You have told yourself that everyone makes mistakes. You decided to let the small ones go, and corrected them in your head. You apologized once and then explained for ten minutes. You tried not arguing, and sat there silent and sure. Somewhere I picked up the idea that anything short of perfect gets punished.
The Right rule tends to loosen when you are wrong in front of someone and are met with warmth. You can know that mistakes are normal, or stop arguing altogether, and still never have had that happen.
01
Why what you tried didn't hold
Everyone makes mistakes is true, and you already knew it. The trouble may not be a missing fact.
Going quiet has a different problem. If you never say the wrong thing out loud, nobody gets the chance to respond to it, so nothing new can happen.
And the long apology may have undone itself. By the time the explaining was finished, the mistake had been argued most of the way back to not being one.
02
What the rule is waiting for
What you tried worked on your response to being corrected. What follows may be what the response is for.
What it says will happen
If I'm wrong about this, it won't be something I did. It'll be something I am. "Being wrong isn't a mistake. It feels like a verdict."
Under the Right rule is a fear, that if you are wrong about this, what else are you wrong about. If you work hard not to be wrong and usually aren't, you may rarely get to see what people do when you are. That may be part of why the fear has stayed.
What would answer it is being wrong in front of someone and being met with warmth. The need under the rule is to remain yourself while someone thinks you are wrong, and such a moment may be the first time you see that it is possible.
03
Three things to do
All three are for small errors, and for a person who has been kind to you.
- Look at what you replay. Each evening, ask what correction you replayed that day. Write down what it was about and who made it. After a week you can see what size they were.
- Say the short version. The next time you are wrong about something minor, say you're right, I had that wrong, and stop. Give no reason and no background.
- Watch what they do next. Stay in the conversation for a minute. See whether anything in how they treat you has changed.
04
What to expect
The heat is likely to come anyway, and the counter-argument with it. You can have the argument ready and still not use it.
You are likely to want to add a but. If you add it, that still tells you something about how hard the short version is.
The other person may hardly react. They may nod and go on to the next thing. That can be strange after so much bracing, and it is worth writing down. I want to be where I am and not second-guess it.
On a tired day, or when a lot depends on the answer, you are likely to argue the point as before. The warm response you got is still something you saw.
05
When this is the wrong page
There is another possibility. You are wrong in front of someone, they are warm about it, and the next correction stings exactly as much. If so, the rule may be a different one, or Right may have company.
Two of the questions apply here. A small correction in a meeting. Is the sting about being wrong, or about not having seen it coming? Not having seen it coming is the Ahead answer, and the Ahead rule is the page for that. And does it matter less if the person correcting you is someone you don't respect? Yes, much less is the Approval answer, and Approval has more on it. What the Right Rule Gets Mistaken For sets Right beside Peace and Needed as well.
Some cautions. In work where precision really matters, your standards belong there. These steps are for the wrong date and the wrong turn. Some people do hold on to your mistakes and bring them out later, and they are the wrong people to practice with. If the person who does that is your partner, this page is not the place to start.The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233. If tonight is an emergency, call or text 988 (US). This library is not that door.
What Is Subtraction? describes the method these steps belong to.