Being Wrong is Often Right

Throughout my travels on this Earth, hurtling through space, I routinely meet people who are terrified of being wrong. In the worst cases their whole identity is founded around their intelligence and being right.

I wanted to take a moment to write on my experiences and lessons I've learned both being and experiencing people who fear being wrong.

NERDS, just the word itself invokes imagery of a scrawny kid with braces, glasses, and at least 1 book. I was (and still am to my core) a nerd, I was one of those nerds who would make people cringe just by my mannerisms. Just imagine that terrible cringe video of the kid Naruto-running in the hallways at school, that was effectively me for a few brutal years.

Why is that important though, why would it matter that I'm socially awkward? That is because it's important to know how little I lacked in understanding people and my behavior.

Once I was in Middle-school and highschool I had mastered the education space, I graduated first in class with a perfect GPA. However, during that time my intelligence and savvy with computers became the core of who I was.

When I would talk to people, every conversation was an argument (and to this day I still struggle with it) I had to win. I was right, and if I wasn't right I was very good at making the other person feel dumb enough to concede anyways. It made talking to people hard, because nobody wanted to talk with me. The second anyone said something incorrect, I would jump on it to fix their mistake. I thought I was helping people know more.

It wasn't until college did I realize my mistake. My fear of not knowing burned me badly when a professor in class tore me apart when I tried to argue something completely wrong. My adamant mindset told me that even if I don't know something, to say something anyways. That was bad, and I'm glad now I learned it when I did.

The lessons:

1. ALWAYS admit when you don't know something. It's better to say nothing, but know you can research it and find out more if needed.
2. Talking about something you know nothing about is lying. That can get you fired, it discredits you, and undermines your ability to perform on things you do know.
3. You cannot know everything, it is impossible, but you can know when to research and how to do it effectively.
4. Respect other people's experiences, just because you may have more years, or age, or wisdom doesn't mean someone else can't be better than you at a particular task. Just think of the VCR, as a kid I could figure it out naturally, but my parents never could. Instead of getting upset and potentially breaking the VCR, they'd ask me to fix it since I knew it better.
5. People respect those who admit their limits but strive to reduce those limits and grow.
6. Continual education is key, if you aren't willing to learn, you'll find our are quickly outmatched by those who are.

Hopefully that was useful in some way. I was thinking about that behavior recently as some students of mine were acting like they knew everything (trust me, they didn't). Always grow and learn, life is too short to be a know-it-all, just focus on what you like and learn when you need to.