“I’d Rather Be Right Than Happy” Identity – A New Solution

Excerpted from Transform Your Life Instantly: Mental Erasers Make Your Mind Work for You Instead of Against You, 2005, Adele Tartaglia

Science has told us that expectations based on memories are strong contributing elements in creating the future events of our lives.

If we choose to be right instead of choosing to learn something from an event by distrusting that there is always a purpose our minds created something, that there is only balance and order in the universe, we are attracting more of the same by perpetuating the endless cycle of repetitive life patterns.

When we refuse to give new experiences or new solutions the benefit of the doubt, we are missing an occurrence of something new of a higher order that may change the direction of our lives.

The “I’d rather be right than happy” attitudinal stance in life seems at first like conceit or egoism when it actually stems from the complete opposite as do most behaviors overtly appearing like self aggrandizement. All are based on deep insecurities, worthiness issues, self doubt, and self abnegation.

Let’s look at a case history to demonstrate this point. In this instance all of the above demeaning viewpoints about self are present along with the instinct for self preservation.

Let’s take a child with a physically and psychologically imposing rageaholic parent. Building himself up by using constant denigration of those around him, bullying, controlling, frightening, guilting, and shaming are his tools of self preservation learned at the knee of his grandfather and mother.

As he passes down this intergenerational dysfunctional program, now become coping mechanism, his family is so terrified of him and his violent temper that each develops their own mechanisms of self protection and survival in the threatening environment.

Mom shuts down emotionally when she can’t take the verbal abuse anymore, goes unconscious and lives in denial of the situation the entire marriage.

The older child, hoping to get revenge some day grows up meaner than the father by modeling after his abuser. He becomes an even worse rageaholic which is the case when an addictive behavior gets passed down to the next generation without therapeutic intervention to heal the core issues. The real self, and even the personality, of this child is lost for life by imitating the abusive father without any hope of recovering his authentic self unless healing of the underlying anger, fear, pain, self hate, and rejection is undertaken.

The younger child, a sickly passive people pleaser, also with no identity of her own, watches the combative relationship of her father and brother and decides early in life never to confront authority figures…literally for fear of her life. This message was stated by mother as she tried to prevent the out of control father from going too far in his punishments of the son.

This child devises her own mechanisms for survival, one of which is to think fast and talk even faster hoping to restore her father to sanity during his rages so that he doesn’t attack her or the rest of the family. She has prided herself on her mental capacities to compensate for the belief she lacked any other value.

She speaks the truth to him and appreciates from an early age that he is not himself when he is acting out and suffers as much from his maladaptive behavior as the family he dearly loves. As the father he wants to protect his family from the dangers of a world full of thieves, cheaters, and liars as he often tells them. Despite the fact that this brilliant man has to accept that he cannot accomplish this feat since he cannot protect his family from his own dysfunction, he feels particularly loved and supported by this child which his own wounded ego desperately needs.

In the process of learning the art of out thinking and out talking her father so he doesn’t kill her in an attack of anger, she develops a belief that the way to survive in life rather than confrontation, opposition, or physical encounters, is the be “right” to learn more, know more, and to always come up with wise sane solutions to problems she can use to dissuade those out of control from staying locked emotional outrages at the expense of rationality.

The father also has the same belief based on his insecurity that he must be “right” and that everyone else is too stupid to be alive. So there is modeling going on too.

It works for her as a child when she can talk him down in behalf of the rest of the family. She then assumes the same identity and position of reasoning peace maker for her brother when he acts out as an adult becoming recognized as the only person who can control him.

Our childhood experiences and assumptions about the authority figures in our lives get projected onto every other authority figure we encounter, or perceive in that role, until we intercede and remove the program. Having an authority figure who was abusive, the daughter projects this identity on to future authority figures, i.e., her husbands.

Unresolved, the girl who never confronted anyone or took care of herself becomes a woman terrified of confrontation and available for abuse of all kinds from the authority figures in her life.
The Law of Attraction in operation is evidenced by her attracting a husband who unbeknownst to her was a criminal who embezzled all the money she made in a multi-million dollar business and then framed her for his crimes in a seven year law suit. Having no money, she was forced to defend herself in court for much of the time against her ex-husband’s numerous unscrupulous attorneys. Her ability to make reasonable assumptions and find solutions served her well and she finally stood up for herself in order to be free so she could finish raising her children.

Later in a very traumatic life, some part of her mind expands her life long goal to defend humanity and takes up the cause confronting and speaking the truth as she sees it against “assumed” authority figures; Corporate America and the government both of whom she sees as abusing, deceiving, manipulating and enslaving the American people by destroying their financial stability and denying them their rights. She is avid in her public defenses with letters to the Whitehouse and political blogging and speeches.

She has successfully transferred her anger, pain, and feelings of injustice from father to the Old Boys network that control the country. She continues to try to out think the offenders by applying research, reasoning and logical consequences to their disreputable and criminal machinations and then confronts them. But this does not make her feel better about a wasted life nor does it satisfy her need for justice. Modeling again after her father the Judge.

Here’s how this identity out pictures in her life. She obviously has done enough personal work to feel courageous enough to fight the good fight for those who can’t and/or suffered enough at the hands of authority to care more about justice than the consequences. [Much of her guilt and feelings of failure have been born of her inability as a child to protect her family from her father and later to protect her own children from him.]

But here’s the problem she has created. By labeling big business criminals who sell inferior products with fraudulent advertising and misrepresentation, and manipulate the economy, she sets herself up to continually experience problems with defective products, misrepresentation, errors in her accounts, refusal to refund money, etc.

Further, by using her survival mechanism to out think and out talk them with reasonable argument, and being successful doing it, she has become locked into her identity of “I’d rather the right than happy.” All around her the rest of the country is telling stories of how they have experienced the same things she has but they have chosen to have a life instead of defending themselves and others against big business.

Whereas, completely frustrated, she is spending much of her valuable time not accomplishing her vocational goals but fighting for justice for citizens and handling problems her own beliefs and attitudes have created for her. [Incidentally, her attorney father spent years fighting everyone from the government, business, and the medical profession over their inferior abilities and gross wrongdoings.]

The Solution

She has to delete from all levels of consciousness, this “I’d rather be right than happy” identity and its logical extension from her childhood set up…."I have to be right or I could get killed.”

[As always the universe's laws of resonance continue to bring her clients who have the same beliefs and the same identities, with their own variety of coping mechanisms. Having learned from her own erroneous childhood assumptions, she can now assist them through the process of freedom from this subliminal identity pattern.]

Some of the erroneous beliefs supporting and keeping these identities in place will be deleted while taking out the identities themselves, and some will have to be deleted separately. Restructured oppositional programs have to be installed and integrated in the subconscious mind to replace the deletions.

Forgiveness and releasement protocols will free the body mind system from negative repressed energies. All associated repetitive behaviors and thinking patterns have to be deleted and rescripted as well. Any denial and projection processes on automatic create must be deleted and reprogrammed separately.

This may sound like years of work but can be done in several sessions using new restructuring technologies that are immediately and permanently effective. Restructuring Therapy will accomplish this work in a short period of time versus spending years in psychotherapy.

Once done, the ramifications of this identity’s viewpoints on life will fall by the wayside never to be experienced by her again and she can enjoy a higher quality of life than she has yet to experience.