Striving Towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

When you fight to be right, you lose your chance to be understood.

Most of us confuse understanding with agreement.

When someone disagrees with us, it feels personal—like rejection. So we push harder, explain louder, convinced that if they truly understood us, they’d agree.

But that’s not connection. That’s control. And control pushes understanding further away.

Here’s what shifts everything: separate understanding from agreement.

You can understand someone’s perspective without sharing it. You can respect their view without abandoning your own. You can make room for difference without losing your convictions.

This isn’t weakness—it’s actually what makes you more credible. It transforms arguments into conversations and defenses into dialogue.

Being understood doesn’t mean compromising what matters to you. It means caring enough to see the world through someone else’s eyes, even briefly.

And here’s what happens when people feel truly seen: they start listening back.

What to do:

1. Think of one conversation that still feels tense or stuck.
2. Instead of trying to convince them, ask: “Help me understand how you’re seeing this.”
3. Listen until they say, “Yes, that’s right”—meaning you’ve actually captured their view, not your version of it.
4. Then share your perspective.

You might not end up agreeing. But you’ll see each other more clearly.

And that’s what actually moves things forward.