The Secret To Being Happy

Over the years I’ve learned two important phrases that roughly get to the same idea: 1.) Eat as many of your words as you can & 2.) You can be happy or you can be right. Both of these phrases are useful in the workplace and within personal interactions afterhours. Sometimes proving your point can be done so at a price and evaluating whether that price is truly worth it is something that should be considered before opening your mouth to speak.

In my younger years I found it imperative that I always get my point across if I knew I was right. However, it caused a lot of negative situations that I later learned from both in the workforce and in my personal life. I did find that at work I wasn’t as gung-ho about trying to make my point as much as I was in my personal life. In the early years with my ex-husband I would go toe-to-toe until I was blue in the face to prove that I was right about something and he was wrong. Unfortunately, we had the same personality and situations like this would escalate since neither of us would give up.

Years later I learned that by biting my tongue I could save myself a lot of frustration and anxiety. I knew that I was right, so why bother arguing the issue until it reached the point that I was miserable. The argument never helped the situation, but instead only added fuel to the fire that kept the argument going. The day I learned to eat my own words and keep quiet was the day I realized I could be happy by just knowing I was right instead of arguing it until I was blue in the face.