Let ‘Em Be Right
Of all the tools and techniques that I have learned and use in my Synthesis process, one of the most powerful and effective, the one most all of my clients appreciate and rave about is the art of allowance.
For those of you who may new to this blog, the art of allowance involves a very simple strategy: simply allowing other people to be whom and what they are. So often we find ourselves trying to change others to suit our viewpoints and values; trying to get them to “see the light and the error of their ways.” When that doesn’t work— and it never does—we might decide to accept them and the attitudes and behaviors we wish they would change. When that doesn’t work—and it never does,
at least not without creating a lot of internal discomfort for ourselves, e.g. anger, resentment, etc,—we might then try to tolerate them. And quite frankly that usually has the same negative effect; we don’t feel good and guess what, they don’t care. So, what to do? Simple, just allow.
When we allow others to be themselves without trying to change them or accept them or tolerate them, we don’t have to feel any negative energy whatsoever. They cease to have any effect upon us and we can go about living our lives the way we want to while they do the same, and we get all the energy that we were investing in trying to change them or accept them or tolerate them back. We can use that recouped energy for our own well being.
As I mentioned, virtually every single person that I share this with comes back a short time later with glowing reports about how good they feel to just allow, allow, allow. And then I share the next level with them, one of the most instant self-empowering techniques I know, and that is to simply let others be right, a technique I first learned from one of my favorite books of all time, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff… and It’s All Small Stuff, by the late Dr. Richard Carlson.
Dr. Carlson’s premise was simple: There are many, many people out there who just have to be right to feel okay about themselves, so why not just let them? Who cares? When we let them be right—even when we know they are dead wrong—we give them the gift of feeling good about themselves, and we give ourselves the gift of feeling good about ourselves because we gave them the gift of feeling good about themselves— it’s a win-win deal.
Remember, of course, there are no absolutes; there will obviously be times when letting someone be right might not be appropriate, particularly if in doing so an innocent person or creature would be harmed. But if we are honest with ourselves, most of the time that’s not the case and it simply doesn’t matter; whatever they need to be right about is really inconsequential: “small stuff,” and so letting them be right won’t amount to a hill of beans, except that you will feel really, really empowered. Try it along with the art of allowance and you’ll see what I mean. I promise you will like the feeling. And thanks to Dr. Carlson in memoriam. He was a very wise man, indeed.
Blessings,
Dr. John
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