PARADOX, noun
- a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.
In the recent articles I might have mentioned that life is usually not what you thought it to be, the more you expect it to be going your way the more it deviates towards uncertainty, it might not be the case for everybody I might simply be bad at life planning, have a bad luck or know nothing at all, maybe, maybe I will never know.
Read more: Your life in ParadoxI have been guilty mostly of having to plan my life, part of it is the result of expectations from other people and part of it is my upbringing. Nonetheless the life I have now is still incomplete, I have not yet achieved my goals, I am still in debt, still do not have a glamorous job and I still suck at my own martial art, but how can I get mad at this life, how can we not appreciate the life we created for ourselves, what we are now are the decisions we have made day by day isn’t it? Our younger selves might not have been the smartest but at that moment we thought that we were making the best decision.
Here is something you already know, when we work towards something, we should never expect linear progress no matter what it is. Life is just unpredictable like that.
On the other hand, if you do not have a plan, then what kind of dream is this. I’m not saying YOLO, that is bad advice but here is something that I have learned and found interesting.
Paradoxes, life has a lot, they can be destructive but also can be powerfully useful.
Here are some of my favorites:
The Productivity Paradox
“Focus on being productive instead of busy” -Tim Ferris
I have struggled with this one a lot, in my early twenties I was aggro about everything, my training, work, compounding knowledge and maintaining social life, I never want to forsake any of these, that’s why I slept less and did what I thought was productive, things such as reading books, working 10-12 hours, training in the weightroom and playing sports whilst running on 4-5 hours of sleep.
When I was younger my body could take it, as I got older and better at it everything became second nature, however the part where I was sleeping less slowly caught on to me.
I believed that sleeping longer was not efficient, that’s why I’d rather stay up for extended periods of time so I could be more productive but in reality it kind of destroyed me.
Andrew Hubermann a renowned neuroscientist, mentioned that however many hours of sleep we missed in our lives, we humans can never ever get it back, there’s no such thing as catching up on sleep.
I then later on stumbled upon the work of Miyamoto Musashi (“Dokkōdō“”The Path of Aloneness”) who now became one of my favorite philosophers. His work entails a life of focus and efficiency, that mastering an art whatever may it be, takes extreme focus and dedication.
I realized where I messed up, if only I stayed focused and pursued fewer things in life I might have done better than I was now. At the age of 16-17 I encountered weightlifting, 3 months later I did boxing, later on kick boxing and then BJJ after that went into MMA, I kind of willy nilly did all of these things without any goal in mind, looking back at it now, my training partners then from each discipline successfully achieved far greater heights, because they sticked into their chosen martial. I only practice BJJ now and I still am at the lowest belt classification. But I am totally focused on just doing BJJ right now.
This is just one of my dilemmas here are more if you wanted to explore more of the dilemmas you create for yourself if you think self improvement is good for you or not.
Being busy is different from being productive, one can be busy without being productive at all rather other things that they do are just distractions for themselves turning them less efficient while thinking they are productive.
One can be productive without being busy, because they know what they need to accomplish and instead of adding things in their schedule they cut off unnecessary tasks. Stay focused on less and you will accomplish more. Put things in order, work on it tomorrow if you can but do not procrastinate.
The Wisdom Paradox
“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” – Plato.
I have written something about this , I remember being in the zone as I started writing consistently late last year when I realized that my writing was not as good as I thought it would be, having learned how to produce better sounding words for my articles or having learned more techniques in Jiu jitsu made me realize how bad I really am.
Knowledge compounds this is fact, but so as cluelessness and ignorance, and this does not stop. So, what’s the point in learning when the less we know the more certain we are, in this case it’s black and white. I still don’t know how to answer that, but I don’t ever see a negative merit to wanting to learn more, as a matter of fact the more questions we ask within us lets us learn more about ourselves and what surrounds us.
I realized that curiosity makes us want to learn more, like turning a page in a book your reading, the more you read into a book the more you want to turn that page because you’re slowly getting into the good part, only to realize that there are more mysteries to uncover. It does not stop, knowledge compounds like crazy but one cannot consume the information the world has to offer. In this world there is more to see than what you cannot see, there are more answers to your questions and more questions than one can know.
Be satisfied at one point or be contented with what you are now but never stop learning. If infinity exists and you have all the answers that can be found then, you shall also have all the questions in existence, if you have everything in this world then you also have all the nothingness.
The Failure Paradox
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison.
Human beings hate to fail, obviously it sucks to fail especially if one invested enough hours and effort for it just to fail, but why do we need to fail? In reality, although we learn a lot from success, we learn more from failing, in effect failing means trying. In failure we experience pain, we experience dread and then we experience fear.
Sense of fear from failure is where people stop, because they fear failing so much, they create an exit, but in here some people do not stop. The fear we feel is what will make the challenge all worth it.
Without failing everything is easy, without risks everything is not worthy of our efforts
Failure is a natural path to success.
Micahel Jordan known to be the Greatest baskeball player of all time experienced quite a lot of failure, one of the biggest failures that went on to define the person he is today, arrived when he was still in high school. He was cut from the varsity basketball team because he wasn’t good and tall enough, but he never stopped pursuing his dream, he worked hard and was able to get a spot in the North Carolina Basketball program, at this time he was not known as a talented basketball player but his coach shared what MJ told him Michael says: “I’m going to show you, nobody will ever work as hard as I work.”
MJ is no stranger to failure he knows that hard earned success has a pre requisite that is failure, He says, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed”.
If we never fail or do not attempt to try then we do 3 things:
-The bar we set for ourselves are not really to better ourselves, we lower the criteria on what really is success, we aim lower, we strive less and choose to avoid failure instead of choosing greatness.
-We do not get better, as we aim for mediocrity, instead of failing forward, we don’t move and stay the same.
-We may not be able to feel the joy of true success because we never did try and instead we avoided failure completely.
The Boredom Paradox
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new sights, but in looking with new eyes.” -Marcel Proust
We all know “The Hero’s Journey” by John Campbell. It’s usually the formula for most main characters in fantasy novels, Manga and Anime where the protagonist in this case “you” gets tired and bored of the mundane life and embarks on a life changing endeavor that will open new horizons for him. With boredom or drive to get out of a rut we seek things out of the ordinary and make us begin our own journey whatever kind it is, let your boredom help you find new things that you really want to enjoy or let it be a time of healing
I admit that this website was a product of boredom and mind wandering, I sit in front of a computer for 8 hours at work with free internet and I enjoy a lot of autonomy, I work from 10pm to 6am and incidentally my mind turns creative at the wee hours of the morning, in the beginning I straight up just write on a notebook, but I thought that improving my typing skills would do me good especially if I do it at paid hours in my job, now it has become an outlet for my ideas to be consumed by other people as well, not only do I enjoy writing but it also helped me widen my vocabulary.
Being bored at work can or may increase creativity in my case it did, it gave me time to daydream. Experiencing boredom can therefore be an opportunity to strive for new ideas or start on new creative inspirations. It’s funny how this happens but this is one example of the many creative endeavors one can pursue when boredom strikes. Some people who experience indifferent boredom do not find it to be an unpleasant experience, but rather a chance to relax and recoup.
As an ambitious person, it can be hard to let go of the drive to accomplish something in every minute of your day. If one has enough patience and self-awareness, periods of boredom could become reserved for relaxation or meditation, rather than randomly searching for something to alleviate boredom, think more constructively about how best to spend free time.
Recharge and revitalize. Read the book you got as a gift, start a journal or listen to the new album your favorite artist came out with.
With this hopefully you will be better at managing future episodes of boredom.
The Fear Paradox
“Above all, don’t fear difficult moments. The best comes from them” – Rita Levi-Montalcini
This is straight forward; we should do things that frighten us because there lies awakening.
Primitively fear kept us alive, our ancestors feared for their lives, feared that a sabretooth will eat them or that a giant reptile might be trying to hunt them, that fear made them develop ways to survive, it awakened techniques and primitive technologies that they must invent in order for them to fight what they feared at that time.
Later on, our ancestors feared they do not have anything to eat so they learned how to hunt and that kept them alive, they learned how to plant and cultivate agriculture that fed them through the winter.
Nowadays people like you and me are not afraid of dying because a giant lizard is on the prowl, we do not fear that food rations will run low, now we are scared of talking to women, we are afraid of losing our jobs and running out money, because the tax collector will reposes everything we own or will ever own.
Like the failure paradox one must take risks because that fear and uncertainty will only benefit us, if it’s scary then you should probably do it, the answer usually lies in what you are afraid of it could be anything, if you fear talking to women talk to them without any hidden agendas. Fear of gaining weight then you are probably not doing anything about it, go to the gym or go for a walk, and so on.
The Choice Paradox
“We are free to be the authors of our own lives, but we don’t know what kind of lives we want to ‘write.” – Barry Schwartz,
The diversity of our choices cause us to stress and, ultimately, a feeling of trapped unhappiness. If you have ever purchased anything, you have experienced the paradox of choice. With the amount of money you brought you are entitled to one item, a T-shirt, with one design you have 15 colors to choose from, you dont want to try them all on so you wish there were just 2 or 3 options. When you get home you wish you bought the same shirt from a different store because they have better prices only to find out there are 30 other color choices.
The paradox of choice is an observation that having many options to choose from, rather than making people happy and ensuring they get what they want, can cause them stress and problematize decision-making.
The less option we have the better decision we can come up based on these, the more choices we have the more paralyzed we get and the harder it is to come up with a decision.
The less resources one have the more creative one becomes, the more prodctivity happens.
Until next time.
Happy new year.
XERGIUS 