Today's message, “Why do fight to win conversations?” Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in Bloomberg, February 12, 2015, “I just try to do the good job that I have to the best of my ability, and I really don’t think about whether I’m inspirational. I just do the best I can.”

This was said by the woman who spent her career adamantly fighting for gender equality, reproductive rights and women’s rights.

She didn’t say, “I just try to do mop up the floor with any Justice who disagrees with me.”

I doubt when RBG disagreed with a Justice or lost a decision to the court majority that she ever phone up the others that evening to continue her oral argument after a decision was rendered.

Have you ever found yourself debating your position on a belief you hold true? Do you explain yourself over and over again to try to entice the other person into accepting your perspective?

What are we aiming to prove? 

On the surface level, maybe we believe we are right and therefore stand in truth. Gloria Steinam said, “The truth will set you free but first, it will piss you off!”

But isn’t arguing for the sake of winning justice and truth outside of the court of law, really just a ruse for placating our ego? 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg also said at the 92 Street Y in October of 2014, “It is important to be a good listener and not to be so attached to your own view, that you close your mind to another way.”

But in today’s world where so many of us are unconsciously operate from our ego – and we all know, our ego desperately needs ‘our side’ to win, we’re not listening to one another.

Have you ever heard the old elementary expression this is a January, February conversation now March your way out? 

How do we stay calm and resolved in conversations when the ego is amplified.  How do we tell our ego to march its way out?

One tactic is to recognize that the life source, or what feeds the ego, is fear.

We are not born with fear or ego, this is a learned response to our environment. So in knowing this, think back to your earliest memory of seeing two people argue, what was the argument about? Was there a winner? A person who represented their facts so well, you saw them as the source of truth? 

Or, are facts blurry and there is no winner only a feeling of sadness in seeing two people argue.

How often do conclude that someone has won an argument.  There are seldom any winners when we witness these types of verbal battles, it’s much easier to recognize that all arguments outside the court of law, are futile unless both parties actively listen, because life isn’t binary. 

Every person brings their own subjective experience to each conversation and that’s the beautiful part of discourse, when it is held at the level of expression Ruth Bader Ginsburg would admire.

In Tao Te Ching Lao Tzu states, “He who has extensive knowledge is not a wise man.” 

So is listening to others our way of winning the argument within ourselves and following a new path towards wisdom?

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