Wanting the truth more than wanting to be right

In Why I Love, the practice for loving truth requires humility: I say I don't know when I don't know, and I admit my mistakes and fix them instead of defending them. My goal is to know what is actually true, even when it proves me completely wrong. When someone challenges me, I stop and ask myself whether they might be right before I answer.

I studied personality types for more than ten years. I created frameworks around them, filmed hundreds of YouTube videos, and built an entire career on the topic. Then, one afternoon, I turned on the camera and admitted to my audience that I no longer believe types are scientifically real. People are far more complex than any neat psychological model predicts, and eventually the real evidence became clearer than my ego's attachment to being right.

Admitting I was wrong in front of the very community I had built was terrifying, but it was also the moment that truly freed me. As a kid, I used to announce that I was going to learn everything about everything. When a classmate memorized thirty digits of pi, I went home and memorized forty-two just to beat him; I didn't care about math, I just cared about looking smarter than everyone else.

Building an identity on being the smartest person in the room collapses the moment you face a test you cannot pass. In a high-stakes engineering meeting years later, a manager bluntly told me that my system design was flawed and wouldn't work. My immediate physical instinct was defensive: my shoulders rose, my jaw tightened, and I started talking over him to defend my position.

But then I noticed my physical reaction and realized that wasn't logic operating—it was an ego trying to win an argument. I stopped speaking, took a breath, and asked myself: is he right? He had a valid technical point, and acknowledging it immediately solved the problem and saved the project. In any disagreement, you can pursue being right or you can pursue the truth, but you cannot pursue both at the same time.

Letting go of the need to be the smartest person in the room allows you to enjoy being a curious beginner again. In your next disagreement, notice when your shoulders tighten or when you feel the urge to speak faster. When that happens, silently ask yourself: could this person be right? You can pre-order Why I Love through the link down in the comments; when was the last time you changed your mind in the middle of a discussion?