Makes Us Happy

We make dozens of choices every day. Yet there’s no choice we make more important than this one: Do I want to be right or do I want to be happy?

Too often in the past I’ve found myself making the choice to be right—even in the face of a reality that clearly told me I was wrong. Life wasn’t responding the way I wanted, my fantasies weren’t being indulged, life wasn’t treating me fairly and I wasn’t going to stand for it. Things had to be my way—the right way—or else. Unfortunately the “or else” only ensured that I would be miserable.

Many people get stuck in believing that being right is going to make them happy. This is a warped fantasy in itself.

A few years ago an anonymous lady came to me with a problem. She had learned that her husband had been cheating on her and she had made the choice to divorce him because she had a rule that she lived by faithfully. That rule was “If my husband ever cheats on me, the marriage is over. I will leave and divorce him” and she was sticking by that rule.

Her story went like this: Her husband went to his buddy's house every Wednesday night for a boys night out poker game. Because her husband tended to drink too much, she insisted that he spend the night at his friend’s house every Wednesday. Apparently, she didn’t want to deal with his drinking problem and so she chose to enable it through insisting on the sleepover.

Unfortunately for her, he met a lady he liked and now he had an out on Wednesdays. Instead of playing poker, he could spend the night with his new love interest.

I asked the lady how she found out about the affair and she said her husband told her. That surprised me. She went on to say that after he had broken off the affair, he came to her and told her the truth. He said he realized that he loved her, not the other woman, and that he was wrong to have been unfaithful and begged her forgiveness.

She refused to forgive him because of her rule. He had cheated on her and her rule demanded that she divorce him. I asked her if she believed he loved her. She said “Yes.” I asked her “Do you love him?” She said “Yes.” Then I asked “Wouldn’t you rather forgive and be happy as opposed to being right and miserable?” She said “No. He cheated and as far as she was concerned the marriage was over.”

Unfortunately for this lady, she made the choice to be right—and miserable, maybe for the rest of her life—instead of choosing to forgive and be happy with the man she said she loved. It made no difference to her that he loved her and that he had been big enough to own-up to his failings. She demanded justice her “RIGHT” way.

How often do we make the same bad choices? How often do we insist on being right even if it ensures that we will be miserable—maybe for the rest of our lives. Insisting on being right is a denial of reality. Life is not the fairy tale that we want it to be. Life is hard and relationships are filled with betrayal and hardship. When we accept this fact, when we accept that life isn’t tailor-made to turn out the way we planned, we are able to let go of our fantasies and thus move forward in life. This is a choice to be happy and it requires that we let go of our self-defeating need to be right all of the time.

Being right never truly makes anyone happy, but being happy almost always makes life right. The choice is yours. What choice are you going to make today?