Stand Up For Your Convictions
Without attachment
There’s a beauty and strength in taking a position, expressing an idea, pleading someone’s case and wanting to make the world in which you live a better place. Whether you choose to do so in a PTO school meeting, at work, or in topics of local, national or global importance, you are exercising an important freedom.
But here’s the rub. When you believe something is right — you often attach yourself to that idea. And it’s so easy to lose perspective. If you insist that your way of thinking is the only right position, the rest follows — that anyone who disagrees with you is wrong. The battle lines have been drawn.
So how do you hold your convictions without attachment? Here are three things I keep in mind:
1. My views are important — to me.
2. What you think matters — to you.
3. Mother Teresa’s three rules — be kind, be kind, be kind.
Yes, it’s critical to freely express thoughts and opinions and beliefs. If, like Mother Teresa, you allow kindness to envelop how you present those ideas and do so without attachment, I think you’ll notice that it doesn’t matter how anyone else responds. Your ideas are important whether or not anyone else agrees with you.
When you arrive at the place where you really mean it when you say, “so what,” you’re holding a conviction with light hands.
Where can you let go of being right today?
You’ve got this.