Own It

For a month’s worth of posts, I (Scott) am critiquing my own past blog posts. I’m viewing this as an experiment in being willing to admit when I’m wrong, change my mind, and to do so publicly.

...continued from yesterday...

In order to learn something from our outbursts, we need to be willing to rigorously examine ourselves in the aftermath.  If we assume we were in the right and the other person was in the wrong, there is nothing to be gained.  In (almost) any fight, both parties are wrong, though to varying degrees.  One party may have more stuff to own than the other, but this does not mean the person with less has permission to avoid self-examination.  

We ask ourselves, “Where did I go wrong?”  “In what ways did I contribute to the mess?”  In other words, we start with the assumption that we did contribute and then work our way backwards towards the truth.  

If we begin with the assumption that we weren’t wrong and did not contribute to the mess, we will struggle to find evidence to the contrary.  

New Scott vs. Old Scott:

I totally agree with myself! It is crucially important in the aftermath of a conflict to seek out things you can take ownership of to the person you had conflict with. It is a huge trust and relationship builder if we can get ahead of these things. Owning mistakes before they’re brought to your attention is a relationship game-changer. 

Now, this is hard to do. We have blind spots. So- if you can’t figure out where you “went wrong” and  the other person points something out- then that’s also great. Work on being mindful of your defensiveness and choosing to set it to the side in order own your mistakes.