"I'd rather be happy than right."

I heard someone say last night that he'd "rather be happy than right."  Thanks Mark, I feel the same.

I spent a short lifetime wanting to be right in all situations.  Sometimes I was, sometimes I wasn't.  But my ups and downs, in many ways, were determined by how much I had to fight to be right.  Because even when I wasn't, I was going to convince myself (and you) that I was.

I just read a book called Fooled by Randomness.  It made the point that humanity and especially the United States, look down on those who change their mind.  It is seen as a bad thing to completely reverse course based on new information.  Instead of incorporating the new information into our outlook (and thereby changing our outlook), we adjust how we see the information so that it fits our outlook.

This is dangerous.  There are countless examples of this in the world, but I'll let you come up with your own, lest I alienate people from my website's goal to help recovery.

Comments

[dAAve]

I am surely a hard-headed SOB. Changing my mind to accept new concepts that didn't fit my ideas was the hardest thing I've ever done. It still is. But it sure is worth the trouble.