the zurkie show - life gets easier when you admit you’re wrong

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

if you focus on only being right, you never challenge your perspective.you can't rebuild something that isn't broken.and if you feel isolated in your relationships, upset at yourself and disappointed in everything...maybe admitting your wrong is the first step to feeling better.sending you all lots of love and peaaaaaaaace!https://linktr.ee/thezurkieshow

One thing you never want to hear from somebody in an argument is the following phrase. I may not always be right, but I'm never wrong. This is a phrase that terrorized one of my relationships in high school. And I realized very quickly that no matter the grievance I had, no matter the problem, no matter how hurt I felt, the person I was with was never going to admit that anything was wrong. because they might not be right, but they're never wrong. I think that we have an issue globally with people not being able to admit when they are wrong. And I am a part of the problem.

Hello, I'm the first one to say, it is very difficult for me sometimes to admit when I am wrong. I've become a little bit better with it, but it hurts the ego. It hurts when you in your mind have a set list of beliefs. You have a set identity. You have evidence to support the fact that you are right and you think you are right all of the time. And of course you would do that because you want to be right. You want to feel the confidence of being able to tell somebody your opinion or how you feel.

But it's funny. When we become thrown into an argument, oftentimes, instead of trying to find common ground, the initial inclination is to be right. And with that, you don't listen. Everything is framed in a lens of how do I feel? What did this person do to me? How can I make them pay?

Instead of, what is the root of this? Why are we arguing? What has led to the argument? I think part of that is because it's hard to admit that you have some kind of role in any and probably every argument in your life. Anything that happened to you that was wrongful, no matter how innocent you were in the situation, there was something that you had to take accountability for at the end of the day. And part of becoming an adult is realizing even when you try to, you try to, you know, to do your best and you try to live life in a way that is not problematic, that doesn't hurt other people, you are not a perfect human being and you will somehow in some way end up harming someone.

Whether that's on purpose, which I hope it's not, or indirectly, you will have a moment where you do something, somebody feels a certain type of way, it's out of your control, and you'll still have to take accountability for it. And it hurts for you to hear you to hear someone interpret your actions in the way that you do things or the way you feel about them as malicious, as bad, as wrong. But that is out of our control, unfortunately. We can control whether, you know, we help a grandma bopcha across the street or if we, you know, shove her on the ground. You have that control, all right? There's a guilty conscious of you that wants to shove the grandma. No, I'm kidding. Of course not.

What? Um, moving on. No, I'm trolling. But there's always a point where you have to kind of come to terms of the fact that in arguments, in disagreements, there is no winning. There is no winning. It's not a game. There is no victory royale banner that will pop up in front of your conversation when you give a crazy comeback.

That's actually a dig at somebody's past, right? because they were vulnerable enough to share with you some of the trauma they went through, and you decide to flip it and use it as something against them. You don't get points for that. And I think a lot of the advice that I've seen when I was in really tough situations with partners, with girlfriends, with friends, a lot of it was like you need to win at this relationship. And if you're losing, you're a loser. terrible framework.

But it's one that works with our ego because we don't want to lose. And it's funny because we will sometimes even sacrifice people just to be right, just to think in our minds we did something big when in reality it could have just been worked out with a conversation and finding common ground. Hey, when you ignore me, when we're having a discussion sometimes, I get offended by that. Oh, I had no idea that I even do that. Thank you for bringing it up instead of, well, you know, you offend me when we're having a conversation.

You ignore me. Wow, I can't even believe that you would think I would ignore you. You know, this is over. This is done. Whatever. I don't care anymore. It's just very easy to be combative, especially now, right? Everything is emotionally charged.

We thrive off negative emotions as a society nowadays. Like, we love being pent up. when somebody cuts you off in traffic, the first inclination is not to be like, all right, well, whatever, you know, they have to get somewhere. It's to curse at them. It's to be like, what an idiot driver, because everyone else on the road is terrible at driving except for you. And I'm saying that because that's how I think.

I'm not even going to lie. I'd be on the road speeding and being like, why is this person going 45 and a 45? Everyone knows you're supposed to go 65 here. It's like, what are we doing? It's the ego. And I do think that having this pride in being right all of the time will make you lose out on a lot of growth. Because you grow from mistakes. You grow from having your perspective challenged over and over and over again.

You don't grow from just being around the same people that will be like, you're right. He was a bad guy. He was terrible for you. And I was telling you that from the start. you grow from somebody being like I think he was really good for you maybe your values were different and I understand why you guys broke up

but I think you should still have a conversation with him and you should still get closure because if you don't it's going to eat at you alive for the rest of your life and those are the perspectives and the conversations that are very difficult to have because again you are confronting the side of you that wants to be right

And of course if, you know, you have to admit and kind of like secede a little bit and be like, ooh, that was messed up of me. I shouldn't have done that. It's going to hurt. It's going to hurt. But you know what? I may not always be right, but I'm never wrong. What if you are wrong, though? And you know you are. What if you're in an argument right now? You and your bestie, you and your partner are. texting less. There's this weird tension. And you know that in your mind you have the upper hand for whatever reason, but another part of you is like, this is not right. I don't like this. Or maybe you don't care. I think you need to figure out how you feel about it. Because if you keep getting into arguments with somebody and you keep just like budding heads all, you know, you need to figure out how you feel about it. all the time. And even though you communicate, even though you talk, even though you try to make things work, nothing changes and you just continue to have these issues and they present themselves

over and over and over again, is that something worth keeping? You know, people aren't meant to add stress to your life. I think we've been convinced that that's just what, you know, part of what happens, right? When you get a relationship, when you get a good friend group, that you will have conflict and you will have stress and I think you will have disagreement 100% but people aren't meant to stress you out you're not meant to stay up at night not being able to fall asleep looking at the ceiling and at the clock it's 3 a.m. because you keep thinking about somebody else's issues you keep thinking about how will our conversation go if I bring this up and I'm afraid to that is not a normal thing and no matter how many

gurus or people you see telling you that there is some kind of beauty and the toxicity of the back and forth and the ups and downs of relationships, I do think they're supposed to trend upward. If all your feeling is like these super, super highs and these just downward lows, and there isn't like a consistent kind of swim upstream, you are still stagnating. You are still in the same place. It's up and down. It's up and down. But again, it's moving like a sine wave across one axis. It's not going up. There's no slope to it. It's just, yay. Oh my gosh. We're good. We're happy. Oh, we're going to see each other. It's going to be great. Why am I with this person? Oh, no, no. It's awesome. It's great. It's great. Do I deserve better? That I don't think is normal. I might be wrong, though. Hey, I might be wrong.

That's my observation. I might be completely wrong on that. And I'm not saying that the person you're with or the friends you have right now, if they make you feel that way, that it's cooked and you're done and you got to break up and everything. I'm just saying that maybe it's worth admitting to yourself, we need to have some kind of goal for this relationship. Like, this needs to move in some kind of way. Because if I'm not going to spend the rest of my life stagnating. I need to challenge myself.

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Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. What if this is you? What if you know that you are an emotional wreck? And the only way to keep somebody in your life is by promising over and over again, I think you have to admit that you're wrong. You promising them that things are going to change without any kind of that. action. I'm sorry, but people notice. People noticed. They noticed in me that I was all talk. Yeah, I'm going to be better. I'm going to commit more to the friendship. I've just been super busy,

man. No, you weren't super busy. You and I both know that. You don't care. It does not matter to you, this relationship, this friendship, don't feel guilty about it. Do something about it. Find a way to embrace these feelings and recognize that maybe the way that you're treating somebody else is wrong.

It's not right. And two things can be true. This is kind of the climax, I guess. Well, no, not the climax. The conclusion of relationships is that and arguments, sorry, is that nobody is in the right all of the time. If not ever, every perspective is valid to some point.

Every perspective also is flawed. There's always going to be nuance. Somebody could view you being, you know, emotionally avoidant a little bit because you've had past experiences that were a little bit weird with people in your family or whatever. We won't get into it, but let's just say you don't like being touched. You don't like just going up and saying hello to people. You're a little more introverted. Somebody could look at that as like, oh, you're deliberately doing that to hurt me, to not engage with me.

And you could be deliberately doing that. But it's not to hurt them. It's to protect yourself. And in the process, you're hurting them. Two perspectives are true because from the person that you're hurting, right? They view it as one way. And from your perspective, you don't see it that way. And you can argue and butt heads or you can admit, you know what? Now that you explain your perspective, I see it. You also have to see mine. And we have to find some kind of in-between so that both of us are

satisfied. Maybe I'll tell you when I'm shy. I'll just be open. I'll just be like, hey, I don't know if I really want to go to this party. I don't know if I really want to hold your hand in public. It's nothing against you. I promise you that. And you have to trust me. And this is, I guess, the baseline, too, of any relationship, any friendship, is you have to have trust. Source, trust me, bro. Literally, that is the source of your relationship is trust.

If you don't have that, if you're losing confidence, it is going to erode everything you have. And there's a good chance it will be over soon. Trust is a very difficult thing. because everyone's trust threshold is different. Some people trust very quickly, and then they are let down. Other people keep their guard up. I'm someone who keeps my guard up. I really do not trust people right away.

I like to give the benefit of the doubt, but I won't lie to you, Zerke's show. There is a part of me that is cynical when somebody is promising me a lot of things telling me they're going to be better. or being like, yo, bro, we got to lock in. 2026, we got to lock in. Get away from me. Stop. The only thing you're locking, okay, is your room, all right, at 12 a.m. to 5 a.m. And I don't know what's going on there, but there is no lock in.

But that is in full transparency because I don't trust myself. I don't trust myself. That's why I do not tell people things I'm going to do unless I am like pretty certain I will do them and even the people that I tell very limited like probably my parents because I have let myself down a lot I have I have let myself down more times than I can say I'm proud of myself and I held it against myself for a long time I would be very very self-sabotaging and I would just remind myself of all the things I promised myself I would do and then I didn't do instead of just acting, instead of just being like, okay, man, I messed up studying for this exam.

Let's just go. Let's flunk it, whatever, and let's lock in on the next one. Instead, I would keep this baggage in this, you know, in cartoons when they have like floating rain clouds. Like, you know, imagine this cloud is like just raining on me and I'm walking around being like, oh, I'm such a bad person. That's just, that was my entire life. and it took me admitting that I was wrong doing that in order to improve at all. I didn't look at that perspective and be like, I'm such, oh, wow, I can't believe I ever thought that way.

I can't believe I'm such a loser for thinking. No, I just kind of looked at it and I was like having this imaginary, you know, whimsical sadness cloud hanging over me is not helping. it's it's making my inner critic really happy but it's not helping it's not moving the needle forward and anything i want to do it's not making me more social it's not making me happier it's not making me happier it's not making me go to the gym it's not making me read more write more watch good movies listen to good music none of that it's going to keep me miserable so let me admit that i am wrong in my perspective because this is the only thing i've known to do for my entire life and

let me try the opposite, which is embracing myself. All right. I messed up. I screwed this up. Okay. What can I learn that I need to stop having a phone break in between everything I do. Like my walk from the kitchen to my bedroom does not need to have a pre-departure phone break, take the walk, and then before I lay in my bed, a pre-bed phone break. I don't need that. That is keeping me in the pit. Okay, let me take away the phone. Let me just enjoy the walk to my bedroom.

Great. Okay, we've made progress. These internal conflicts and these internal arguments that you're always having with yourself, if you cannot admit that you are wrong and that you might not have the best mindset, you might not be doing things that are in alignment with helping you. You might be actually ruining your own life by keeping yourself in the muck, keeping yourself tied down. You have this balloon of hope and this balloon of progress that you could float up. You know, they have the Albuquerque Balloon Festival.

One day I'll go to it. But like, you could float up and see. see your entire life from a different perspective, but instead, you are afraid to cut the rope. You're afraid to let yourself go up and just not be so miserable. Because you don't want to be wrong. Because you don't want to admit to yourself that your entire life of suffering was for nothing. And again, that is just a bad perspective. Because it was for something.

All of those terrible dates and the terrible people that caused you harm. in your life. You didn't deserve it, but you are able to learn from it. And that is your option. You have two options. You either embrace the things that happened to you and you say, it's part of me now, but it does not define me, or you let all of the things, all of the people, all of the hurt, all of the pain sit on the back of your life as a backpack of something you carry around everywhere. And I don't know about you. I'm sure when you had a pretty heavy backpack in school or you were on a hike and you started feeling the backpack, you can walk around with it for a certain amount of time. And then after a moment, you just, you get bogged down.

Your back hurts. Your leg is giving out. Your knees are doing the stanky leg. And you're just like, dude, no duh, you're miserable. I might not be right, but I'm never wrong. Or maybe you are right. maybe everything I've said is not going to help you. And maybe you know what?

Your internal monologue that convinces you every single day that you are cooked and you are a loser, maybe it is right. Or maybe it's just a perspective. Maybe it's just a compound of all of the moments of your life where you wanted to do something for yourself and you couldn't. maybe it's a compound of all the times you felt lonely and you sought out attention from people who did not care about you maybe it's a compound of all the bad decisions that at the moment you thought were right because that is all you knew and if that's the case then why wouldn't you entertain a different one because it's uncomfortable because it hurts your ego because the

idea that this reality that you have shaped, this beautiful sphere of existence, it could have been actually a different color, a different element, and it could feel a lot better. It could have a lot more in it. And that is something that I think time and time again keeps people rooted in bad habits, keeps people angry, keeps people arguing for the entirety of their life. And Zerke's show, I don't know about you. I don't know how long I have here. But if there is one thing that is for certain, I don't want to spend my life around people that are miserable, that choose to be miserable, I want to spend my people, spend my people, that sounded crazy coming from me spend my people what does that mean what i don't want to spend time

with people who aren't going to uplift me who aren't going to look at the silver lining and who aren't going to just enjoy what we have while we can likewise i am not going to spend a life this body with a person who is cynical, who sees the worst in the world, because that is all they consume and that's all they believe, who does not have any ounce of accountability for his own emotions, for his own decisions. I want to spend my life with somebody that I'd be proud of. And that means someone who recognizes that they can be wrong. that maybe they're not right. Maybe there isn't something as right and wrong,

and it's just experience, and it's just perspective, and everything is nuanced, and there isn't just a clear defined path for everything, and there isn't just this concrete, this is how it is, because it is how it is, because there is so much evidence against that, I would rather work with myself in a way

that would be fruitful to me, me because I am not living this life for anybody else. I am not doing these things for anyone else's approval. I just want to admit that I might be wrong and that is okay because I will learn from it. Zirky Show. Today's episode of the Zirky Show was filmed in Cripple Creek, Colorado, and it is literally peak. I mean, there's a lot of peaks. You get me? I love Colorado. I love Cripple Creek. It is it is cold, but if you ever have a chance to go to Colorado, do it. It is such a beautiful state with beautiful people. Did you know that the Zerky Show is everywhere you go?

That is correct. You can watch it. You can scroll. You can stream it. The choice is yours if you want to tap in. These are the best ways to tap in. Do the things that bring you joy and don't skip breakfast. You know, I'm somebody that when I moved out of the house, I started just not eating breakfast because nobody was making it for me.

Take the time to make some good breakfast. I'm talking bacon. I'm talking eggs. I'm talking pancakes. Whatever it is. Ask your parents how they made those epic French toast slices, you know, with the maple syrup. Get the recipe. Make it for yourself. You deserve it. If you're trying something new, just know that I believe in you. And as always, Zerky Show, I'm sending you lots of love and peace.