You never win an argument.

There’s a story behind that.

This is your daily message from Chad number 1175 to upgrade your mental game today by telling yourself a better story, because the most important story you hear is the story you tell yourself. And this message is dedicated to Ethel Caterham.

Here’s the upgrade:

You may think holding your ground means arguing for it, but upgraded thinking knows you can decline the argument and keep the ground.

Here’s the story:

Ethel Caterham was born in a Hampshire village on August 21st, 1909. Edward the Seventh was on the throne — the great-great-grandfather of the current king. She was the seventh of eight children. At eighteen she took a job as a nanny for a British family living in India. Three years on the subcontinent. That’s where she met Norman, an officer in the British Army. She buried him in 1976. Fifty years ago. She has buried both of her daughters. She has three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

August 21st she turned 117. She is the oldest living person on earth, and the first person from Britain ever to reach that number. Reporters ask her the same question they ask everybody who gets that far. What’s the secret? Here’s what she said. She’s non-confrontational. She never argues with anyone. She listens — and then she does what she likes. Most people only hear the first half.

“Never argue” sounds like being agreeable. It sounds like folding. It sounds like a woman who spent 117 years going along to get along. That is not what she said. She said she never argues. She did not say she gives in. She listens to you all the way to the end. And then she does exactly what she was going to do. She didn’t avoid the conflict, but she stopped needing to win.

Dale Carnegie said it a different way. “You can’t win an argument. You can’t, because if you lose it, you lose it. And if you win it, you lose it.” Rob Gilbert says it in one line. If you win an argument, you’ll lose a friend. Ethel Caterham worked that out sometime before the Second World War and she’s been running the experiment ever since.

Here’s what an argument costs you. Your afternoon. Your sleep. Your blood pressure. Sometimes the relationship. And at the end of it, the other person believes exactly what they believed when you started. Here’s what it costs you to listen all the way through and then go do the right thing anyway. Nothing.

There are two kinds of people in a disagreement: the ones who need to be agreed with, and the ones who just go do the right thing. I’m working on being the second one. Which of the two are you? The better story to tell yourself is, “I don’t have to win the argument to hold my ground.” You have been telling yourself that if you don’t argue, you lose. You have that backwards. The argument is the loss. The quiet decision is the win. Somebody in your life is going to hold out the bait today. Don’t take it. Listen all the way to the end. Then go do what you know is right.

Tell me a story of an argument you walked away from to fromchadsmith@gmail.com. Send someone a text and ask them, “Have you ever won an argument and lost a friend?” You can get a free copy of my book, The Most Powerful Story in the World, by going to fromchad.gumroad.com. The transcript of this message and hundreds of others are always available at http://www.fromchad.com.