Letting Go of Being Right: How to Take Your Power Back and Choose Inner Peace

Letting Go of Being Right: How to Take Your Power Back and Choose Inner Peace

As recovering people pleasers and codependents, many of us learned that if we could just explain ourselves better, convince someone of our point of view, or get them to see things our way, everything would finally feel okay.

The problem is that living this way keeps us on an emotional battlefield.

We become exhausted trying to manage, control, fix, defend, and prove. We fight for approval. We fight to be understood. We fight to be right. And underneath all of that fighting is often something much more tender: a desire to feel safe, valued, heard, and enough.

In this episode, I share a very personal story from my own marriage that reminded me how quickly old patterns can surface, even after years of healing. What started as an innocent comment from my husband unexpectedly activated a deep fear inside me, creating an opportunity to witness an old protective system that still occasionally shows up.

The beautiful thing about this work is that awareness changes everything.

As we heal, we begin to recognize that letting go of being right does not mean giving up our voice. It doesn't mean abandoning our needs, our boundaries, or our truth. Instead, it means releasing the belief that our peace depends on someone else agreeing with us.

When we stop fighting every battle, we discover something powerful: we can stand in our truth without needing to control anyone else's.

When we release the need to prove, convince, defend, and manage, we create space for something much deeper: compassion, connection, and inner freedom.

Your voice matters.

Your feelings matter.

Your perspective matters.

And you don't need anyone else's permission for that to be true.

Until next time, namaste. 💜

💜 In this episode, I also share about attending a powerful weekend of spiritual teachings, channeling, and connection at Gaia. If you're interested in exploring Gaia's library of consciousness, spirituality, healing, personal growth, and metaphysical content, you can enjoy a free 7-day trial through my affiliate link:

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The Recovery Your Soul Podcast courses and content is for educational purposes only and is not affiliated with or representative of any organization, recovery group, or religion. And reflect the personal experience and opinions of Rev Rachel Harrison and her guests. RYS claims no responsibility, any person or entity for any loss, liability, damage caused or alleged to be caused, direct or indirectly by the use application or interpretation of the information presented within. 

Transcript

Why Letting Go Brings Peace

Rev Rachel Harrison 0:00

As a recovering codependent or people pleaser, having a voice can be complicated because we often don't know how to ask for what we need. And so sometimes we may end up controlling and really pushing what we think is right because we think it's the only way to share our needs. But there's something that happens when you let go of being right or let go of other people thinking that they're right and start to see from a new way of being that is around your own wholeness, remembering that your thoughts, your feelings, your place in the world is enough. But it starts with understanding where that desire and that want and that need to be right comes from and getting off of the emotional battlefield. Profound changes and the ability to be at peace can come from letting go of being right. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to the Recover Your Soul Podcasting Community, a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. My name is Reverend Rachel Harrison. I started Recover Your Soul after having profound changes in my life from my recovery of alcoholism, codependency, people pleasing, and control addiction. I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and the recover your soul process to help others transform their lives as mine was transformed. For us to overcome external circumstances, we need to turn the attention to ourselves, focusing on our interchange and healing. Positive results in our lives will follow. Welcome to Recover Your Soul. I'm Rev Rachel. Thank you so much for being here with me today. We are on this continued journey of letting go of people pleasing, letting go of codependent behaviors, looking at our lives from this spiritual lens and having awareness that we can be okay, even if the people in the world around us aren't okay. You know, many people found this podcast originally because I talked a lot about Al Anon in the beginning, because I was still in the throes of being severely affected by the addiction around me in my life. I'm a recovered alcoholic, I've been sober for over eight years, and my husband was an alcoholic, my kids deal with addiction, and it was everything around me that I was trying to control, and I didn't know how to have a voice. I didn't know how to speak my truth without it being controlling. And I caught myself in desperately trying to fix and control and make it be better. And I was pretty sure that I had the right way. I had the right way because I could see that if these changes happened, then there would be a shift. And through that shift, there would be some sort of change that would be better for me. When I finally let go of trying to control the world around me, which was a pretty big deal to let go of that control, I started looking at myself. You know, in the intro it says, turn the attention to yourself. And that turning the attention to myself also meant that I had to let go of my self-righteousness, which was a very difficult word for me to admit as part of my protective system in my recovery. But it was around letting go of being right. And I want to talk about it today from this spiritual lens because I have so much more clarity around it. And I'm not perfect at it. I still call myself sort of a tumbleweed, you know. Sometimes I still kind of tumble into these situations where I'm not quite handling it on the level in which I would like. But I have found that letting go of this control piece and especially

When Control Feels Like Safety

Rev Rachel Harrison 3:57

some belief system that there is a right way and a wrong way, that somebody here is right, has given me so much peace in my life. And we are now here protecting our peace. We're creating our own peace. And it is important because it's pretty crazy out in the world. And I'm pretty sure that, like me, it might be pretty crazy in your family too. Life continues to be lifey regardless of how uh clean and clear you get in your healing. The rest of the world is still having their experience because we're on this wild ride as souls, having this pretty amazing, painful, sometimes complex, sometimes challenging, but beautiful experience. And one of the things that I think is so powerful around this journey of this releasing control is that we're resetting a belief that there is only one way to see it. There's the way you choose to see it. There's the way you choose to feel it. There's a the way you choose to be present with it. You know, it's only been really six years in earnest that I've been deeply doing this spiritual work. The first two years of my recovery were just getting off of alcohol and opening up my eyes just enough, just doing the 12 steps and the healing process just enough. I mean, that's what the whole recover your soul spiritual memoir is about. And I hope that you get it and enjoy it because I believe that it's not my story. It's our story. It's our story of giving ourselves permission to have been in the messy, to be in the messy. Maybe you're in the messy right now. Um, to be in the painful and to be in the relationships where you're wondering, why isn't this going the way that I want it to? What's happening? Why am I not getting what I need? And when we feel that way, what do we do? We double down on control. We double down on trying to fix and manage and take care of and be present for and and and make the people around us manage the people around us who are making complicated decisions, painful decisions potentially. Um, very painful decisions. And so we think we're right. And you know what? We might be. I was working with a client yesterday, and it really got me thinking about this topic. And I have been kind of wanting to talk about it for a while, but I wasn't sure how to bring it in. And one of the things that happened in my marriage that has so profoundly shifted, I'm recording this on the 17th of June 2026, and tomorrow, the 18th of June, is my 32nd wedding

A Spiritual High Then Real Life

Rev Rachel Harrison 6:48

anniversary. So that we've been together for 34 years, but we have been married for 32 years, which seems pretty crazy. And I often joke that we've been married many times. It's just to different incarnations and different versions of the same person, but really different aspects of ourselves. And there were many, many, many years where the first reaction that I had to him was defensive. And I had a little flavor of that this weekend. On Saturday, I had like the most beautiful, what I would consider spiritual Disneyland day for me. I went to Gaia, which is the TV network that has spiritual and metaphysical everything. So it is everything from uh ancient aliens to the disclosure information to beautiful spiritual uh concepts and getting to really understand the depths of metaphysics and healing and just so many great things. And um, I'll put a link to the Gaia Network in the show notes. But I was able to go and get a tour on Friday and then on Saturday they had this channeling conference and um just incredible, beautiful people talking about all the stuff that I love, you know, and really validating so much of what I'm feeling and what's happening in my life and how the transformed I feel and incredible channels. And then in the evening, I missed the final channel person because I'd already bought tickets to see Lee Harris, who is another spiritual teacher and channels guides that he calls the Zs. And I had those tickets forever with a bunch of my best friends. And so literally for like 12 hours, I'm in the depths of like this super high frequency of love and acceptance and light and just like no worldly stuff, just all the metaphysical heart space stuff. It was really beautiful. And then on Sunday, I wake up and boom, there I am in life with Rich, right? And he is just being him. Like he, I love Rich for that. I've learned so much how to just enjoy him for what he is. He's just, he's just in the world, just doing worldly things. And we went to go run an errand and we're walking up to my my new car, which I still need to do my episode about getting my new

The Comment from my Husband That Triggered Me

Rev Rachel Harrison 9:10

car because it really was this um incredible manifestation of dreaming and believing that you are deserving of anyway. But it's a big deal to me to have this very nice car, which I appreciate very much. And every time I get in it, I think, oh my God, I'm so lucky to have this beautiful car. I feel so grateful. And we're walking up to it, and Rich says, Oh, I can't wait till we get some surf racks on that car and I can take it surfing. And I got defensive. That old part of me that had a black and white mine, mine don't share. I felt this intense energy of encroachment, that this thing that I have been working on allowing myself to deserve and to have, that all of a sudden it wasn't mine. And that's not true. That's not at all what he said. What he said was it'd be really fun to put surf racks on this and to take it surfing. He didn't say, I'm gonna start driving it, but man, I went right into this old place and it was just such a like a hit. What he and I talked about was that uh it was almost like I had a spiritual hangover, you know, and I was in this place where this immediate shift in energy brought me this defensiveness. And then we ended up having this not great conversation about cars and money and then all the stuff that can really activate. And I felt myself an old part of me that was just fighting to fight. I was just defending myself. I was that, I was that um tumbleweed, just tumbling around, just demanding that that I get what I need. But it was like I didn't even know what I needed. I just was in a place where I felt uncomfortable and I didn't know what to do with it. All those old protectors came up. Self-righteousness. I know what to do. Here's what we'll do with the other car. Here's how you have your car. This is my car. I don't want you to touch my car. And he was actually really interesting because he wasn't fighting the fight like I was. And he was saying, I don't know why you're so upset. It's not this big deal. What's what's going on with you? And and then I got vulnerable and I said, I think I'm afraid, some part of me is afraid that this vehicle that I'm so proud of will get taken away. Makes me cry. And he's like, No one's taking away your car, honey. This is your car, and you deserve this car. And I'm just, I'm just playing around and I do want to take it surfing someday, but but I totally get it. He was very sweet. But it reminded me of the years where defensiveness was the first thing that somebody's right. And as I was working with this client yesterday who's been with her husband for a very long time, and there's a lot that happens in relationships that's complicated. I think this is the piece that's so important to understand that this spiritual journey, which is relationship, means that you have two souls who are in their own experience, their own wildness. And we're dancing around each other in our healed and in our woundedness, constantly in our reactivity and in our wholeness. We're we're on this journey, and so often one person starts the path to get healthy and the other person's not on the path in the same way. You know, her husband still drinks, um, she's working really hard on herself. And as much as she would like for him to be different, the likelihood is that he's just gonna be him, just like how Rich is just gonna be rich. But as I've

Getting Off The Emotional Battlefield

Rev Rachel Harrison 13:02

changed, he's responded differently to me. I'm bringing out different parts of him as I create safety in our relationship, which includes having that kind of funny thing on Saturday, of which ended up he was so sweet to me and just said, I think you're having a spiritual hangover and it's okay. And he didn't do the fight. That's huge. So, in this conversation with her, what was very apparent was she feels that she doesn't have a voice. And that's how I feel sometimes when I turn into my this dustball of um of not knowing how to have a voice. And so, what I want to make sure that we're looking at is letting go of being right does not mean that you do not have voice. It means that you don't waste your time and your voice fighting on hills that aren't worth fighting for. We end up being on the emotional battleground, as I call it, just because we feel so affected, we feel all the protectors up, we don't feel like our needs are being met, we don't feel safe, but that's in ourselves. So when I think about the car, Rich just saying something like, it'll be fun to put surfaces on the car and take it surfing, had nothing to do with me. Had nothing to do with my deservedness. I felt that. I took that on. That was my own mechanism that is very old. Now, what they're saying, and I love this, is the more that you bring the light and healing into yourself, the stuff will rise up to the surface to continue to be healed. Many of you say, I feel like I'm going two steps forward and one step back, two steps forward, five steps back. Don't see it that way. What you're doing is you're deepening your awareness of yourself and how you feel in those situations and what that feeling is offering you because you're actually giving yourself a chance to feel. Most of us have been just pushing it down and just getting on the battlefield and fighting, and we don't even know what we're fighting for. We don't even know why we're fighting. And you know what? When you fight, you don't get what you're looking for. What you're wanting is connection, love, attention. We don't get those responses when we're in the battle because we are attacking. And you've heard me talk before about the Course of Miracles talks about attack. And I always thought attack meant fighting, you know, like saying harsh words or cursing at somebody or, you know, being really intense. But what the Course of Miracles says is that when you judge, when you have a judgment, which goes to this who's right, who's wrong, when you have a judgment and you believe that you are right, it is a form of what other people feel as attack. And when I really started to get that, I understood that my control that I was doing, that I thought was attempting to help the chaos and the pain and dysfunction that was literally happening in my house, was perceived and received as attack by the other people that I lived with. That my self-righteousness, which again, whoo man, when I was doing my 12 steps and I'm working with my sponsor, and we got to the fifth step where I'm sharing all of my stuff and then looking at the character flaws, and she pointed out self-righteousness over and over and over, that was a hard one for me to take because I was so sure that my way was the right way because it was going to help. Now, with this client yesterday, one of the words that we started talking about using came from Al Anon, which I remember this in the beginning of my healing that was so powerful is you, you might be right. And I used to say that to Rich through gritted teeth in the beginning. You know, it's kind of like detachment. Sometimes when you start doing detachment, you have to detach with a chainsaw. You don't detach with love. You detach with like, there's just so much bottled up, so much pain, so much wound, so much anger, so much resentment that we don't know how to come from our heart space yet. We're up here in our head and we're defending and we're on this battlefield, right? So Rich would say something that would hit all of my defense mechanisms, if not enoughness. Not that he's intending to, maybe he was intending to, it doesn't even matter. And instead of fighting, I would look at him and I'd go, hmm, you might be right. And you could feel the tension release. Because if we really think about what we want in these conversations, each person just wants to be validated and heard for their opinion, their view, their way of seeing it. Now, I think there used to be much more of a paradigm that there is only one way, very black and white. I've worked with a lot of clients who are recovering from family systems of you were the person who was right or you're the person who is wrong, you're the person who is better, or you're the person who's less than. And as recovering people, pleasers, and codependence, we are in this place where we are being affronted with the parts of us that are trying to be enough in systems where we were told that there's a right way and a wrong way. And if we had thoughts or feelings that didn't align with whoever that person was that was the person at the top of that hierarchy, there was something wrong with us. Well, we are eliminating that. And that's the part where spirituality comes in, which is it is as we choose to see it. And there are many opportunities for different ways to see it. There is less right and wrong always. And the deeper you get into the spiritual world, the more you recognize everything is just a view of somebody. So for somebody, they might have something that feels very black and white. Like here's an example. I was talking to a friend, and she was just coming up with this concept of control. She had no idea that she was controlling, and I was just talking to her, not as Rev Rachel, but as a friend. And she said, um, but there's a right way. She's fighting with her with her husband, right? Because she knows what's right. And he's feeling, he's feeling nitpicked, he's feeling um completely invalidated in his views, he's feeling completely like their marriage is falling apart because she's obsessed with this rightness, because that's her protective mechanism, right? So it's about us being gentle to ourselves that this is the protection. And she said, but there's a right way. And I said, Well, yes, for the person who thinks that it's right. I said, Rich

Many Views Can Be True

Rev Rachel Harrison 20:33

is in construction and he is very, very good at what he does. We always have this joke that if one will do, Rich will use two, right? If there's one screw that can be put in, Rich will put two screws in. Richard is impeccable with his building. It may take him a minute to finish the stuff around the house, but when it's done, it's perfect. Now he will tell you that there is a right way to do X. And I've watched him struggle with employees and even customers who can see a different way, even me, like in the house. I can see a different way. And one of his blind spots was that he was so good at what he does that he sometimes would get blind to another way. Maybe you don't have to use two screws with something. Maybe this will, you know, this may not be perfect as the eyes and what his perfection is, but to somebody else, it's enough or it's good or it's whatever. There might be systems that work well, but if we don't push those systems sometimes, we can't innovate to new ideas, to new ways of being. And and that example for her was like, oh, because she had bumped up against Rich on a project. And she could see it one way, and he was seeing it another way. They both had their views, which were quote unquote right. So as I've let go of this fighting rich for every single moment of whether whether something's right or wrong, the peace that I feel within myself is the part that is the most important part. Because the more that I've said, you might be right. He might be right. In his mind, he's definitely right. And there might be a way to do something that's different than the way that I've done it. And my self-righteousness that didn't want to be invalidated for who I am, because somebody else was saying that it needed to be different, was really me thinking that I was being validated in my not enoughness. But the more that we stand in our enoughness, the more we can have the people around us have whatever their opinions are. And just because one person thinks there is a way doesn't mean it's the only way, but it's the way for them. So as I was working with this client, I was saying, if you stopped fighting everything, how would that change your relationship? And she said, I'd feel a lot more peaceful. And I'd probably actually get along with my husband better. And what's interesting is that the more that I have done this work with Rich, one of the things that he's said to me is, you never used to validate what I thought. I didn't actually like everything that he thought. And so I was trying to convince him of a better way to see it. And so now I'm much better at just letting him be and think and feel whatever he sees, and then being clear about what hill to stand on. On Saturday, I guess I thought the hill to stand on was my car. And in a way, it is the hill to stand on because it's an important thing for me. But we didn't fight in the same way we used to fight. And I immediately could see that part of myself. And even though I was watching myself do it, you're watching yourself, and that's improvement. And I often say what we're working on in Recover Your Soul is not to completely eliminate the parts of ourselves, our shadows or our beliefs or patterns and stories that have kept us safe for so long, we're just reducing their reactive impact that can be harmful to yourself and the people around you. So to just allow myself to feel and to be able to witness that part of me that's like, oh, I have a part of me that thinks that what I want will be taken away, that other people get what they need before I do. That is so valuable and important. What might have been at a 10 before, most of the time now, those belief systems are at a two or three, you know, they have definitely not totally gone away, but they're way down. And if they spike up for a minute, it's okay. Give it space, give it grace, give yourself grace. But when you get off the emotional battlefield and you stop fighting for everything, you actually release those parts of yourself that are in hypervigilance. And that allows you to let go of the beliefs that are trying to protect and flip the script over to your wholeness and to witness more clearly and to watch somebody who might be making some kooky choices and might be doing things that you don't particularly care for. But is it a hill that you're going to stand on? And is there a right way here? And you can flip this the same way, which is that if you have somebody who's trying to convince you constantly that they're right and you feel put upon and you feel controlled, when you battle them, you're actually giving them control. So when you say you might be right, you're actually releasing the part of them that's trying to defend themselves. And then you come at it from your most healed, awakened state, which can see more clearly and recognize how you can be in that situation, the choices that you're gonna make in that situation and in that relationship based on your wholeness instead of on your woundedness. And it might mean that you need to set some boundaries. You know, when you do this and that doesn't feel good to me, here's what I'm gonna do. It might mean that you leave some relationships, it might mean that you have to stand up for yourself, but you don't stand up for yourself in that old way, even if you do the tumbleweed version coming into it. You can just pick yourself up, recognize who you are, claim your own safety. Know that everybody might be right here because everybody has a different view and opinion, and you don't have to invalidate your opinion for someone else's opinion to also be true. But we don't have to fight for it. Knowing that you are enough within yourself and doing this work is taking your power back. We don't need everybody else to believe or think the same way that we do for us to have our beliefs be true. So the more that you step into your wholeness, the more that you step into your sovereignty, the more that you can be from your heart. When we are in this space, we're actually having a more open heart. It has more compassion, more grace, more allowance for all that is without protecting, but at the same time, without allowing harm to come in. Because you're holding your center so strong that you choose how you're gonna be with it. And if there's a lot of big feelings, those feelings are giving you information. They are a guidance system to understand more. And that's what I love about the process, the recovery soul process that has so transformed my life. It just continues to give me more and more and more understanding for this very simple set of steps, but it's a way to deal with and to be with those parts of yourself that have been on autopilot, that old operating system that's from woundedness and fear, and to move that into a way to see and grow and heal and release and let go of what doesn't serve you, connect with your higher self, choose to be present with your wholeness, live from your awakened state, and be in a world that is very complicated in a non-reactive way, detached with love. Life continues to be lifey. But something that may have been a huge blow-up for weeks on end was something that was maybe half an hour, and that's success. Until next time, Namaste. If something that you just heard resonated with you, I want you to know there's a whole community waiting for you. The recovery soul process is a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life, and there's many ways to walk it together. Start with the free mini workbook at recoveryoul.net. It's a beautiful first step. You can join us for the free monthly support group on the first Monday of every month. And if you're ready to go deeper and work the nine steps, you can join the self-study collective or a soul circle or come to one of our in-person retreats or workshops. And if you want to work with me personally one-on-one, coaching is available. You can also find bonus episodes every Friday on Patreon, Apple Podcasts, and I'm on YouTube with new videos that are posted weekly. And grab your copy of the new Recover Your Soul Spiritual Memoir. It is a spiritual journey of healing from addiction, codependency, and people pleasing available on

Community Support And Next Steps

Rev Rachel Harrison 30:19

Amazon, and it's our journey of healing through this process. You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and all of is recover your soul. Just remember you're not alone in this. Together, we can do the work that will recover your soul.