Great idea! Instead of approaching it as “your beliefs are wrong, here is why” (Which will never work), you can simply start asking them questions about their beliefs! If you simply act genuinely curious, you won’t raise the ego defenses.

And they’ll either realize that their beliefs are wrong, or they will stick to their beliefs. But in that case you will understand their beliefs better and so feel less angry. Win/win!

Meg, let’s say you found someone who believes kicking puppies is the right thing to do (but doesn’t take any action on that), and you think they don’t have the right to believe that. What are you going to do about it?

You can’t control other people’s beliefs. You might try forcing them to take therapy or something, but you can’t help someone who doesn’t want help. In fact, by trying to convince someone their beliefs are wrong, you only make them hold those beliefs stronger. (I saw a study somewhere, can’t remember where, with Democrats and Republicans. At first, about 30% of the Republicans were hard-set in their beliefs, the rest were luke-warm. Then they presented good logical arguments to them as to why some Republican policies are bad. At the end of the study, about 70% of the Republicans were hard-set in their beliefs. In other words, hearing arguments against their beliefs only made those beliefs stronger.

Shadowart, you make a great point. Sometimes we enter a moral grey territory there, where we can’t really avoid forcing beliefs onto one another. A great example would be someone wanting to cut down a tree, and someone resisting.

I don’t have a be-all and end-all answer there . But I sure know that understanding others will often stop me from feeling bad about things I don’t control.

@Danman:

Good quote. Thanks for sharing it!