What To Do When Everybody's Right (Including You) | Q&A #1

As a way of turning over the ideas I’ve covered so far, in this episode I offer the five questions I get asked most often—and most immediately—when I teach this material. (Being early days for this show, nobody wrote in. So instead of inventing listeners, I hauled these ones out from my notes — and answered them straight. You’re invited to send in your questions for future episodes.)

There's also a correction in here that I've owed you for six episodes: it was never "the need to be right." It's just being right. Drop the word, and you start seeing it in the one place you'd least like to find it—I think you know where I mean. 

Inside: Five questions answered, three on how to work with being right, one about knowing versus seeing, and one on whether surrender is even possible when the world’s on fire. All answered from the point of view of putting aside mechanistic ego reactions to get to what’s real and what matters. 

Recognise why you can't directly make someone else see their being right, what wanting to might say about you, and what you can realistically do that is meaningfully different. * The "being right" vs "being correct" distinction. * Noticing the mechanism and still not being able to stop. * Where this teaching sits next to ACT, IFS and the contemplative traditions (and why that question is a trap). * Is "I don't mind what happens" (equanimity) even possible in today’s world?

Got a question for the next one? Drop it in the comments or reply by email — your name on it if you want it there.

What to Believe — finding signal in the noise.

Show notes:

A listener Q&A with no write-ins — yet. Five real questions, drawn from the coaching room and trainings, about the mechanism at the heart of this show to date: being right.

We cover: 

Q1: How should you respond when you can see “being right” in others? A: Notice how this added layer of awareness can birth a spiritual ego. (And how the issues you're most right about are the areas where you're most stuck.) Q2: Does giving up being right make you a doormat? What if your job requires it? A: How to distinguish between being right as an ego mechanism and being right in fact. Q3: What to do when you can see the mechanism and still can't stop? A: How to shift from awareness to action. Q4: How does this approach correlate with other knowledge frameworks? A: Knowing when knowing is just knowing and shifting to seeing and doing. Q5: Isn’t “I don't mind what happens" (equanimity) just privilege talking when the world is in crisis? A: Start small and don’t invoke a crisis of meaning until you’re ready.

Mentioned: the surrender episode (Ep 5), the Bob Newhart "Stop It" sketch, Krishnamurti's "I don't mind what happens."

Got a question? Comments or email — we'll do this properly next time. 

Transcript

– Open: Where you're stuck, you're right

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The places in your life where you're most stuck, the relationship that won't resolve, that fight you keep having, are the places where you're most certain you're right. I'm right, aren't I? That's not bad luck. That's the mechanism. Come with me, I'll show you. This is what to believe. Finding signal in the noise. I'm Neil Biobaum.

– Q1: How do I get him to see it?

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Here's one of the first questions I often get asked when I present this material. And it'll go something like this. Someone will say, I've listened to the episode on needing to be right, so I sat there nodding the whole way through. Because it's my business partner, exactly. Describes them to the T. Twelve years we've been together, and the man cannot concede a point. Doesn't matter how small. How do I get him to see it? Because if he could see what he's doing the way I can, we'd be unstoppable together. So now beware, my response to this one often gets the person's back up and they get a little bit annoyed. So if this is addressing something for you, you might find yourself having that same response. It's not always exactly what you want to hear. And at the same time, it really is illustrative in what we're dealing with here.

– Clarification: being right, not needing to be right

SPEAKER_00 1:09

And I need to start with a clarification. So until now, I've used the term needing to be right. But the actual term is simply being right. I've used needing to be right because it's easier to conceptualize, to understand as I'm introducing it. But if we move into it fully and from now on, I'll use the term being

– Making wrong as the flipside of being right

SPEAKER_00 1:28

right. The flip side of the being right coin is making wrong. When you're being right, you're necessarily making someone else wrong. Or something else, it might be a situation in life. God, you're making them wrong. It wrong. So you're not just a neutral observer anymore going, how fascinating. Look at this person being right. You're making them wrong for needing to be right, for always being right. So it's arisen is you being right, that they're being right, and that they, like you, should not always be right. Now let's say at the personality level, you didn't create yourself to be the way you are, you just find yourself with less of a need to be right than they do. So you were doing fine and this thing annoyed you slightly, but you didn't quite have language for it.

– The risk of awareness: the spiritual ego

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Now you gain the language and the awareness of being right, and you saw, notice that word, seeing, saw, you saw the thing in your business partner, and you could name it. You know, I had a language for it. But at the same time, you turned into the being right person. But because your being right has a layer of awareness attached to it, you feel like your being right is better. It's one level up. That, my friend, is where the spiritual ego kicks in. See, I told you that you wouldn't like the answer.

– The double bind when you are right

SPEAKER_00 2:49

It's also hard to see because you are right. The thing is happening. You have a fair case. That makes it harder to see, but it's still happening. You're still falling into the trap of being right. And it's doubly hard to see and accept because your case is valid. Can you see that? That's where we get stuck. The problem with being right is it's where we get most stuck. The things we're most right about, and especially validly right, are the things we're most stuck on. Or buckarollary, where we're most stuck is where we're most right. Go into an inventory of your life. The things you're most unhappy about are also the things you're most right about. So in this case, with your business partner, you are right, and you're being right. That's a double bind. The hardest thing in the world is to give up being right when you are right. How would you give that up if you are right? And why would you? Well,

– Making the shift in real terms

SPEAKER_00 3:48

first of all, who is noticing about the being right? Only you, not your business partner. And is your being right about them being right and that they shouldn't be right? Is that making a difference? No. The other person is probably just picking up a vibe, so it's making it worse. And if you said something, would they see it and suddenly stop? Probably not. You can see how challenging it is for me to land the point deliberately. How are you gonna do that in the middle of a business meeting? So your being right is not making it better, probably making it worse, and you're the one suffering. That's why you'd give it up. You'd shift your attitude, your approach from one of making wrong, making the other person wrong for being right. So you'd shift from making wrong to one of simple noticing. How fascinating. That's a phrase I encourage people to use. Some of my clients, whole companies, use it to switch themselves to a neutral curiosity observer mode. So giving up being right is also achieved by giving up making wrong and switching to observer mode. And the phrase, how fascinating, is just a useful switch. It kind of sets the tone of the mind. It's like how fascinating. And it switches us into this open curiosity mode of noticing as against judging and being right. And then watch to see what happens in that space. Something will happen in that space when that energy shifts. It's like when someone's trying to push in in a queue or in traffic. You feel their energy and you resist. Then suddenly when they're asking politely and they they're just standing there, you feel generous by letting them in. There's an energy behind that. That's a whole inquiry in itself. We'll do that one day. But that kind of effect, so when you give up being right, you have that kind of effect on someone of them no longer resisting you, and something inside them feels it and changes. And so when you give up being right, they no longer feel the vibe. And something will happen in that space. I don't want to say what it is, because then you'll look for that and make that your experience. And then some part of you won't entirely trust it because you won't know if it's because you're just doing it because I said so, or if you discovered it. So I'd rather you discover it for yourself. So do the work and see. Something will happen, and then you can deal with that.

– Q2: What if your job depends on being right?

SPEAKER_00 6:15

And here's another question. And a quick note these questions aren't from listeners yet. The mailbag's still empty, the show is still young. So I'm bringing the questions that I get asked most often when I introduce this topic in a workshop or on a webinar. If you want yours in the next one, drop it in the comments or email me. And this question is a challenge and a fair one, and I'll put it the way it usually arrives, which is something like, I get how this works in a family argument about nothing, but I run safety on construction sites, let's say. My whole job is being the person who won't back down. If I concede a point to keep the peace, someone goes home in an ambulance or doesn't go home. So aren't you just teaching people to be doormats with a spiritual gloss on it? Some things are worth standing for, some hills are worth dying on.

– Being right as identity versus fact

SPEAKER_00 7:08

So in my response, I would immediately question the person asking this and ask, is that the absolute truth? The whole truth? Is that true that in every single instance it's a life and death matter? Or to what extent might you be using that as a justification for just always being right because you are not able to discern when it's appropriate and when it's not appropriate, or because you've built an identity around it and you need people to fear you all the time so they listen to you some of the time. I'm quite sure there are instances where it's absolutely the case, and there's no need to justify it. There's no need to be right because you simply are right, and you're not going to compromise. In those instances, you're not being right in the sense of bringing an identity to the thing. You're just like, you know, that bolt cannot go there in that way without being talked to a certain level because it's not safe. The end, no debate. That's assertion of fact. Reality aligns with your statement, no issues, you can just insist. I would also ask whether there are instances where you could give some leeway when there's a valid case for being flexible. And to what extent would allowing that mean you have to step outside of your whole identity, the tough persona you've built that gets you listened to, like I'm this person and I have to be this way, and this is what I bring, then you're being right. And I'll be honest, the very fact that you ask this tells me that there are some things that you're doing that are being right, and some part of you knows it. You just don't know how to give it up in those instances. You don't know how to assert when it's appropriate, and not assert when it's not appropriate because you've built an identity around always asserting. So now you have to be this person all the time. You can't just respond to the situation on its own merits. You treat the world as you are, not as it is. So

– Treat the world as it is, not as you are

SPEAKER_00 9:02

what would it look like if you responded to each situation on its own merits? If you're right, you're right. If you're not right, don't be right. And when you notice you're doing it, repeating that pattern of being right even when you don't need to be, you don't have to cover up and look good, like now you've started, you've got to finish. Just exit. You see you're in the wrong direction on the highway, just take the first exit. You're in the bad neighborhood, just get the hell out. In other words, just stop. Stop yourself. Mid-sentence if you have to. As soon as you catch yourself, just go, sorry, I'm rethinking this as I'm speaking. No, we don't need to do it that way. We can do it your way, thank you. The end. And if I'm wrong, and you're dealing with an environment where every single situation in the entire universe is a life and death matter, well then you're in a whatever kind of situation. Maybe you're on an oil rig in the North Sea in the middle of the night, because I've been in the military in active service, and I know that even there, not everything is life or death. I've coached engineers building tailing dams for mines, is one that comes to my mind. All the poisonous water that comes out of a gold or platinum mine, and these dams are upstream from towns, and so if those dam walls collapse, whole towns could get wiped out. And even they had to admit that not every decision was actually life or death.

– Q3: I can see it and still can't stop

SPEAKER_00 10:23

And here's another question that comes up, and it will go something like this. So, your teaching has worked maybe sometimes too well, because now I catch myself needing to be right in real time. Last week I literally watched myself doing it in an argument, selecting my evidence, building my case, the whole thing. I saw it clearly, and then I carried right on anyway. So now I'm not only stuck in the same fights, I'm watching myself be stuck in them, which is somehow worse. What am I missing? So we're talking to the person who has gained the awareness, not yet managed to take it into, convert it into action. And my response would be along these lines. So awareness is the first step and the most important one. Without it we're nowhere.

– The rewards of awareness versus the challenges of doing

SPEAKER_00 11:09

But we need to be careful of two things. The first is building an identity around awareness. It's easy to do that, and we saw how subtly it can happen when I responded to the first question. And without any intention, it just happens. It's like the awareness can actually create a level of ego that wasn't there before, so we have to watch out for that. That's the spiritual ego. The second thing we have to be careful of flows from that, and that's the difficulty with translating awareness into doing. The doing is the hard part. It's easy to know something, and it's most satisfying for the ego to be aware of something that others aren't. It's much harder to come down off that pedestal and do it. The ego experiences that as a bit of a humiliation. It's not really. Humility, yes, humiliation,

– Quoting Bob Newhart: Just stop it

SPEAKER_00 11:56

no. So what does the doing entail? Well, it's kind of like that Bob Newhart video where he says, just stop it. I don't know if you've seen that one. It's uh you can look it up on YouTube, Bob Newhart Stop It. So basically he's a psychiatrist, and the client arrives and she's afraid of being buried alive in a box. And so he kind of takes her money and now he's ready to start the session, and he says, it'll just take five minutes. And she's like, How can it just take five minutes? And he he says, Well, here's here's the answer. Are you ready for it? Yes. He says, Stop it. Just stop it. And she goes, What do you mean? What do you mean? He says, Well, you don't want to spend your whole life being afraid of being buried alive in a box, do you? No, I don't. That's why I'm here. Well, then just stop it. It's classic, it's absolutely that's how therapy should be, all of it. So you can look that up. Although I'm more or less giving it to you now.

– Take the first exit

SPEAKER_00 12:50

So, in a sense, that's what we need to do when we recognize ourselves being right. Just stop it. Just take the first exit off the highway, get out of the bad neighborhood. In other words, just shut the F up. Literally, don't put that comment on social media. Don't make that statement at the dinner table. Or if you've started typing the comment to use backspace. If you've started speaking, just stop, even if it's mid-sentence. Find a way to exit. Just go internally. I don't need to do this. I don't need to show myself.

– The purpose of your speaking

SPEAKER_00 13:22

And remember, we're not trying to be moralistic here. We're dealing with what's real and what matters. So if you're having a conversation with somebody and you're about to argue your point, ask yourself, are you going to change their mind? Given that you're in being right mode and they're in being right mode? Is anybody listening? No. So then, what's the purpose of your speaking? What will you actually achieve other than showing yourself and hurling your arguments around so that you can feel better about yourself and be nice and angry when you get home? And then you'll be unhappy about that anyway. None of that makes any sense. So just stop. It's not necessary. That's the first level of doing, and it's hard. I didn't say it was easy. Nobody here promised easy.

– Making an offer, asking a question

SPEAKER_00 14:08

And the next level of doing, when you've mastered the first, the one I've just described, is when you're able to offer, notice I use the word offer a view without being right about it. You're just putting it out there, but without needing to be right, without being right. That this is the right answer. It's just an offering, just a thought. And then you observe what happens. You observe how the person responds. How fascinating. I notice this, I notice that. You also do it without the air of superiority for not being right, without that spiritual ego layer. You just put it out with an authentic intention that it might be heard, and if it's not, you let it go. Or another thing you could try is to ask a question, say about how the other person arrived at their view. And how do you think that might land? Well, let's say somebody else is arguing a thing, and you ask them with sincerity because they'll feel it if it's not sincere. You say, How did you arrive at that view? and you let them explain. What do you think might happen? There's a chance that in explaining how they got to their point of view, they're going to trip themselves up. This is often used as a leadership technique. You ask someone to think through their problem first when they've come to you to help solve their problem. You ask them to think it through and to explain why they did it that way in the first place. And in doing that, they often catch themselves. And it's a way of empowering people to find their own answers rather than you having to tell them. So very often, if the person is not too caught up in being right, there's a chance, a small chance, that they're going to catch something in themselves. There's a better chance of it happening if you do it that way without being right than if you just oppose them. And if they don't, they just use the opportunity to be right. They're completely unaware and unconscious and they're just going for it. In which case, you just watch and you go, how fascinating. They didn't even notice that. Has anything changed in the universe for you or for them? Have the stars fallen from the sky? Is the building collapsed? No. Nothing has changed. But maybe you gave the situation a chance. Maybe you've remained peaceful and haven't furthered the argument. And if you're genuinely not being right, then you might genuinely learn something. I believe you will. And you walk away richer, even if they don't. And at the very least, you're listening. And that alone would be doing something different. And

– Q4: Where do I file this?

SPEAKER_00 16:31

then there's a question we get from people who listen to information like this and they have their own backgrounds. So therapists, long-term meditators, people who've been on a spiritual journey, and it will sound something like this. Is your observer of self the same as witness consciousness in the contemplative traditions? As one example, or the diffusion move in ACT, or parts work in IFS. They all seem to circle the same territory. So what's actually new here? Is it a synthesis? Are you making a claim? Others aren't. I want to know where to file it. So that's the kind of framing. In other words, a kind of an intellectual framing with bits of jargon and some acronyms.

– The check: what’s driving the question?

SPEAKER_00 17:14

So if someone asks this in, say a workshop, the first thing I'd be doing as a trainer internally is assessing what's driving the question. Is it because they want to show themselves? The ego is sometimes so proud of its knowledge that it can't just let them sit there and be silent. It drives them to show what they know. And I'd test this assessment by asking, what is knowing this going to do for you? And my reason for asking this is because knowing is not the point here. We want to see and to get it and to put it into practice. It's up to you where you place it intellectually, which model you place it with in your mind. Probably nobody else knows those frameworks. I wouldn't pretend to if I didn't. And so it's not a useful conversation. I could say X or I could say Y or Z. And they might agree or not agree, but it would have no impact whether we agreed or not. It would merely be a point of interest. And to recognize that would be more valuable than any answer I could give. So if my assessment was correct and I asked the question, what is knowing this going to do for you? I would expect the person to pause momentarily and start to look, or to automatically start intellectualizing their reasons for asking.

– The automatic response is the signal

SPEAKER_00 18:30

And the automatic version of the response would be the signal that this is the ego running its routine. And you would know that it's irrelevant to intellectualizing because they'd lose the room. People would start to tune out. And my job as a trainer would be to bring the person back to what's real and what matters. So I'd pause them, probably by saying their name, and I'd ask the same question again and again until they saw what they were doing. They wouldn't like it. And some people would think I was rude, and that's okay. I might then ask the person what they had just seen, and what I'd hope they come back with is something along the lines that they saw, and hoping they use the word saw, seeing, saw, something about the automatic nature of their reaction, or that their knowledge framework is just a point of interest and doesn't really make a difference, or that they recognize they need to be right about how this fits with all their knowledge and making me wrong if I said something they disagreed with. Something along those lines. That would be the real thing to learn here.

– My answer doesn't matter — the doing does

SPEAKER_00 19:29

And if I was asked to explain, and if I agreed to answer, I would point out that my answer to their question doesn't matter. As I said earlier, you can place it where you want to. You can go and do the maths, do the intellectualizing, put one next to the other in a box and compare them and weigh them up, and come to a conclusion all by yourself, one that I may or may not agree with. What matters here is the doing of giving up being right when you need to. That's what matters. Are you able to recognize it in the situation and do it? If yes, great. If not, continue practicing.

– Q5: Is "I don't mind what happens" just privilege?

SPEAKER_00 20:03

And another question that comes up around things that we've been dealing with is around the subject of not minding what happens, especially when it comes to stuff that really matters. So a question might go like this. In the surrender episode, the one on experience the power of surrender, it landed really well, but I kept snagging on I don't mind what happens. I've got a voice that says, that's just privilege, isn't it? A man is being fine while the world burns. Between climate news, politics, minding what happens feels like the only responsible thing I've got left. So how do you tell the difference between real equanimity and just going numb and calling it being peaceful? And so my response to this one is that it's difficult to answer on the content because it is an extreme and sensitive topic, and anything I say will trigger a being right reaction, exactly what we're hoping to avoid. So let's have a look at what's happening here.

– Don’t start big, start small

SPEAKER_00 21:03

What we're doing in this instance is we're using the most extreme example to negate the principle of I don't mind what happens. That's like going to the gym and starting with the heaviest weights or doing the most complex dance or exercise routine when you're just starting out. So when it comes to not minding what happens, in other words, giving up your preferences and asserting your preferences in every situation, start with something small. Start where you can choose to not mind what happens. So maybe it's like I don't mind which pizza we order, even though you secretly have a favorite. Start there. Don't start with the state of the earth. Start with not minding when they don't have your color option at the store. Start with not minding which song plays next on your playlist. And each time see what opens up in that space. See what learning you gain. Something will happen for you in that space. And build a case for being able to do it again, maybe in slightly bigger situations.

– The ones where you really don’t have a choice

SPEAKER_00 22:00

So when you've made progress on the smaller ones, then move to ones where you really have no choice and practice not minding what happens there too. So maybe the fact that you have to go to work on your day off, practice not minding that. Start to see that not minding what happens is about aligning with reality the way it is. It's your only actual rational choice to things you can't control. It doesn't mean you don't care. It doesn't mean anything about your identity. And notice those sentences. When you stop minding what happens, when you get to the bigger things, you find yourself being asked to give up your judgments about things, sometimes on issues you really care about, that have meaning for you, that say something

– How meaning comes into it

SPEAKER_00 22:44

about you. It starts small, but eventually you bump up against what things mean for you and about you. Minding what pizza you have has meaning if you're a vegan. Now, if you met some sage like Krishna Murti, who we got the statement from, you'll discover that they've seen beyond personal or other meaning, and so they can not mind what happens at every level of the universe, of life. But that's for really advanced sages. You're not there yet, I don't think, and you might never be. So that barrier of meaning and identity is one you deal with when you get there. When you've mastered it on every other level, you can start looking at the veganism, the climate issue, etc. And does saying this negate the principle? No, because at one level this is useful and functional and can benefit you to give up your preferences, can benefit you and benefit the world. It's a let's call it an enlightenment light. And the other is if you want to achieve true enlightenment. And to back this up, I'll use the analogy of Newtonian physics. So Newtonian physics applies to bodies of a certain mass, it doesn't apply to quantum particles, for example. That requires a different mathematics, but that doesn't make it untrue within its domain. So when you stop mining what happens, you're inevitably going to open up a crisis of meaning at some level. Until then you can safely operate within the domain where you can manage it. But somewhere you're going to push up against these boundaries. Can you allow that? Or do you need to control it in case you end up not liking who you become? That's what would stop you. And would help you find reasons to argue against it. And I would say there's a good chance that the person you are now probably won't like the person you'll become if you give up minding what happens on the level of a Krishna Moti. But ironically, the person you become, if you did that, wouldn't mind. But you'll face that hurdle, climb that mountain when you get to it. Until then, when it comes to issues that have meaning for you, mind away.

– Outro

SPEAKER_00 24:49

That's what to believe for this week. If you're finding value from this, please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you're listening. If something landed, not just made sense, but actually landed, then share it with someone who you believe could benefit from it as well. That's how this work spreads. You'll find a written companion on Substack under my name, and if you want to take it further, there are ways to work with me. You'll find the links in the show notes. I'm Neil Baum, thank you for listening. See you next time.