You just love to jump into a heated argument with counterarguments. That makes you feel like you automatically won the debate.
Only one thing is wrong, you noticed that your contrarian personality is driving people away from you.
How do you stop being a contrarian? By realizing that you don’t have to counter the world non-stop and that your attitude hurts the important people around you.
But you love being contrarian. It’s part of your personality.
You get an adrenaline rush when you counter someone and win a discussion.
It’s all good until you turn around and realize that no one wants to argue with you anymore.
In this article, we will explain the term contrarian in more depth and advise how to stop being a contrarian.
We know you don’t like being told what to do and immediately want to do the opposite, but please keep reading.
Is Being a Contrarian Bad?
By various definitions, a contrarian is a person who disagrees with the majority and has different opinions.
A contrarian thinker is someone who takes an opposite stance to popular opinion.
It literally means to “be against.”
What’s really wrong with that? Doesn’t precisely counter-thinking move the world and challenge society to progress?
As for famous contrarians, we will name just a few: Plato, Napoleon, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King.
Have you heard of them? Of course, you are. Their thoughts were not aligned with the majority, but they changed the world.
Then why wouldn’t you think the opposite from the majority too?
The point of this article is not to be against critical thinking but to point out the need to be contrarian by default, whether it is justified or not.
There is a huge difference between having an automatic opposing opinion just for being a contrarian and having your own independent thinking.
Are You a Contrarian? 4 Signs
Someone has probably already told you that you are a contrarian, and you are aware of it.
What are the signs that characterize contrarian thinkers:
1. You Love to Have an Opposite Opinion
Everything good for others is not good for you, and vice versa.
For some reason, you always like to have a different opinion than others.
Some song is super popular right now, and everyone seems to love that song. It’s bad for you by default.
It’s the same with movies, sports, and everything else.
Everyone listens to mainstream music, but your choice is some underground band that no one has even heard of.
You are ready to watch the worst movies and praise their quality for countering those who like to watch Hollywood blockbuster hits.
And if what you love becomes popular, you quickly counter with something else, even at the cost of not loving what you used to love.
2. You Love to Win Arguments
You love to be right in every discussion. You are addicted to that feeling.
Is there any greater satisfaction for you than when you counter someone and defeat them in an argument?
You are ready to provoke an argument just so you can win with your incredible facts.
And, of course, you know everything.
You know all the topics from politics, sports, and global warming, and your facts are the most accurate and from the most reliable sources.
You always find targets for debate. There are colleagues at work who want to do their work in peace, and you barge in with conspiracy theories.
Sunday lunch turns into an argument because you always have to have a different opinion from your family.
There is the internet when you have no one to debate with in person.
You can always find someone ready to argue on social networks and forums.
And there is always a subject for the argument. Topics go from whether a movie is good to whether the earth is flat.
3. Being a Contrarian is Your Lifestyle
We’ve already mentioned how you love listening to music no one listens to and watching movies no one watches.
We respect your taste, but maybe you are doing all that just to be different from others.
You try too hard to be different in your desire to stand out from the crowd of conformists.
How much of it is natural, and how much is just a cool image you want to project in public?
And today, it’s even cool to be a hater and a contrarian.
Your high school rebel phase hasn’t ended. It’s evolved and makes you have counter opinions about everything more than before.
4. You Don’t Respect Other Opinions
Is it because you suffer from a superiority complex that makes you think that you are better than others, or you think you are unique, but you always think you are right.
You believe your information is always the most accurate, and your opinion is the measure of value.
While others speak their opinion, you tap your foot nervously and readily attack them with counterarguments.
You always want everyone to listen to you and talk the most. But know that the loudest are also usually the most insecure.
If someone else is right and undermines your word’s correctness, you get angry and act out too much because you feel like you’re losing control.
How to Stop Being a Contrarian? 4 Suggestions
Unless being a contrarian affects your life very badly, then there is no reason to do anything about being a contrarian.
But you feel that constantly being the contrarian burdens you and creates problems with others, and you want to change that.
Try these tips:
1. Distinguish Between Independent Opinion and Counter Opinion
We have already said that we support critical thinking.
The fact that you don’t fall into the framework of general opinions does not mean you should change that.
But when you’re a contrarian just to have a contrary opinion to the majority, ask yourself how sincere it really is.
Ask yourself if maybe you’re not as cool as you think you are.
Just because an opinion is an opposite doesn’t automatically mean it’s right.
You know what they say about opinions, opinions are like as… like noses, everyone has them.
Many people have a different opinion than others just to feel special.
At least the internet is full of them.
2. Understand What is Behind Your Need to be Contrarian
For this, you may have to go deeper into your conscience.
What is it that drives you to be in constant disagreement with others?
No, it’s not your unique taste in movies and music.
These are internal insecurities, and countering everyone is your defensive mechanism.
You’re not happy with things like your dead-end job, the place you live, or your relationship.
All of this can make you feel like you hate the whole world.
These are no excuses for becoming a contrarian.
Do you like to counter the people you are jealous of the most?
This is not a coincidence because you want to diminish their value.
It would be best if you change your attitude for your well-being.
Instead of constantly having to think differently than everyone else as a defense mechanism, change the things that make you behave that way.
3. Ask Yourself if Your Attitude is Hurting Others
We know that, according to you, everyone else is a conformist who cannot understand your advanced thinking.
But ask yourself how they feel then?
There’s a problem with being a reflex contrarian: you destroy relationships.
If you always take the opposite position at every opportunity, you leave the impression of a negative, annoying, unsupportive person.
People need support sometimes, instead of your counter-views.
If you bite your tongue and keep quiet about something you disagree with, the end of the world won’t happen.
4. Stop Hurting Yourself With Your Attitude
Does your attitude hurt you as well as others?
Have you noticed that others have reduced or completely stopped interacting with you?
You feel like no one takes your opinion seriously anymore.
Jeff Bezos says: “You have to remember that contrarians are usually wrong.”
You do not contribute to the discussion when you are automatically contrarian. Everyone knows in advance what you will think and what you will say.
Everyone probably thinks you’re lying when you’re telling the truth.
All of this makes you feel isolated and tired of always having to be right.
It’s a liberating feeling that you don’t always have to counter and be right.
Maybe it’s wise to accept other people’s opinions sometimes instead of sticking to your own.
Who knows, maybe those other opinions can change your way of thinking and positively impact your life.
To Sum it Up,
“It’s actually pretty easy to be contrarian. It’s hard to be contrarian and right.”
— Reid Hoffman
Being a contrarian by default does not make you the most intelligent person in the room.
It actually harms you by reducing the credibility of your words and by alienating you from close people.
Instead of being a reflexive contrarian, respect the opinions of others as you respect your own.