How does the world look to us when we view it without the pair of sunglasses called right and wrong? As mentioned in a recent post titled “How Does the Right/Wrong Paradigm Color Your Experience“, the right/wrong paradigm is a context for looking at life in which one person is right and the other is wrong. Further, the belief is that in order to give up making the other person wrong then they, themselves, have got to be wrong.

Within this paradigm, one of us has always got to be wrong. If you can get outside this mode of thinking, then all of a sudden you’re in a space alive with possibilities. So let’s look at two examples from an area closest to all of us: family.

I come from a family that values education highly. Everybody in my family went to college. However, my oldest son, Kelly, did not like school. It isn’t that he’s not smart; he just wasn’t into school.

From within the right/wrong paradigm, one of us had to be wrong and because of the importance I placed on education, I definitely made him wrong for not being into school. As long as I made Kelly wrong, he turned around and made me wrong.

This continued to the point that when he was thirteen or fourteen I almost drove him out of the house and into a boarding school. But I eventually came to my senses. I examined all the prices – not just what I was paying, but what my wife, daughter and both my sons were paying – and I stopped resisting Kelly.

Resistance is really what is behind the right/wrong way of looking at circumstances. It comes from thinking that the situation isn’t the way that it should be. When I could say, “Okay, this is the way he is, where do we go from here?” possibilities opened up.

I may not have gotten Kelly to work hard at school, but at least now we could communicate. Now we could have an intimate relationship and talk about alternatives. He was open to my input, even though we saw this one area differently. As it turned out, Kelly ended up going to college and graduating, anyway!

Another illustration has to do with money, my wife Roma, and me. I used to make Roma wrong for not saving enough money. On the other hand, I was willing to risk great amounts of money, and she made me wrong for risking too much money and not living enough in the now.

We were at a point of stalemate by making each other wrong. One of the ways we moved out of this stalemate was by looking at the needs each of us was trying to meet. By moving out of making her wrong, I saw that Roma desired the freedom to spend money the way she wanted to. That insight made it possible to look for ways to solve that need.

So, we came up with a solution. As the income earner in the family, I would provide a fixed amount of money every month from which the bills would be paid. If Roma saved money from that base amount, then she could spend it any way she wanted. For instance, if she wanted to buy a couch, I could no longer make her wrong for buying a couch. On the flip side, if I created any money above the base amount I provided for her, I could save it, invest it, or do whatever I wanted with it, and she wouldn’t complain.

I relate these examples not to communicate ways to solve specific family problems. The larger lesson is to show how thinking outside the right/wrong box looks, and to show how this new paradigm opens up abundant possibilities for success in relationships and other areas of our lives.

Think Outside The Box,

Brian

PS – Attend a FREE Champions Online Workshop to learn more ways you can think outside the box.