It's Hard To Change Anything When We Can't Let Go of Being Right

Helping In A Time Of Need

One of the hardest things I had to do this summer was to grit my teeth and smile, so I could find it in my heart to praise a hostile man whose assistance I urgently needed.

Through a documentary peer group, I volunteered to help a few Afghani documentarians prepare their Special Immigrant Visa applications. The man in question was a dentist who founded a non-profit that offered free dental work in Afghanistan; I needed him to write a letter confirming the employment of an Afghani documentarian who worked for him at his Kabul dental practice for over ten years. The dentist had not responded to his former employee's calls and pleas for help, so I called him at his dental practice. To my shock, he was rude and belligerent—he was highly incensed that his former Afghan employee had the gall to call him in the middle of the night, and even more displeased that he had involved me, a documentary filmmaker, to pester him. He bellowed over the phone: "Tell your Afghani friend to chill out and relax!"

I felt a surge of anger—he wanted me to tell someone who served him loyally and now faced death threats because of that work to "chill out?" At that point, there were lots of things I wanted to say, none of them pleasant.?But I thought of this documentary colleague I was trying to help, his young children about my daughter's age, his wife pregnant with a girl. I had one job—to get a letter from the dentist. I gritted my teeth and pushed my heart to soften. I praised all the good he has done to provide access to quality dentistry in Kabul. I applauded his courage, admired his generosity of spirit—and I asked him if he would kindly get that letter of employment verification written and sent to me as soon as he could.

We got that letter a few hours later.

Feel Righteous Or Achieve Goal?

What I really wanted to do was to shame the dentist for his insensitivity and privilege. It took all my will not to do that. This is at the heart of why it is so hard to change minds and hearts—when we care more about being right and making ourselves feel vindicated than we care about changing anything.?Numerous psychological studies?have shown that "moral reframing" is one of the most effective ways to change someone's mind. It's not rocket science—ground your argument in the moral values of those you're trying to persuade, not your own moral values, and you're more likely to win them over. Yet, it's something we fail to do in matters we care about the most. When things get heated, we put up blinders to block out other perspectives and retreat to the familiarity and safety of our convictions and beliefs.?

This is a stumbling block not just in matters of politics and social issues. I witness this in professional arenas as well. When a client or colleague challenges a point of view or a piece of research, I see researchers and strategists get defensive and frustrated. The discussion becomes focused on proving oneself right and the other wrong. But if our goal is to open minds to new learning and change behaviors to embrace new opportunities, telling people "they are wrong" is not likely to accomplish our goal.

For people to accept what we have to say, we have to understand what's troubling them; if they voice their disagreement in a way we cannot comprehend, we need to understand it. When we genuinely learn their fears and desires, we can reframe what we want them to know and accept in a way that makes sense to them.

Listening Doesn’t Mean Giving In

One of the ways I try to keep myself from a defensive reaction is to listen and give people the room and space to voice their disagreement. Don't defend, don't argue—focus on listening and understanding. I remind myself that listening doesn't mean agreeing—I'm not betraying my beliefs! And when I listen with an open heart, I discover surprising areas where our values overlap. I naturally see ways to reframe what I want to convey because the fiery need to be right no longer controls me.

When I invite others to speak their mind, taking time to listen and understand instead of rushing to counter-argue, it also cools their fiery need to be correct and vindicated. This puts them in a better state of mind to receive what I have to say.

This strategy isn't just a mind trick—it's about having the humility to accept that our worldview is not the only "right" one and recognizing that we may not always have the moral high ground. I found out later that the dentist I was dealing with is not a wealthy, privileged Santa Barbara dentist like I assumed. He hired many Afghans over his years of work in Kabul and was overwhelmed with requests for SIV applications. He is an older gentleman in his eighties, and from his Yelp reviews, it appears that he's always been a bit of a grumpy old man type (his blunt responses to bad Yelp reviewers are pretty entertaining!). For all I know, part of his lashing out may have stemmed from a sense of helplessness and hopelessness at the situation. He may not have been the kindly old man I wanted him to be, but he was not a callous, privileged elite either. He was simply a human being reacting to a difficult situation.

This article was originally published in Izzy's Big Flipping Newsletter (subscribe here!). Izzy Chan is a strategist, researcher, documentary filmmaker, keynote speaker, cultural envoy, consultant, and the director of?Matriarch, a documentary-in-progress set in four matriarchal communities around the world.