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23. Empowerment Through Wanting to Be Wrong



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ABOUT THE PODCAST:

As educator moms, we often pride ourselves on being “right”—about parenting decisions, classroom management strategies, and even our beliefs about what needs to change in education. Being right gives us a sense of security, control, and empowerment.  But what if empowerment can also come from wanting to be wrong? In this episode of the Empowered Educator Mom podcast, we explore why our brains cling so tightly to existing beliefs, how that can hold us back, and how wanting to be wrong opens the door to growth, possibility, and resilience.


Through stories, psychology, and relatable examples, you’ll learn how wanting to be wrong can help you break free from limiting beliefs and empower you to handle personal doubts and challenges.


Wanting to be wrong can be an amazing addition to your empowerment toolkit – one that helps you shift your mindset in powerful ways.  Instead of fighting to be right about what’s not working, you’ll learn how to flip the script and empower yourself to see what else might be true.


WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

  • Why our brains cling to being right, even when it holds us back

  • The hidden energy cost of changing long-held beliefs

  • How confirmation bias keeps us stuck in our own stories

  • A mindset shift that turns past struggles into sources of strength

  • A powerful mantra about personal limitations


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SEE FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Years ago, I remember watching a show where the host talked about critical character traits he thought kids needed to develop.  As I recall, there were four, maybe five traits, and I don’t remember most of them.  In fact, I only remember one – entrepreneurship.  I’m guessing I don’t specifically remember the others because they were traits I already agreed with – things like hard work or empathy or being a good citizen maybe.  But entrepreneurship was different.  It wasn’t something I’d ever considered as a valuable character trait.  It wasn’t something that had been encouraged in me or that I’d heard encouraged in general.  So when I heard this person talking about how we needed to encourage it in kids, I was a little confused and even more resistant.  Why did kids need to be entrepreneurial?  How would that benefit them?  Most kids probably wouldn’t start their own business – they’d go work for someone else like I did – so entrepreneurship wasn’t that big of a deal.  It wasn’t a character trait I possessed, and I’d done fine in my life.


Fast forward about 15 years and I found myself wanting to leave public education to start my own coaching business.  The problem was, I had no experience creating or running a business.  I had never thought of myself as a business woman or business owner.  I didn’t have a business degree.  I didn’t know anything about PNL statements or tax requirements or setting up an LLC or getting clients or any of that.  I was not an entrepreneur!  I was an employee.  I knew how to be an employee, and I had no idea how to be an entrepreneur.


During my tenure in education, I saw a handful of teachers start their own businesses or non-profit organizations, and I always thought, “That’s not for me.  I could never do that.”  I remember during my first or second year of teaching, there was a first grade teacher who created her own phonics program and started selling it.  She wasn’t very old and she hadn’t been teaching much longer than me, and I remember just being in awe that she could do that … because I certainly couldn’t.


So near the end of 2020 when I first started toying with the idea of leaving education, I had to really grapple with that idea that I was only an employee and not an entrepreneur.  I realized that if I were going to start my own business, I needed to be wrong about that.  I needed to be able to let go of that part of my identity, to turn away from a belief that I’d held my whole life.

And that was hard to do.


For several months I asked myself, “What if I’m wrong about that?” and I played with the possibility in my head.  But I just couldn’t shake the idea that I wasn’t an entrepreneur.  Until one day my coach asked, “Do you want to be wrong about that?”  And that’s when things started to shift.


In today’s episode, we’re going to continue this theme and talk about how wanting to be wrong can be a great empowerment tool.  We’ll talk about why we’re hardwired to think we’re right and when it can be really helpful to give our brains some pushback.


Ready?  Let’s get into it.


Are you ready to feel more empowered and less overwhelmed at home and in the classroom?  I’m Keri Martinez, and I’m a wife, mother, and educator- turned-life coach with more than 25 years experience.  I’m here to offer you strategies, tips, and tools to help you increase your personal power so you can stop stressing and obsessing, and start enjoying your work and family more.  I know that when you feel better, you do better.  But it can seem darn near impossible to feel better when you’re handling two of the most demanding jobs on the planet – teacher and mom.  Typical PD sessions, conference workshops, and self-help books on work-life balance aren’t cutting it, so It’s time for a different approach.  Welcome to the Empowered Educator Mom Podcast.


Hello everybody.  Welcome to this week’s episode.  I hope your school year is off to a great start and you’re finding this podcast helpful and empowering in the work you’re doing as a mom and an educator.  If you are, please pause this episode and do one of two things for me.  Either give the podcast a five-star rating in Apple Podcasts or Spotify or share the podcast with another educator mom.  Bonus points if you want to do both, but just one would be fantastic.


OK.  Let’s get into this week’s empowerment tool – wanting to be wrong.  I would not be surprised if you saw the title of the episode and thought something like, “Why would I want to be wrong?” or “How could wanting to be wrong be empowering?”  “That can’t be right – it seems counterintuitive.”  “It doesn’t feel safe to want to be wrong.”


And actually all of those responses illustrate the brain’s desire to be right, to fight being wrong.  But why does the brain do this?  Why does it cling to its “rightness” even when faced with compelling evidence to the contrary?


Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian obstetrician who worked in Austria in the mid nineteenth century.  While working at Vienna General Hospital in 1847, he noticed the maternal mortality rate was two to four times higher for physician-assisted deliveries than for midwife-assisted deliveries.  In looking for reasons to explain the large discrepancy, Semmelweis noted that physicians were conducting autopsies prior to delivering babies, and midwives were not.  Semmelweis concluded that the physicians were carrying what he called “cadaverous particles” on their hands from the autopsy room to the women in the delivery room, and he instituted a mandatory hand washing policy for physicians.  In the year following that new policy, the maternal mortality rate dropped by an astonishing 90%.


Despite that drop, his “cadaverous particles” hypothesis and hand washing procedure were largely ignored and even ridiculed by other physicians.  The prevailing medical and scientific opinion of the time was that maternal deaths were caused by “miasma" or bad air, and some doctors were offended by the suggestion that they should wash their hands because they felt their social status as gentlemen was inconsistent with the idea that their hands could be unclean.  (This seems so ridiculous now, but remember this was back before the germ theory of disease was widely accepted in the medical community.)


Two decades and thousands of maternal deaths later, Semmelweis’ insights were finally accepted after the discovery of microscopic pathogens.


The brain wants to be right.  It wants to be certain, and it will actively resist things that threaten its sense of “rightness” and certainty.  But again, why?


From an energy standpoint, the brain is a very expensive organ to operate.  It’s roughly two percent of your body weight yet it requires 20 percent of your body’s resting energy to function.  It’s always looking for ways to be efficient and will use shortcuts when possible.  And one of those shortcuts is maintaining current thoughts and beliefs.  It takes less energy to maintain an existing belief than it would to change to something different.


An article by Ralph Lewis on the Psychology Today website says this: “Radically restructuring our belief system and creating a new worldview engages parts of the brain involved in higher reasoning processes and computation, and is consequently more effortful, time- and energy-consuming.  The brain often cannot afford such an investment.  This would explain why, when we experience cognitive dissonance, it is easier to resolve this discomfort by doubling down on our existing belief system—ignoring or explaining away the challenging, contradictory information.”


This is why our brains engage in why psychologists have termed ‘confirmation bias.’  Confirmation bias is looking for and valuing evidence that supports what we already believe and dismissing things that contradict that belief.  Our default or subconscious brains are well practiced at noticing things that align with what we already believe, and it doesn’t take much effort to notice additional things that align and then slot them into our belief framework.  Similarly, it’s just as easy to filter out things that don’t align.  The default brain doesn’t consider those things relevant so it will dismiss them out of hand unless we use our conscious brain, our prefrontal cortex, to pay attention to them.  But again, that’s costly in terms of energy, so the subconscious brain, in an effort to conserve energy, will resist us doing that.


Another thing or reason our brains cling to being right is that being wrong can feel unsafe.  Being wrong and making mistakes are often equated with failure, and failure can feel pretty terrible.  Failure can also be very costly.  It can even cost us our life in some circumstances.  In prehistoric times, if I failed to find food or shelter, I could die.  If I failed to accurately predict what was causing the rustling in the bushes, I could die.  The brain’s prime directive has always been to keep us alive, and it needs to be right and fast to do that.  Now we don’t face the same threats in our modern world, but our brains still operate the same way and still want to be right.


A final reason I’ll mention about why our brains want to be right is that it validates our self-perception.  Believing we’re right provides a sense of security, control, and comfort while any challenge to that can seem like a threat to our ego or sense of competence.  In the Ralph Lewis Psychology Today article I cited earlier, Lewis says, “In many cases, people have a lot invested personally in their belief system.  They may have staked their reputation on a particular belief.  Not infrequently, people structure their whole lives around a belief.  And this investment may go far beyond a sense of self, extending to large material and financial investments or a life’s career.  A change of belief for such a person would obviously involve a monumental upheaval and may entail intolerable personal losses.”


In a separate Psychology Today article written by Sam Goldstein, it says, “Admitting we’re wrong can feel like [we’re] admitting we’re flawed [and] this triggers the brain’s threat response … [B]eing challenged feels like being attacked.  So we defend ourselves—not just intellectually, but emotionally as well.”


So our brains have valid reasons for wanting to be right, reasons that often serve us very well.  But there are times when wanting to be right does more harm than good, when wanting to be wrong would be much more useful.  So let’s talk now about when that might be the case and how you can help yourself in those situations.


In general, I find times when it’s helpful to want to be wrong can be grouped into two categories:  people and challenges.  Now I know sometimes people fit in the challenges category, but I’m going to keep them separate for simplicity’s sake.  So when would it be useful or helpful to want to be wrong about people?  Well, first of all, I want to point out that “people” includes you along with everyone else.  When would it be helpful to want to be wrong about yourself or anyone else?  I’m going to share three ideas.  This is not meant to be an all-encompassing list, so feel free to text me or DM me if you think of others.


The first thing you might want to be wrong about yourself or others is potential or the capacity or ability to change and grow.  Dr. Carol Dweck wrote an amazing book you may have read called Mindset:  The New Psychology of Success, and in this book she talks about the difference between having a growth mindset and a fixed mindset.  Having a fixed mindset is believing that your intelligence and capacity are fixed, that you don’t have the ability to improve and grow, and having a growth mindset is believing the opposite – that your intelligence and capacity are not fixed and you do have the ability to improve and grow.  Dweck says we can have fixed mindsets in some areas and growth in others, but her main point is that our success and growth are determined by the mindset we have.  If we believe we don't have the potential to improve in a particular area, we won’t.  If we believe we are capable of growing, we will.


So let’s talk now about some specific potential or capacity examples where you might want to be wrong.  

  • First of all, if you think you’re never going to be able to lose weight or cut out sugar or stop drinking, do you want to be right about that?  Or would it be more helpful to be wrong?

  • If you think you’re never going to be able to stick to a budget or get out of debt or save money, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think your child is never going to learn to pick up his dirty laundry or keep her room clean, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think your significant other or a child has lost their way and is going to ruin their life, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think you’re never going to survive the school year and the crazy student behaviors, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think your admin has ruined the school’s culture, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think certain students are never going to get your classroom procedures down or turn in homework or pass your class, do you want to be wrong about that?


The point with all of these is examining your beliefs about your own or other people’s potential and considering if those beliefs are serving you.  Ask yourself if you want to be right about what you believe.  If not, you’ll need to be intentional about wanting to be wrong instead.


One of my all-time favorite inspirational stories is about a sheep farmer from Australia named Cliff Young.  In 1983, Cliff Young did the impossible and completed the 875-km (that’s 544-miles for those of us in the US) Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon in record time by running continuously –  yes, I said continuously – for 5 days, 15 hours and 4 minutes.  I’m going to quote now from a story on the marathons.com website .  “With no coach, no sports science, and no sleep … [Cliff smashed] the previous record by nearly two full days.”  And he did it wearing overalls and work boots.  And one more thing – he was 61 at the time and had started competitive running only five years prior.


This race “demanded extraordinary preparation, strategic planning, and near-superhuman stamina. It was a race for elite ultramarathoners—athletes who calculated every calorie, nap, and step” and people thought it was a joke when Cliff showed up at the starting line.


“Cliff Young didn’t just win a race—he changed the very fabric of ultrarunning. Before him, no one thought it was humanly possible to run nearly 900 km without sleep.  After him, scientists and runners alike studied his signature stride: the “Young Shuffle”—a low-impact, ultra-efficient gait that dragged the feet just above the ground to conserve energy.  To this day, it’s taught in ultramarathon training camps.  But Cliff’s real legacy goes beyond biomechanics.  He redefined what endurance means.  He proved that patience and grit could outlast speed and youth.  That simplicity can beat sophistication.  That underdogs—those who don’t fit the mold—often hold untapped potential.”


Jack Canfield recounted this story in his book The Success Principles and said, “Cliff’s story illustrates that sometimes it isn’t what you don’t know that stops your success. It’s what you do know that isn’t true” (p. 86).


Wanting to be wrong about limiting beliefs about your potential can be very empowering.


All right.  The second thing you might want to be wrong about yourself or others is identity, and this overlaps somewhat with potential, but let’s talk about some identity examples of where you might want to be wrong.

  • If you think you’re a terrible mother because your house is messy or dinner is always a struggle or you don’t spend enough time with your kids or (fill in the blank), do you want to be right about that?  Is it serving you to believe you’re a terrible mother for whatever reason?  Or would it be helpful to want to be wrong?

  • If you think you’re not a good enough teacher or admin, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think you’re a habitual procrastinator, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think you’re not an organized person, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think you’re not a fun or creative person, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think your admin is completely unreasonable and unwilling to listen to other people’s ideas, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think the person at your school who processes purchase orders is lazy or incompetent, do you want to be wrong about that?


Again, the point with all of these is examining how you think about yourself or other people and considering if those beliefs are serving you.  Ask yourself if you want to be right about what you believe, and if not, start thinking about wanting to be wrong.


The story I shared in the intro about me wanting to leave public education is a great example of the power of wanting to be wrong about an identity.  Once I realized I wanted to be wrong about my belief that I was an employee and, therefore, not an entrepreneur, things started shifting.  I was able to recognize that just because I hadn’t been an entrepreneur before didn’t mean I couldn’t become one now.  I was able to start looking for evidence that I could be an entrepreneur, that I could start my own business, and that I could figure out whatever I needed to know to run my own business.  It’s been much harder than I imagined, but I’m doing it.  I’m figuring it out.  I’m making progress.  And all of that started with me wanting to be wrong about part of my identity.


The last area you might want to be wrong about yourself or others is relationships, so let’s go over some examples for that.

  • If you think you think you’ll never be able to make friends, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think your marriage isn’t what it used to be or you’ve lost the spark you once had, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think your child doesn’t respect you or you’ll never have a close relationship, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think your department is dysfunctional and will never work well together, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you’re a principal and you think you’ll never mesh with your assistant principal, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think your students’ parents just don’t care, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think your students’ parents are overbearing and too involved, do you want to be wrong about that?


Now, before we move on, I want to clarify that I’m not saying any of your current thoughts about potential, identity, or relationship aren’t warranted, that they aren’t valid, or that you don’t have evidence to support them.  If you’re thinking you’ll never get out of debt, or your admin is unreasonable, or your marriage isn’t what it used to be, your brain has valid reasons for thinking that.  If I asked you to, you could give me lots of evidence to substantiate what you’re thinking.  I am not trying to convince you that your thoughts are bad or wrong.  If you think your child will never be able to keep their room clean, I’m not saying you should start thinking they’re the neatest person ever.  If you think your students’ parents don’t care, I’m not suggesting you start thinking they’re super caring instead.  Your brain has plenty of evidence to support your current belief, and trying to get it to think something so different won’t work.  Or it rarely works, I should say.  You’re not asking yourself if you want to be wrong about any of these thoughts so you can believe the opposite.  You’re asking if you want to be wrong so your brain can start loosening its grip on that belief and start looking for different evidence.  Because nine times out of ten, there is evidence contrary to your belief, but your brain hasn’t been able to see it because it’s been so focused on protecting the current belief.


I was coaching a client recently about her relationship with her husband, and she felt like she and her husband weren’t connecting like they used to, and he wasn’t really interested in what was going on for her.  And she had plenty of evidence to back up what she was thinking.  So I told her her thoughts were completely valid.  Her brain had good reasons for thinking them, and if she wanted to keep thinking them, she totally could.


I also told her that I was willing to bet there was evidence to the contrary that her brain had just ignored because it was focused on protecting her current beliefs.  And if she wanted to think something different, she’d have to be willing to consider that she might be wrong about the relationship and her husband.  She did not want to be right about what she was thinking, so I suggested she start looking for evidence to support different beliefs – look for evidence that the relationship, while it had changed over the years, was still good, and that they were still connecting in some ways.  Look for evidence that he did care about her.  Two weeks later she told me she had found evidence to support the new beliefs.  When she looked for it, she was able to see it.


Now there are still some things she’d like to improve in the relationship, and that’s a beautiful thing!  But being able to recognize what’s already good, wanting to be wrong about what she was thinking before, puts her in a much more empowered headspace to think about how she wants to approach things moving forward.


OK, so we’ve talked about when you might want to be wrong about yourself and others regarding potential, identity, and relationships.  Now let’s talk about when you might want to be wrong about challenges, and for this, I’m talking about past, current, and future challenges.  So let’s get into some examples again.

  • If you think you’re currently struggling because of things that happened in your past, do you want to be right about that?  Do you want to be right that you are now limited by your past struggles?  For example, do you want it to be true that you’re struggling with alcohol or food because your parents struggled with the same thing?  To be clear, your brain has valid reasons for that – and you could continue with that story.  It’s just very disempowering because it gives all of your power to something in the past, something that can’t be changed.  You can’t go back and change what your parents did or the environment you grew up in, but you can choose what you’re going to do moving forward.  So do you want to continue believing you’re limited by what happened in your past?  Or do you want to be wrong about that and believe your past struggles helped you develop inner strength you can use right now?

  • If you think your current challenges are too much for you to handle or that they’ll never end, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think the future of education is bleak, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think the country is too divided and there’s no hope to unite us, do you want to be wrong about that?

  • If you think there’s no hope and things are just going to get worse, do you want to be wrong about that?


I hope these examples and stories have sparked some ideas of things you might want to be wrong about in your own life – specifically limiting beliefs about potential, identity, relationships, and challenges.  I’ll end with one of my favorite mantras about limiting beliefs that I think ties in beautifully to what I’ve been sharing today.  And it is, “If you fight for your limitations, you will get to keep them.”  When your brain is fighting to be right about any limiting belief, I hope you’ll remember that and ask yourself if you want to be wrong about the belief instead.


Take care my friends and have fun hunting for limiting beliefs to be wrong about.


Thanks for listening to this episode of the Empowered Educator Mom podcast!  If you loved the episode and want even more help from me, be sure to grab my free “3 Secrets to Less Stress as an Educator Mom.”  I wish someone would’ve shared these with me early in my motherhood and education journey because they would have saved me from a lot of stress and anxiety.  So if you desperately want to be less stressed and overwhelmed, you need these secrets.  They are not things you’ve heard before, and even better, you can implement them right away to start feeling better right away.  I know they can help you like they helped me, so click the link in the show notes and discover them for yourself.


Have an amazing week everyone, and I’ll talk to you soon.




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