What if they're right?

I want to put something in front of you, and I’m going to jump straight in.

Think about everything that’s ever been said to you. Every opinion someone pushed on you, every judgment, every version of the truth they insisted on.

What if all of it was right?

Your kid who judges you is right. The partner who felt scorned and pointed the finger at you in blame is right. The boss who let you go, or never gave you credit, had a reason that was right. The people on the other side of the political aisle are right. Your mother or father, who told you exactly how you should live and how you should show up, was 100% right.

How does that land?

01Them Being Right Doesn’t Make You Wrong

Our first reaction is usually, “Well, if they’re right, then I must be wrong.”

That isn’t true. Someone else being right doesn’t make you wrong.

I’m not talking about two plus two equals four. I’m talking about how each of us interprets the world based on how we were shaped and what we’re working through right now.

So what if you could hold some compassion and say, “Okay. You might be right. That’s fine. It doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

It costs you nothing. And it gives you a mirror. Maybe there’s something about how you relate to people that you didn’t see before. Or maybe it shows you how solid you already are in what you know, without having to make anyone else wrong to stay rooted.

02The View From the Top of the Mountain

This isn’t spiritual bypassing. We can talk about everything that’s wrong with the world all day. What I’m offering is a higher vantage point.

Picture standing at the bottom of a mountain and deciding it’s too big, so you’ll just focus on one small part you can climb. You have the capacity to get to the top and look down. From there you can see so much more.

It’s the difference between creating from the top down and from the bottom up. When we connect with divinity first, that intelligence can refine the rough places in us. When we skip that and just keep polishing our rough spots by ourselves, we get stuck in the cracks.

03My Brother Was Right

For as long as I can remember, from when I was four or five years old into my early fifties, my brother told me I was selfish. Self-absorbed. Entitled. That things came to me too easily. That I didn’t think about other people.

And you know what? Sure, at times I was selfish.

And I know without question that the label that stung so hard for so many years wasn’t who I was, or how I knew I was living my life. Yet it drove a big wedge between us.

So I asked myself where I might be showing up that way. Did it always land as true? God, no. But I also didn’t need to invalidate his experience. If I was busy fighting him, I’d just be proving his point, because I wouldn’t be listening.

So I could say, “Show me.” And sometimes he was right. There was a white lie I told once to keep the peace. To me it was nothing. To him it was a betrayal, because it touched something he held dear that I didn’t even know about.

Was my brother wrong? Not really. Was I wrong? From my intentions, no. But a lot of us who are empathic assume people pick up on what we intend. We think we’ve said it clearly, and the other person’s mind just doesn’t translate it that way.

04Welcome to Being Human

Every one of us has betrayed someone. Abandoned someone. Lied to someone, taken from someone, or failed to make someone a priority. Welcome to being human.

Maybe you think you’ve lived clean enough that you haven’t. But if someone expected something from you that you couldn’t give, and they felt entitled to it, are they wrong to be upset? They’re working through their own version of the truth.

05What If My Daughters Are Right?

My daughters think I’m a little left of woo sometimes (even though I secretly know they think I’m cool too). They’re right. I’m too much sometimes. They’re right about that too. Am I imposing sometimes? 100%.

So I ask myself where I’ve crossed a line. Where have I pushed my truth onto them in a way that costs them something? Where am I being that vampiric energy I say I want to get rid of in the world, just in quieter ways?

Imagine one of your kids tells you how badly something hurt them at fourteen, and you want to jump in and say, “But you don’t understand, I did show up, here’s what I did.”

What if they’re right?

What if you could say, “I’m sorry I hurt you. That wasn’t my experience of it, but I hear how painful it was for you. I’m sorry we went through that.”

Feel how freeing that is. It costs you nothing, and it invites the connection you actually want. We get so invested in defending ourselves that we give up what we’re hoping to experience. That’s the prison we really want to break out of.

06When Someone Wants More Than You Can Give

Sometimes a person comes back into your life wanting more than you’re ready for. You can let them be right about what they want and still honor where you are.

“I get it. I understand you want to connect. I just need a different pace. If you can meet me there, I’ll show up as best I can. All I expect from you is that you keep being you. And if I pull back sometimes, it isn’t because I’m invalidating your truth. It’s because I’m honoring mine.”

Will every relationship survive two people’s truths not quite meeting? Maybe not. Some relationships just keep repeating the same cycle, and that’s okay too. You get to choose.

07My Dad, the King of Aloofness

My father was the king of aloofness. God, he was good at it. I’d bring something up over and over and he’d just go somewhere else, and it blew my mind.

It took me years to see that his nervous system couldn’t land on those conversations. He’d been through his own abuse. When it got too hard, he left his body. He didn’t have the resources or the education I’ve had to learn how to come back into my body.

So was Dad wrong for being aloof? No. I get why he left.

It’s been about twelve years since he passed. I’ve done so much healing with it. These days I have more tears about the connection we did and didn’t have than I have anger. I still get pissed at him every once in a while. Why didn’t you take care of yourself? We were left holding the bag for how you treated yourself.

And still. If I could have one minute of my father alive, sitting next to me, being his aloof, frustrating self, I would take it all day long. I’d tell him I freaking love him and thank him for being here.

If you have a parent who’s passed and a conversation that never happened, stand in front of a mirror. Look into your left eye and call them in. Tell them you’re finally going to have the conversation you’ve been too afraid to have. Don’t stop after two minutes. Stay fifteen, thirty, or an hour. Say what you wanted and didn’t get, and how it felt. Then tell them you understand their version of right, and let them go.

The window doesn’t close when someone dies. They may receive you in a way they couldn’t while they were here.

08The Apology We’re All Waiting For

Here’s the apology most of us are hoping for: “You’re right. I’m so sorry that was hard. I promise I won’t do it again. Believe as much of that promise as you want. What I’ll do is show up consistently, so you can see who I am today.”

Have you ever received an apology like that? It’s rare. And how many times have you given one with that much commitment?

We’re all doing our best.

09Perfect Is Exhausting

Perfectionism is exhausting. And you’re already perfect.

Perfectionism is really trying to earn belonging. It expects that if you get it right enough, you’ll finally receive something. That’s a setup for disappointment, because people are going to be people.

Think about the guy who looks perfect on paper. He checks every box because he knows which boxes to check. And you think, he’s great, just not for me. All that effort, and it still didn’t get him what he wanted.

Be true to yourself. Let other people be true to themselves.

10The Empowered Empaths Are Going to Change the World

Years ago I heard that empaths are going to save the world, and I’ve never forgotten it.

At first, empathy means you feel everything and don’t know what to do with it. Then you learn to be in different environments without losing yourself. Eventually you become an empowered empath. You can feel all of it and stay rooted.

That’s where real compassion comes from. It’s not a moral rule someone handed you. It comes from learning to be compassionate with yourself, and from living through enough ups and downs that you can meet someone deeply without getting lost.

When I moved back to Hawaiʻi in 2020, I felt pulled to sign up for a men’s retreat. I had so much judgment about it. On the first day, around sixty men went around and introduced themselves, and it broke my heart. Men sharing a drop of what we share in our community and getting completely overwhelmed. Leaving their bodies. Crying from saying the smallest thing.

Know that the circles you’re in aren’t the whole world. A lot of people don’t have access to the language we speak yet.

Places hold energy too. This summer I spent time in a town in New England with a long history of psychiatric hospitals, and I could feel it in the air. It wasn’t too much for me, just different. As your empathy sharpens, you’ll start noticing things like that more. Knowing what’s yours and what belongs to the place is part of staying rooted.

11Get Smarter, Not Tougher

Fear, guilt, shame, and judgment are tenacious. They’re clever. Sometimes we think we’ve let one go when we’ve just swapped it for another one. Don’t get so confident that you stop paying attention.

Are those energies wrong? No. They’re part of how we come to understand who we really are.

So it’s time to get smarter with them, not tougher. Open your heart even more. And if you don’t know something, just say “I don’t know.” I trust I’ll come to know what I need to know.

If you’ve been doing the work and it feels like you’re in the rubble, remember the Six Million Dollar Man. He had to crash before he could be rebuilt better, faster, stronger. When the old foundation burns down, nobody puts the rusty pipes back in. We upgrade.

12Feeling Brand New

A lot of people are telling me lately that they feel like a toddler, sometimes even an infant. That’s uncomfortable, because the world keeps expecting a grown-up.

I think that feeling makes sense. We’re being asked to stop splitting ourselves into compartments. For years there was the John who hosts Beyond The Ordinary and the John who just shows up in regular life. Those two are merging, and I can’t keep them in separate containers anymore. You probably have your own versions: the one that feels safe at work, the one your family knows, the one that only comes out in meditation. The fullness of you wants in.

Nobody expects that to click into place overnight. You don’t expect a one-year-old to be as tall as a five-year-old. Then one day you look up and wonder how that kid got so big. That’s how this kind of growth works, and we get to live through all the in-between.

Here’s something to try. Look back to around 2007 or 2008. What was changing in your life back then? Did you wake up spiritually, change jobs, or end a marriage? A lot of us are cycling back to that same theme now, in a more evolved form. Notice what’s returning, and notice who you are as you meet it this time.

13Choose You

Let everyone else be right. Stop fighting to prove you’re right. Let your truth stand without needing a defense.

We’ve been fighting so hard for the life we want that we’re too busy fighting to live it. That’s a bad investment, and I’ll judge that one all day long.

Your light doesn’t need defending. Enjoy what’s here, knowing all of it is a gift and none of it is yours. The house, the places, the people we get to love are all on loan.

My children are on loan too. I get to be a steward for them, and in a lot of ways they’re stewards for me. We chose each other for this time together.

I’m not yours, and you’re not mine. But we get to belong to each other while we set each other free.