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How I Managed to Win Every Argument

How Opening and Closing Your Own Self Can Win Anything

By Jason M.Published 6 years ago 3 min read
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The first thing you should always know is that nobody really wants to argue. It’s tiring, it gets you angry, and it’s very disappointing when neither parties’ points are taken into full consideration. That being said, both parties usually want to win the argument to prove their points and intelligence or to assert their dominance. But what’s the point of all of this?

After years of living watching the teenager to young adult stage of growth through my brother, I found myself wondering if I was as arrogant as him. Seeing him argue with my parents about the most meaningless of stuff ranging from why the music is too loud all the way to if he can go out with his girlfriend at midnight made me realize just how meager both of their arguments really were. I saw them both falter to fallacies and to many repeated points in their arguments. I then was able to project the image of him arguing to just how I was whenever I argued with my parents and sometimes even my friends. A conclusion was realized within me. To win the argument is simple. You have to close your mouth and open your mind.

Obviously this doesn’t sound like the ideal solution to winning an argument. What we all want is for our words to trump over our opponents. We want them to understand that what they were saying is wrong, and what we were saying is right. But this does just that. We have to open our minds to be able to hear what they have to say because we’re usually attributing the errors in miscommunication to their faults, when really it usually is ours as well. We also have to close our mouths when we’re arguing, not only because the silence can disturb the other parties, but also because the silence would allow us to better hear what they have to say. Instead of filling the air with pointless noise and rambling, why not try being silent?

With that comes admitting defeat. If you start to feel the argument drag out and start to become pointless, close your mouth and stop arguing, but also open your mind that your point is still valid but you can accept theirs can coexist alongside yours. Countless times I have bitten my tongue when my friend and I had argued about who’s the better basketball player or when we’ve argued about liberal politics. Usually, topics like those are too one-sided that there can really be only one winner, but I’ve managed to let my friend’s arguments coincide with mine. One time, we were arguing about how one of our teachers was, in my opinion, a racist. My friend and I went a long time discussing this, and we both had our own biases in question when we were talking about this. He really liked the teacher since he was able to agree with most of his ideologies, while I, a minority, wasn’t able to see eye to eye with many of the things the teacher had brought up. Because of this, the argument was going nowhere, so I decided to listen and to stop talking. I soon realized that both of our biases and our own personal attributions towards the teacher were our downfall in allowing for us to come to a reasonable conclusion. Ignoring the need to argue and allowing myself to admit defeat let us both end the argument and continue our day on a regular schedule.

Of course, none of this is easier than it sounds. I really wasn’t able to listen to my own advice until getting into a complex yet pointless argument with my friend over where we were going to hang out. Over time, I was able to realize that finishing arguments quickly and losing was better than dragging it out, getting angry at each other, and coming to a standstill where neither party is correct.

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About the Creator

Jason M.

Hi! I’m an 18 year old college boy who doesn’t know what he’s doing here. Hope you enjoy my content 💞

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