What kind of relationship do you have with the judgmental and righteous part of yourself?
Some people may not know or recognize that you are right, but you are convinced of it.
On the outside, you may have a calibration problem in terms of how much of your righteousness to share and express with the world.
How does it feel to believe you’re right about something when a lot of people are wrong?
Although you may succumb to the illusion, let’s simplify this and say for the moment that you do in fact have good reason to believe that you are right.
These aspects can all affect your relationship with this part of yourself.
This highlights a conflict between being right and dealing with people who think otherwise.
A Committed Relationship
Since this part of you isn’t going away anytime soon, you’re kind of stuck with it.
Confidence
You have great flexibility in how you choose to relate to this part of yourself. There’s something very powerful that happens when you make a real decision about where to take this relationship.
For me, big changes happened when I decided to relate to that part of me based on trust. At first, it was really difficult.
One of the first big decisions was when I started having doubts about the religious ideas I was taught growing up. I was a teenager who was beginning to awaken to other ideas of life. But I was thrust into a very restrained way of seeing the world with 12 straight years of Catholic school. My teachers, classmates, friends and family were all Catholic. Disagreeing with my religion meant disagreeing with everyone I connected with every day on a pretty fundamental level. It was sure to be a path of isolation with no support from anyone. Questioning and doubting what I was taught was not acceptable behaviour.
So how could I identify with that part of me when I felt I was right and everyone around me was wrong? I was just a teenager. But it was getting harder and harder to keep pretending that I was okay with ideas that didn’t make sense to me. I saw these ideas as unreasonable and wrong. I saw obvious contradictions, misalignments and bullshit as people suggested filling the gaps with “faith”, which really means ignorance.
At first, I did the awkward dance. I expanded a bit by raising a few issues. I probed here and there.
The Benefits of a Healthy Inner Relationship
It makes sense that you have a better life if you trust yourself when you firmly believe you’re right about something when lots of other people think you’re wrong. This includes trusting your reasoning, trusting your senses, trusting your intuition, trusting your feelings, and also trusting your ability to explore and adapt.
This doesn’t mean you have to be 100% right all the time. This means that you will move faster by leaning into confidence than by struggling with self-doubt.
You don’t have to immediately bet the farm on self-confidence. You can always probe and test to gather more information. I often use 30-day challenges to do this. They are like fact-finding missions.
A few years ago, I researched fasting, for example. I learned more than most people would ever want to know, mostly by reading about the experiences of people who had done it. Then in 2016, I tested it for myself by doing a 17-day water fast, which went well. In 2017 I did a 40-day water fast, sharing daily videos as I went. It wasn’t that hard physically. It would have been a lot harder if I couldn’t bring myself to trust what I learned about it.
Act on your righteousness
A healthy relationship with your virtuous self can empower you to act more. With more action, you gain experience and wisdom.
Here’s the thing: you’re right about a lot of things that you’re probably not acting on.
You see opportunities, and you’re right about them.
What if you could just say once in a while: Fuck it! I’m right, and these people are wrong. I will trust myself and act accordingly.
The path with a heart is the path of courage. It is also the path of trust.
When you are right, let yourself be right. Being right when you are right is honest and truthful.
source: Pavlina
