Being right about how wrong someone or something is can be pretty irresistible, especially during the holidays. It’s a trap we fall into on a daily basis. You can walk into the place where you buy your holiday plants and be right about how wrong it is to have only red poinsettias when you had specifically ordered white. You can be right about how wrong your boss is to ignore how hard you’ve worked all year. You can be right about how wrong your sister-in-law is to give you a too-small sweater for the fourth year in a row. And the thing is, you probably are right. You probably could get a bunch of people to agree with you, and you could all sit on a bench together and revel in your rightness. But then what? While you’re busy being right, your whole life could float on by.

A highly successful woman I know, named Lauren, had a chronic case of “the rights.” She was very vocal about how right she was that her husband should be earning more money “at his age.” She was right that her little daughter should have learned to walk “by now.” She was endlessly right that the company she worked for was wrong to give her such a small salary increase every year. And, finally, she was right about how inept the people who worked for her were. Lauren probably was right on some counts, but, boy, was she tough to be around. Her husband came very close to leaving her, her daughter almost never smiled, and there was so much turnover in her department that she missed out on a big promotion. Lauren finally asked me what I thought she wasn’t doing right.

“Nothing you can’t fix,” I told her.
“Then what?” she asked.
“You just have to let go of one thing. And it’s something we all need to let go of — the need to be right.”
“Yeah, but how do I do that?” she asked. “It’s sort of been my life — you know?”
I told Lauren that whenever she felt the need to be right about how wrong someone or something was, she should “press pause.”
“Just take a few beats and ask yourself this question: What am I committed to? Am I committed to being right about how far ‘behind’ my daughter might be at any given moment, or could I be committed to something much greater, like creating a warm, positive environment, one that enables her to grow up with confidence and optimism? Am I committed to being right about how inadequate everyone who works for me is, or am I committed to creating an energetic, optimistic workplace where enthusiastic people devote their best selves to what they do every day?”
“What do I do with the ‘being right’ thing?” she asked.
“You let it go,” I said. “You give it up. You go for the greater reward.”

Well, she had to work on it a bit, but eventually Lauren got it. And it changed her life, not to mention the lives of the people around her. She even looks different. The furrows between her eyes have nearly disappeared. Seriously, letting go of being right is better than a shot of collagen. Plus, it lasts longer. Try it.