In my experience, the 3 most important words in the English language are “I was wrong.” Those words have shaped my life in wonderful ways.
Several years ago, my youngest son, Parker, took a year off from college, and together we built a sailboat from scratch. It was hard, because neither he nor I had ever built a boat. During one part of the project, we worked for an entire day planking a small section of the hull. The process had been hot, long, and tedious. The next morning, the light was different, and I could see that the method I had chosen for the prior day’s work had produced a result that was going to cause serious problems with the boat later. So, after talking about the mistake and its consequences (and also trying out some bad rationalizations about how maybe it was not so bad and maybe we could fix it later with this or that), I admitted that I made a mistake, grabbed a hammer, and immediately destroyed all the planks we had installed, so that we had no choice but to remove them and start over.
It was a critical moment, and Parker’s eyes were huge in disbelief that we would destroy all that work. However, after we backtracked and installed the new planks properly, the boat was beautiful and strong. Parker saw that it was the right decision to admit we were wrong, to back up, and to do it over the right way – and to do so before we wasted any more energy going down the wrong path.
Denial
The shame of getting something wrong is trivial; it is so normal, so human, so utterly forgivable, particularly when trying new and difficult things. In contrast, the shame of denying your mistakes, of denying reality, is not trivial at all. You can trust someone who makes mistakes, but you cannot trust someone who denies them. If someone does not speak truth about themselves, a subject on which they are most well-informed, how can you rely on anything they say about anything else?
Those 3 little words – I was wrong – are powerful not because they change the situation but because they change you. Just like using a hammer to destroy the faulty planks, saying “I was wrong” immediately stops the rationalization and the if-only-ing, allowing you to shift your focus 100% to dealing with the present reality, allowing you to start right now building a better solution.
Denial is a stubborn anchor that prevents the boat from leaving a bad harbour; you must pull it up so that you can sail on.
Children
Saying “I was wrong” to your kids is particularly important. Most kids do not grasp the fallibility of their parents until late in childhood. Consequently, when we parents fail to help our kids understand our fallibility, we allow the kids to operate in a false alternate reality. They see something bad happen, but they know it could not have been wrong, because Mom or Dad did it. So, they waste time and energy trying to craft some convoluted model of the world in which wrong actions are good. Furthermore, if you never admit your mistakes to your kids, they will feel like something is wrong with them, because they know they make mistakes and get things wrong.
Your mistakes present an opportunity to show your kids a foundational truth of life: human beings are full of nuance, neither wholly good nor wholly bad. If we want to inhabit a society of graciousness, we need to raise our kids to avoid pigeonholing people (including themselves) as bad based on an imperfection or mistake. Admitting our mistakes to our kids helps them understand how common it is for good people to make mistakes, because Mom and Dad are the original good people in most kids’ lives.
Apology
Your friends and colleagues know that they themselves are not perfect, and they are not looking for you to be perfect. In fact, nobody can stand being around a perfect person for long. Those 3 little words “I was wrong” are the cover charge to enter a real relationship, the sort that happens between flawed people who know they are flawed.
Recent research from Daniel Foster and others has shown that genuine apologies deepen relational bonds by demonstrating that the apologizer values the relationship more than his or her personal reputation. When you see me apologize genuinely and admit my mistake, you sense that I value you and our relationship more than my purely selfish interests. That is a powerful attractant.
Contrary to what your insecurities whisper in your ear, you will be amazed at how people will step toward you when you say “I apologise. I was wrong.”
Correction
However hard it is to tell yourself that you were wrong, it is even harder to hear it from someone else. To hear a respected partner tell you that you are wrong before you see it yourself—that is a gut-punch. Despite the pain, it is essential to surround yourself with people like that, who both;
- value you for all the times you are right.
- tell you when you are wrong before you realise it.
There is no greater privilege than to be warned that you are not seeing reality clearly, to have your foggy delusions fanned away before you can follow them off a cliff. When you find such a truth-speaking partner, try (it will be hard) not to run them off. They might just save you from having to say another 3 words quite so often: “I am sorry.”
CONTEMPLATE
With whom would you rather work: a partner who rarely makes mistakes but never admits them, or a partner who often makes mistakes but always admits them? Why? Does your answer change if the question is about leaders rather than partners? Why?
ADAPT
Develop the habit of speaking the truth about yourself and your mistakes. Practice saying “I apologize. I was wrong.” until it comes out easily.
Article by More to Life Elder – Scott Davies
Article published in More to Life – Edition 65
