Paradoxes is one of the most mind-blowing truths in life, which seemingly contradictory on the surface but turns out to be true or valid when investigated more closely.
In this article we are going to share 15 of the most profound paradoxes that we have a come across and if you can think of some that are not mentioned in this article, post them in the comments below which we appreciate.
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Paradox-01
“The More You Try To Make People Like You, The Less They Probably Will”
One really interesting thing about human psychology is that most communication that happens between us is not what we’re actually saying, it is the subtext of what we’re saying.
It’s not what we tell you it’s why we told it to you, curiously if we are always telling you things because we think it will make you like me that will because you that subtext will cause you to distrust what we are saying.
There’s something about human relationships we need a little bit of friction in them for us to trust that the person is being authentic and real towards us, because that’s what creates a real relationship, that’s what makes people actually like each other authenticity.
Paradox-02
“The More You Fail, The More Likely You Are To Succeed”
The way you get good at something is by learning to do it better and the way you learn to do it better is by doing it wrong, so many people get so obsessed about avoiding failure and being successful by not failing whereas it’s quite the opposite the way you become successful is by failing early, failing often and failing forward.
Paradox-03
“The More Something Scares You, The More You Should Probably Consider Doing It”
Obviously this doesn’t apply to like jumping out of a moving vehicle or getting in a wrestling match with a grizzly bear or uh handing a handgun to a small child.
We don’t recommend those things just because they’re scary but interestingly the most important things we have to do in our lives tend to scare, because the most important things in our lives have the greatest effect on our identity and our perception of our own self-worth and so the stakes are high and whenever the stakes are high we tend to get nervous about it.
if you find that there’s an area in your life that or there’s something in your life that you are consistently scared to do even though you know it’s good for you probably means you should do it.
Paradox-04
“The More You Hate A Trait In Other People, The More Likely It Is That You’re Avoiding That Trait In Yourself”
Carl Jung called this the shadow and it’s basically this idea that the things that irritate us about other people are often the things that we don’t like to admit about ourselves.
If you’re consistently annoyed at people who are indecisive, it’s a good chance that you don’t like to admit that you’re indecisive yourself or if you’re always frustrated and feel as though people are disrespecting you, it could easily be that you’re disrespecting of other people.
There’s this interesting mirror aspect of our psychology in that we tend to project the uncomfortable things about ourselves onto the world around us.
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Paradox-05
“The More Connected We Become With The World, The More Isolated We Seem To Feel”
This is a fascinating paradox because with the glories of the internet and the you tubes we can get in touch and be in touch with literally thousands or millions of people, that’s an incredible feat of technology but what we don’t think about is that as soon as you are part of a group of thousands or millions of people the more insignificant any of your individual actions feel.
Paradox-06
“You Can Only Have A Happy Relationship If You Are Happy Being By Yourself”
If you have some defect in yourself some deep-seated insecurity or piece of trauma that you’re trying to cover up with love and affection from somebody else that is going to create the basis of a toxic relationship.
You’re going to become emotionally dependent on that other person and because you’re emotionally dependent on them you’re not going to have a good time.
Paradox-07
“The More You Learn, The More You Realize You Don’t Know Anything”
We heard a really cool analogy about this once, it was like it’s called like the knowledge circle. the smaller your circle of knowledge is the smaller the border is with all the things that you don’t know and so when our knowledge is very small we think like oh well you know there’s like 2 or 3 things that we don’t understand but you know we get the basics.
but as you learn more and that knowledge circle expands the border of that circle with the unknown expands as well and so once you become an expert in your field you realize that there are like 250 things that you don’t understand and tons of open questions and tons of inconsistencies and tons people have gotten wrong.
So you get this paradoxical effect where the more you know about a subject, the more you struggle to talk about it because you realize all the things you don’t know.
Paradox-08
The More A Person Is Convinced They Are Right, The More Likely They Are Wrong.
There’s a thing in psychology called the dunning-Kruger effect and it basically says that the less experience or expertise somebody has in a field the more confident they will be in their beliefs.
The philosopher Bertrand Russell once summed this up quite eloquently when he said that “the whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts”.
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Paradox-09
“The More Honest You Are About Your Faults, The More People Will Think You’re Perfect”
There’s a funny thing about vulnerability and that even though it scares the living out of you it makes everybody think you’re courageous and powerful.
It’s this beautiful paradox of vulnerability that it’s the more we expose our flaws the more we’re comfortable with our shortcomings the more people revere us and respect us.
Paradox-10
“The More Options You Have, The Less Satisfied You Will Be With Each One”
basically it’s like if you sit down at a restaurant and they have 4 options you’ll pick 1 of the 4 options and you’ll probably be pretty satisfied with it but if the menu is like the cheesecake factory and there’s like 45 pages of options you will spend the next 30 minutes of your life agonizing.
But before that you will agonize whether you made the right decision or not, in the psychological literature this is called the paradox of choice, the more options you give people the less satisfied they are with whatever they pick and in economics is just known as good old opportunity costs.
When you’ve only got 4 options you’re only giving up 3 potential choices whereas if you have 400 options now you’re giving up 399 potential choices and that hurts a little bit.
Paradox-11
“The More You Force A Relationship The More Likely You Are To Break Up”
This is something that we feel like everybody has to learn the hard way. We certainly did when we were young and stupid.
you cannot force feelings, in fact what you will find is that the more you try to force feelings the more you will create the opposite feeling, this applies to everything, like the more you try to not feel anxious the more anxious you feel, the more you try to not be angry the angrier you feel, the more you try to not feel guilty you start feeling guilty at the fact that you feel guilty.
So emotions have this kind of self-perpetuating aspect about them and so if you try to force yourself to love somebody, it’s just going to make you love them less. If you try to force yourself to trust somebody you’re just reinforcing the fact that you don’t trust them in the first place.
when it comes to emotions you have to surrender to the emotions, you have to do the opposite of forcing them and in relationships this often scares the living out of us because we think if we don’t try to control the relationship maybe they’ll go away and yeah maybe they will but if they don’t, that’s what makes the relationship meaningful.
Paradox-12
“The More You’re Able To Love Yourself The More You’ll Be Able To Love Others” And “The Less You’re Able To Love Yourself The Less You’ll Be Able To Love Others”
Generally speaking the emotional health of your relationships is going to be a reflection of your emotional health within yourself, if you’re able to be compassionate with yourself for giving of mistakes, grateful for successes then that is going to be reflected in your ability to be compassionate and grateful and forgiving of others, if you’re not able to do that with yourself then you’re not going to be able to do it with others either.
Generally speaking we tend to treat ourselves the way we treat others and vice versa and so if our relationships are not ok and incredibly judgmental and highly controlling and constantly anxious and insecure, that’s probably how we are on our own as well.
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Paradox-13
“The Less Afraid You Are Of Death The Less Afraid You Are To Live”
Life itself requires risk. if you’re going to do anything meaningful or worthwhile you need to risk something, maybe not risk your death but at least risk something, risk money, risk reputation, risk your emotions, risk your dreams and goals.
If you’re not willing to risk things then you’re not going to be willing to do things, so the more comfortable you become with risking loss, potentially risking the ultimate loss which is the loss of your life the freer you are to actually live.
Paradox-14
“The Only Certainty Is Uncertainty”-That is the only truth is our complete lack of knowledge of truth.
Paradox-15
“The Only Constant Is Change”
The world is always in flux, it’s always moving, it’s always changing, and anything that is true today is going to be uncertain tomorrow as we continue to grow, expand and evolve.
So learn to be comfortable in that uncertainty or should we say “learn to be comfortable in that discomfort”
- If you go through this paradoxes then it is the time to change yourself and make your life better in upcoming days.
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