QUOTE(Zoloft @ Wed 8th February 2012, 8:35pm)
Part of my routine when I wake and prepare for work each day is to say a short reminder to myself—"Consider you may be incorrect, and admit it if you are."
It's saved me from many a compounded error over the decades.
I'm sure. We can go further than that, we can admit that we are quite likely to be wrong in some way, i.e., that the "truth" is generally more than we know. I can be "right" about a thing, as to how I'm thinking about it, but be "wrong" in terms of achieving overall goals, because there is something I don't know, and I don't know that I don't know it.
For "wrong," there, read "ineffective."
The admission, then, is of fallibility, which we can admit even when we think that we are "right." One way that I managed to reconcile what I'm learning with my assertive habits was to realize that I want others, when they think they are right, to stand up for what they think. In fact, it's not necessary to be right to stand for what we think, it is really a choice, not a discovery of "truth."
In fact, if we seem to disagree, it may well be that we are both "right." We simply don't understand each other well enough, and that is a possibility that suggests and allows for growth and learning and transformation.