When we see choices or behaviours as simply “right” or “wrong”, we end up making decisions based on fear and judgement. But there’s an easier approach, and it’s 800 years old.

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Last year, I was at a conference and I attended a workshop around money mindset.

Now we know resources are tight in the NHS, we know that the cost of living crisis is rising, we also know that we can feel a lot of anxiety around money.

And I run my own organization since I stopped working as a GP.

And so money has become something slightly different to me.

I need it to keep the podcast going.

I need to be able to pay.

All the team members, they help edit the podcast and get the training organized and get us to all the right places on time.

So I've got also responsibilities and things.

And so I thought this would be a really good workshop to go to.

And the thing about money is that it's quite a good indication.

Of your internal state and what your thoughts around yourself are, in fact.

You might want to check out the podcast episode we did recently with Agnes Otzelberger about money.

Now, I don't know much about finances, about accounts, about business accounts.

And I really wanted to do the right things.

So at one point I put my hand up and I asked the workshop facilitator can you just tell me.

Is it right to do this with the cash or is it better to suit this?

And she just stopped me and she said Why are you asking if something is right or something wrong?

I said okay, I've got that wrong.

W what's the most helpful thing?

Should we be thinking of, of organizing our accounts like this, or like this?

And she said again, let's stop talking about helpful or unhelpful.

I said, well, well, what, what am I supposed to ask, then?

She said, The main thing is this, that work or doesn't it work?

And that was one of the moments for me, where I suddenly realized how much I use the phrase right and wrong, helpful, not helpful, wise, unwise.

And all that judgment that's going on in my head about what I'm doing.

Is it good, is it not good?

About what other people are doing, is it wise, is it unwise?

Is it right or wrong?

And when people come to me and tell me about the struggles that they have at work and the toxic workplace often think, oh, that's dreadful, that shouldn't be happening.

That's wrong.

That's not very kind.

And we all do it, don't we?

We like to put people into categories is good, bad, right, wrong, helpful, unhelpful, wise, insightful, not wise.

Maybe that is just me, but it's the way I've been thinking all of my life.

And it started for me as a very young child.

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I've shared before that I've recently been diagnosed with ADHD, but only quite recently as an adult.

And when I look back as a young, pretty bright child with ADHD, I constantly seem to be in trouble.

I didn't want it to be, I was a really good girl.

I wanted to do the right thing, but I so often ended up doing the wrong thing.

I was impulsive or I forgot to do stuff, or I was just chatting a lot.

And so I grew up feeling that I was a bit inappropriate.

I was tactless.

I upset people a lot.

And if I'm honest people.

Only two happy to let me think that because then they could think that they were right.

I also had quite a religious upbringing and there was a, quite a strong narrative.

All right and wrong.

This is the right thing to do.

This is the wrong thing to do, and people talked about sin and judgement and good and evil.

Now, whatever your faith, whatever your belief, when you are constantly laboring under the thought that there was a set way of working that's right and there's a set way of doing things that's wrong and you've got to try your best to do the right thing because you really want to be good, and most of us want to be good, don't we?

We, we're good people, we don't want to upset people, we want to do the right thing.

That sort of judgmental voice of right and wrong can really turn in on us and make us judge ourselves, but also make us judge other people.

So when that workshop facilitator started talking about behavior, that works the behavior that doesn't work, I really felt like a penny had dropped.

And then a couple of weeks later, I came across that wonderful poem from Rumi.

Rumi with a 13th century Islamic poet and scholar, and the first line of one of his poems goes like this.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.

I'll meet you there.

I love to imagine that me and all those people that I've been judging or have been judging me or I think are doing the wrong thing or the right thing, we can just all get together and go to this field and just hang out, and none of it actually matters.

We're just people.

And for me, those two lines are profoundly releasing.

Because it's such a relief not to think of things as right or wrong, and not have to judge other people as right or wrong or good or bad.

Or the sessions is right or wrong.

Because one of the things I've noticed, that's really holding people back from making the decisions they need to make to live a wild and precious life, is it that they feel so guilty, they feel they might make the wrong decision.

They think that asking for what they need to live that ideal working week where they can really thrive is somehow wrong or self-indulgent or selfish, and of course that is wrong.

And I've lost count of the amount of people that said to me, well, I'm not sure about doing a career change or even just crossing my role because what if I make the wrong decision?

But what if there wasn't a wrong decision?

What if there wasn't a right or wrong, there's going to be some stuff that works for you, there's some stuff that doesn't work for you.

And the stuff that works for you might be completely different to the stuff that works for other people.

But there's no value judgment on that.

When I gave up my license to practice, I felt really bad.

I felt I'd let people down.

I was worried I was being selfish, I made the wrong decision.

But that decision, it worked for me.

It won't work for everybody.

It worked for me.

There's no right or wrong, there's no judgement about it.

And when I look back at that little girl with ADHD, working really hard, trying to get to medical school and mucking up quite a bit and being impulsive, I know I didn't mean any harm.

Now, there were things that I was doing that didn't work particularly well, There's things that I did that did work, but it didn't mean that I was wrong.

Because when I believe that I am wrong, that's where shame comes into things.

And operating from a place of shame, that's a really bad place to be.

Critic FM gets turned on really loud and we believe that I'm just not good enough.

I am not enough.

And then we become really, really defensive, so we try and justify ourselves all the time so we can be quite aggressive and argumentative, or we can just withdraw from things or procrastinate or people please, and just live the life that somebody else has designed for us rather than our own.

Or feel really, really miserable because somebody is telling us that this particular thing is right, but we want to go this way, not realizing that there's no right or wrong, there's just something that's going to work for us and there's something that's not going to work for so much.

Or what if they both worked or what if they both didn't work?

But how are we going to know?

Because if we can think of behavior that works or not works versus right and wrong, then we're going to have much, much more freedom to try stuff out.

Because then we can find out what doesn't work.

There's no judgment having done something that didn't work is no better than doing something that did work.

You've just learnt how that didn't work.

Dr.

Edward Jenner who was credited with inventing the smallpox vaccine apparently was asked what it felt like to fail something like 300 times at vaccinating for smallpox?

And he said, I didn't fail 300 times.

I just led 300 ways in which you can't vaccinate for smallpox.

I love that reframe of stuff.

See, this is so, so important.

Because what we believe and the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we've been told the child and through all formative years, well, they influence our thoughts.

Our thought influence our feelings and it all influences what we do, our behavior.

And when we're believing that we're wrong or we're not good enough, or we've done unhelpful things, then we feel guilt and shame and fear, none of which are powerful, none of which are helpful, and are actually very powerful motivators.

We will do anything we can to avoid shame and guilt and fear.

So we'll try our best to do everything that we believe is right, even though that might not work for us.

And who says it's right.

Anyway.

Often, what we believe is right is just tradition.

It can be things like total doctor identity.

This is the way a doctor should work, or this is what a doctor does.

It stops us taking risks or actually following what we really want to do.

And it has occurred to me that if I spend more of my time living in that field that's way outside of right or wrong.

It's just looking at, does that work or doesn't it work?

I'll then fit a lot more freedom.

I'll be able to use my intuition.

And I'll be much more authentic and be able to live my life in the way that makes sense to me.

Now my immediate thought, when the workshop facilitator said to people, there is no right or wrong, there's just behavior that works or doesn't work.

I was like well, well, what about behavior that that's hurting somebody else, you know?

What about somebody that is, that is abusing people in their care?

Well, you can't say that's not wrong.

And she said, well, if she thinks about it, logically that behavior does not work in a society.

That behavior does not protect people.

And it got me thinking about why we're so obsessed with right or wrong.

And I think.

One of the reasons is that we are often driven by our amygdalas, aren't we?

By our threat detection system, and we operate out fair.

So we have these, what I've heard, referred to as SAS instincts, those survival and selfish instincts.

So a lot of our instincts are just to survive, to get food on the table, to reproduce, you know, it's survival of the fittest, isn't it?

So evolution would say that I'm going to try and survive.

But that might mean that I put myself about other people in terms of survival.

We've also got this fear of upsetting people because we all need to belong to a tribe.

And that was very dangerous for us when we lived in caves if we upset people.

So survival does mean being kinds of people.

So kindness is obviously we see as good as the right thing to do.

Then we've got these selfish instincts, you know, we all want to have enough, we wants to be able to feed our family.

Uh, we want to feel good and sometimes that is the expense of somebody else.

So we've got these innate desires that come from sort of our threat that come from survival, that come from being selfish people that need to live in this world.

And I heard that described.

Recently, I think a very old translation of the Bible where they've talked about.

We are all children of wrath.

Yeah, we are children of wrath.

We are often driven by fear by anger, by our amygdalas, by, by being threatened.

Now that behavior doesn't often actually work.

We know it doesn't.

And so that sort of behavior has been badged sinful or wrong.

Because in a society, we can't all be like that.

In society just doesn't work.

And when we're acting out fair that's often when this wrong or unhelpful behavior comes out.

But when I think of all those times when I have been impulsive or maybe acted out of fear, was I trying to be evil?

No, I wasn't trying to be bad or wrong.

It was the only way that made sense to act at that point.

Now did it work?

No, it didn't work.

So it was good.

I got the feedback that I needed to change it.

But the self judgment and shame around it isn't really very helpful.

We also know that there's some behavior that, that universally people like, that makes a society work, that to me anyway, seems to be the best way to behave, seems to be the right way to behave, that's being honest, acting with, with integrity, saying what I mean, meaning what I say, being kind to people, not causing other people undue suffering, and being fair.

Now in my mind that behavior works.

It works for other people.

It works for me.

It means you can get the best out of people.

Those sorts of things are your values.

Your values of justice, not exploiting people, all those things that seem to be hardwired into us.

Basically for me, it's much easier now to think of it as this behavior, that behavior.

It's not working is coming out fair out of my threat response.

And then the ise stuff, the behavior that works is coming from a place of love, from intuition, from my deep in a values, as opposed to that's right.

That's wrong and beating myself up about it because the minute you start to have some self judgment around what you're doing, you become defensive, you start shoulding on yourself, I should, I ought to do that, I don't really want to, it's not too good to work for me, but I should do it.

And then you're in conflict.

You know, that, that thing that you should do, that's the right thing to do doesn't work for you, and someone somewhere has badged it right or wrong, and then you run a conundrum, aren't you?

So for me, it's quite difficult to know if something is right or wrong unless I truly understand myself.

And the site understand what my core values are, what makes me tick, and just releasing myself from this idea of rightdoing and wrongdoing has been transformative for me.

Now, I am not saying that I'm going to go around breaking the law or doing despicable things.

There are some things that we know do not work and that's why there are laws around it, and it's to protect people who are innocent it's to make sure that everybody can thrive in this world.

So I wouldn't go as far as to say you can never say anything is wrong, but we label Farsi much as right and as wrong, as wise, unwise, helpful, or unhelpful.

And using this thing about sitting in the field beyond rightdoing and wrongdoing, that s not an excuse to trample over everybody else's feelings and be totally selfish and destroy the planet.

But I'm really sick of hearing people preaching right and wrong to me, who obviously are miserable themselves and not living what they're actually talking about.

And another mistake we can make is to think that, well, if it's something that's going to work, it's going to be really easy, and if it's not, it's going to be really difficult.

Often, actually doing the thing that we know is going to work long-term is the really difficult thing to do, and gets judgment from other people.

But I've come to see that judgment., That's their problem, that's the way that they see the world.

And it's about what would be right or wrong for them or work or not work.

And it's much more about what would work or not work for them.

And if I give you a concrete example, One of the things that seems to be like the worst sin anyone can commit in healthcare is dumping on colleagues.

That is wrong, we shouldn't do it, right?

Well on the face of it, dumping on colleagues sounds really selfish.

It sounds like it's not a behavior that's very helpful and it certainly sounds like it's not going to work.

But if we don't leave stuff for our colleagues and it means that we're constantly at work for five hours extra every single day, we have eventually burn out.

And we don't ever delegate to anybody else because our worry about dumping on colleagues.

And this thing that we can never, ever leave anything on done, well, in the long term it's going to be much, much worse for them.

So actually sometimes dumping on colleagues might work.

The problem here is the word dumping.

Isn't it?

That's such a judgment filled word.

That implies that it's the wrong thing to do.

I guess what I'm getting at is we need to stop saying shit or ort.

We could change that to kid.

I could do that.

I don't have to.

I could choose to do that if I want to, if that's going to work for me and for you.

But what about if it lets me, but not for you?

Well, that's when you need to start negotiating, that is when, if we come at each other with right and wrong, we're never going to come to a conclusion that's going to be helpful for anybody.

That is why I think Rumi says that let's go and start field of working and not working behavior that works, the behavior that doesn't.

Beyond wrongdoing, beyond rightdoing, let's just talk about what's going to work for everybody.

And get over who's right and who is wrong.

And for me, I'm just going to keep doing stuff that's working.

If it's working for me and I'm really thriving and the people around me are thriving, it's not destroying the planet and it's not hurting other people, for me that works.

So the next time you have some self doubt, self judgment, self criticism, I don't know the right thing to do, what should I do, is this right or wrong?

Let's just ditch that.

Ask yourself the question is that going to work or is it not going to work, and how can I find out?

And then maybe we can all just get ourselves to that field that's out beyond rightdoing and beyond wrongdoing.

I'll see you there.