Healthy Disagreement

A natural part of sharing life with others is disagreement. Two people with two different vantage points and perspectives will interpret the same situation in different ways. And that’s assuming that people are even operating from the same set of information, which often isn’t the case, and it's responsible for added confusion.

This is why disagreement is really good at its core. What it does is bring light to the assumptions and context that’s missing, and spirited debate can be a tool for arriving to a better shared understanding.

Logically, that’s what we want. But there’s this thing called the ego that often turns what’s meant to be a very valuable practice into a process that creates even more separation. The ego is our sense of self. Its goal is to establish our own independent value. Admitting that we were wrong, mistaken, or misinformed means we’re not good enough, that others will invest in us less because we have less to offer, and it negatively impacts our personal survival.

This is why many people get defensive when their way of seeing things is put into question. We react shut off, agitated, and emotionally to maintain our sense of self. And that energy is received by others creating even more distance between us and them.

It’s important to understand this bias so that we can show up in a more constructive way. We can have debate with real disagreement, but do it in a way that’s respectful. It requires a level of humility to know how your ego might be responding defensively out of protection. It requires open-mindedness to accept the holes in your argument and admit that you have blindspots. It requires awareness to know how you might be rationalizing the truth to serve your stance rather than seeing the situation objectively.

Disagreement is inherently good because it’s an opportunity to broaden your perspective. It becomes problematic when you don’t allow your lens into the world to shift given the new information you’ve acquired. A quote that helps me with that, my favorite of all time, is Maya Angelou’s “Do your best until you know better. Then once you know better, do better.” 

It allows you to receive disagreement in a way that’s healthy, helpful, and non-threatening.