Don't Make Yourself Right

My son needed to go to the bathroom while we were all getting ready for the day. He ran back upstairs and yelled down that he needed help turning on the lights.

I went up and turned on the light in the bathroom and the hallway.

He said, “no, I need all of the lights on upstairs. Every bedroom.”

That was dumb. So obviously, I did what any parent would say early in the morning when they’re not thinking clearly:

I said no.

That didn’t go over well. We got into a classic standoff.

What if this happened every single time? What precedent are we setting? I also wanted to teach him to be conservative with his energy usage.

I wanted to teach. I wanted to be a good parent.

It reminded me of what a client had said when he brought a problem to me. He was about to give particularly difficult feedback to someone, and I asked him what his strategy was going to be.

He said, “Look, it’s not going to be hard. I’ll just give him feedback about the impact on me and mostly I’ll just make sure I’m not trying to be right.”

With my son, I was trying to be right. And it made it a lot harder.

Instead of meeting him where he was.

I would love to hear what you think about this.

Join us this week as we discuss this and more.

Don’t like listening in-browser? Hit up Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher. NOTE: If you’re checking this out before Saturday, the episode likely won’t be up there yet!

And please leave us a 5-star (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) review where ever you listen to podcasts (unless you’re listening in-browser as we don’t have a rating system on the site 🤷‍♂️).