Don't try to win the argument
Why finding the truth matters more than proving your point
Not long ago I was walking to get coffee and overheard a man talking to his colleague. He looked defeated. Shoulders slumped, face heavy.
And he said the line I’ve heard so many times:
“I really did everything I could do.”
You know that sentence. It usually appears at one specific moment in life:
Right after something has gone badly wrong.
We use it after a failed deal, a breakup, a lost job, a project that collapsed:
“I did everything right.”
“I did everything I could at the time.”
There’s even that famous story about the Nokia CEO supposedly saying, after the Microsoft deal:
“We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost.”
Whether or not he actually said those words, the mindset behind it is very real. And I want to challenge that mindset directly.
If you did everything right… why did you fail?
Let’s take the sentence seriously for a moment.
“I did everything right and it still failed.”
If that’s true, two things follow:
You weren’t the cause of the failure.
Something “out there” was the cause—the market, the timing, the other person, the economy, “life”.
In other words, built into that sentence is a quiet assumption:
“It wasn’t me. I was right. Something else was wrong.”
It can feel noble to say “I did my best”, especially if you’re exhausted and hurting. Sometimes it’s even true that the odds were stacked against you.
But as a habitual lens on life, “I did everything right” is dangerous. Because if you really believe you were perfect and the world randomly punished you anyway…
Where exactly do you go from there?
What do you change next time?
Who has any power in your story: you, or the environment?
If the answer is always “the environment”, then you’ve handed over the steering wheel of your life.
The people who get stronger vs. the people who don’t
There’s a huge difference between:
Taking blame for everything (which is unhealthy and extreme), and
Honestly locating your part in what happened.
I’m not talking about martyrdom:
“Fine, it’s all my fault, I’ll take the fall.”
That’s still drama. That’s still performance.
What I’m talking about is much more sober and powerful:
“Something went wrong here. What, specifically, was my contribution?
Where did my behaviour, my choices, my blind spots play a role?”
Because the moment you can say:
“I was too slow to respond.”
“I avoided that difficult conversation.”
“I didn’t prepare as thoroughly as I told myself I did.”
“I dismissed their feedback.”
… you’ve just found a lever you can actually pull next time.
And that is the real divide between people who get stronger in life and people who stay stuck and bitter:
One group is always looking for their piece of the cause.
The other group is always looking for someone or something else to blame.
The fastest route to real failure: blame
Blame feels satisfying in the moment. It protects the ego. It makes you “right”.
But it has one lethal side effect:
When everything is someone else’s fault, nothing is within your control.
If the client was unreasonable, the market was unfair, your ex was crazy, your boss is an idiot, your colleagues are useless, then you’ve built a world in which your results depend entirely on forces you don’t control.
That’s not strength. That’s helplessness dressed up as victimhood. It’s also the opposite of how anything great is built.
Think about startups and tech companies. Their entire operating philosophy is:
Build → ship → watch it fail in some way →
Ask what we did that didn’t work → change → ship again.
We call this iteration, as if it’s a fancy innovation concept. But under the hood, it’s the same basic mental move:
“We could have done something better. Let’s find what that was.”
Same at home in your kitchen. The “perfect roast turkey” doesn’t appear on your first try. It’s:
“Last time it was too dry.”
“I put it in too long.”
“The heat was off.”
Each time, you’re owning your part and tweaking it. And over time, you go from “that didn’t really work” to “oh wow, this is actually amazing.”
No iteration is possible if your story is always:
“We did everything right, and the universe is just unfair.”
Being “at cause” vs. at the mercy of the elements
Life will always contain things you cannot control: other people, markets, illnesses, wars, random misfortune.
But there’s a deep power in walking through life with this stance:
“Whatever happens, I will look for my part and I will refine that.”
It doesn’t mean you excuse bad behaviour from others. It doesn’t mean you say “it’s all my fault.” It means you refuse to give away your last piece of power: your ability to respond, learn, and change.
That mindset creates a very different feeling inside you:
You stop seeing yourself as a leaf in the wind.
You become someone who is at cause in their own life, not simply at the mercy of the elements.
You walk into the next chapter knowing, “My success or failure has a lot to do with me. And that’s good news.”
The hardest (and most useful) skill: looking for the truth in what they say
There’s another layer to this, and it shows up in conflict.
Imagine an argument (at home, at work, anywhere). One person is clearly on the defensive: they’re raising their voice, justifying, explaining, insisting they did “nothing wrong.”
Maybe that person is you. Maybe it’s them. In those moments, here’s a practice I try to live by:
Don’t just listen to their words. Look for the truth inside their words.
Not everything coming at you will be true. Some of it will be projection, fear, stress, old wounds.
But almost always, if you really listen, there’s at least one sentence that is true, even if it’s uncomfortable.
And if you can find that sentence, and own your part in it, you unlock a special kind of power.
The airport lift story
Recently I had a small but vivid reminder of this.
I was at an airport, impatient, rushing. A woman and her daughter were trying to get into the lift with me, and in my hurry I made a snappy comment to move them along.
She reacted hard. Way more aggressively than the situation really warranted. Instantly defensive, armour up.
In that moment I had a choice:
I could match her energy, justify myself, go into “I didn’t do anything wrong, she’s overreacting”.
Or I could pause and apply my own rule: look for the truth in what she’s saying.
And the simple truth was:
My reaction wasn’t very nice.
So I told her that. I agreed. I didn’t grovel, I didn’t collapse. I just acknowledged the obvious truth in her complaint: “You’re right, that wasn’t very nice of me.”
You could almost watch the fight drain out of her. Her body language softened. Her tone changed. She went from hostile to friendly in seconds.
Why? Because the moment you willingly own your part, there’s nothing left to fight about. The whole situation could have turned ugly over something tiny. Instead, it flipped completely, just because I chose truth over ego.
This isn’t about taking the fall. It’s about taking the wheel.
Let me be very clear:
This is not about always being the one to “take the fall”.
It’s not about letting other people off the hook.
It’s not about accepting abuse or pretending other people’s behaviour is fine.
It’s about something much more selfish, and I mean that in a good way:
You do this for your own empowerment.
You look for your part in what went wrong because:
That’s where your leverage is.
That’s where your growth lives.
That’s how you make sure you don’t repeat the same pattern again and again.
The person who refuses to reflect, who always insists “I did everything right, it’s all on you,” might look stronger in the moment. They might “win” that argument. They might walk away feeling victorious.
But they walk away weaker, because their world, their outcomes, are now less within their own control. Meanwhile, you walk away with a clearer sense of:
What you did,
What you’ll do differently, and
How you’ll handle the next round better.
Over time, that difference compounds.
A simple rule to carry into your next hard day
So here’s the rule I try to live by, and the one I want to leave you with:
Whenever something goes wrong, look first for your part in it; not to blame yourself, but to reclaim your power.
And when someone brings you criticism, anger, or hurt:
Don’t just react to how they say it. Look for the truth in what they’re saying.
You will not always get it perfect. Neither do I.
But if you keep leaning in this direction, owning your slice of cause, iterating like a startup founder, listening for truth even when it stings, you’ll find that:
Business gets better,
Relationships get deeper,
And life, as a whole, becomes something you’re actively shaping, not just surviving.
That’s the real opposite of “we did everything right but somehow we lost.”
It’s: “We didn’t do everything right. But we’re learning. And next time, we’re going to do it better.”
Now, make it rAIn, KG