Achieving A Sense Of Balance and Relief

In yesterdays post I suggested replacing the idea of 'right and wrong' with the concept of 'more or less useful', and the post received two categories of feedback. Thanks for both :)

• There was a testimonial which was left as a comment, which I would like to share
• There was a suggestion which I'd like to follow up on

Let's do the suggestion first

"The blog I just read was interesting but my mind was looking for an example to illustrate how more or less useful might be applied".

Your boss says, 'that's the wrong way to speak to a prospect, you need to do it the way you were trained'. In your mind simply rephrase to sound thus. 'The way you spoke to that prospect was less useful than speaking to a prospect in the way you were trained'.

Why?

You observe your partner setting the auto-tune function on the new TV, and you see that it's going nowhere and you want to say, 'hey, you're doing it wrong, let me show you'. Instead you say 'hey, there's another helpful [useful] way to do that, are you interested?'

Why is your way more useful? What's really going on? Maybe your partner is having fun playing, and the point for now is not tuning the TV at all, but rather playing with the TV.

Something can be more useful in one context and less in another. Possibly several ways can be just as useful and you need to either choose or synthesise. Something that was useful yesterday, may not be as useful today.

Right and wrong tends to be rigid and polarising , whereas more and less useful, fluid and empowering.

The testimonial

How fortunate I was when I met you Paul. How pleased I am that I embraced these changes in my life. It was a huge relief to me and my sense of balance, when I stopped looking at everything in terms of right and wrong.

It helped me to be kinder to myself and then it helped me to me more compassionate and understanding toward other people. I did go through a period of confusion for a while after I started to be aware of how I was mentally labelling everything right or wrong and then once I understood how much more helpful it was to me to ask myself 'is it helpful or unhelpful?'.

I have freed myself up to stop judging not only others but also myself and given myself permission to understand why I do what I do instead of playing judge and usually jury as well.