As I was reading some of the previous articles I posted on Zen @ Wall Street, I reflected on the fact that – ultimately – I could have given the opposite advice and it would have proven equally true or effective for the reader.
Wait, what?? Can two opposite things be true at the same time?
Here’s the catch: I didn’t say which reader. Nor did I say at which point of the reader’s life.
What side of the spectrum are you at?
When I’m doing one-on-one coaching, I know exactly where my client’s at. And I can advise accordingly.
But for those of us who write articles, books, have a blog, a Youtube channel or whatever medium to reach more people all at once, anything we say can effectively be proven wrong and backfire altogether, depending on the audience it lands.
For example, in this article I advocate for letting go of routines and self-imposed structures to find one’s own pace in work and all creative endeavors. That has been a great discovery for me, but it came after following years of routines and building up my discipline first.
The article is intended for an audience that has likely spent a few years down the personal development rabbit-hole. However, the same type of advice, decontextualized, and given to the average Joe on the street, could have a pernicious effect.
In fact, the average modern man is probably at the opposite end of the spectrum: he’s mostly unconsciously coasting through, easily falling for all sorts of addictions, distractions and advertising, with little to no sense of ownership over his life. So, the opposite advice turns out to be the right one in that case: self-discipline, self-discipline, self-discipline!
To the average man, letting go of discipline and routines, could immediately sound like an invitation and a handy justification to perpetuate a lazy lifestyle, sit on the couch, eating chips and watching football every night.
That’s why personal growth is riddled with paradoxes. Maybe you’re doing something right, but do it for too long and suddenly the opposite becomes the right move!
It’s all relative. So why don’t we explore a few more of these paradoxes?
More paradoxes in business and life
1. Business Sales
When you start a business, and have zero customers, a sound advice is probably: sales, sales, sales!
After all, you need to get some response from the market, create a customer base and show profits to potential investors.
But once you’ve grown into a gigantic corporation, sometimes the opposite advice becomes true!
It’s not unusual for a company to analyze its customer base, realize that the bulk of sales comes from a small group of customers, while others mostly result in complaints, returns and increased overhead costs. Some companies at a more mature stage at times decide to drop customers instead.
2. Being present vs. Having a vision
Very juicy and trendy one. Both topics are quite fashionable these days.
Should we strive to have a great and inspiring vision? Becoming the best version of ourselves, live with no regrets, die knowing that we have become the best we could ever become … and constantly stretch towards that ideal or….
Should we just be happy with the present moment, accepting what is, savoring the simplicity of the mundane and avoid getting distracted by our mind when it pulls us towards the future, as an escape from the now?
Million dollar question. Both. Again it depends on where you are in life. Sometimes you need to be reminded that you already have all you need and that the chase is just distracting you from appreciating what is. Sometimes the lack of a vision makes you so sluggish an utterly uninspired, that your lack of growth gets in the way of appreciating what already is, and you need a push.
But get the right advice at the wrong time and it will push you even deeper down the wrong path.
3. Writing
With writing, you can have opposite types of advice. From “write 500 words per day”, to “find your inspiration first and just flow from there”.
Again, it depends on where you’re at! For most people, waiting for inspiration is exactly the type of advice that will get them staring at a blank page for hours or got them into the writer’s block in the first place.
But then on the other hand, after you have imposed yourself to write an X amount of words everyday for the sake of gaining pace, momentum and self-discipline, what’s the benefit of writing crap just for the sake of writing?
In my case, I’ve written articles and books for more than a decade, so at this stage the lax approach works best. If I can’t think of anything to write about, I need to distract myself, enjoy my time, maybe take a walk and that’s when a new article usually is born.
It sprouts naturally within my mind and then it’s only a matter of typing it into a word sheet as if my hands were on autopilot (of course, there’s a quite a bit of editing afterwards, don’t think it’s that easy).
Forcing myself to write a set amount of words each day would only backfire and prolong the problem. But would my current approach have worked at the very beginning when I had to get myself started with writing? Very unlikely. Again, it’s all relative. Both pieces of advice are true. And false.
4. Doing vs. Planning
Another great example is taking action vs. carefully planning.
Again, what side of the spectrum are you at? On one extreme you end up with paralysis by analysis, and on the other with reckless and haphazard agitation that doesn’t build up towards anything substantial.
I’d advise most people to declutter their lives and spend more time pondering, in silence, walking alone, and to spend time and strategize their existence like a CEO does for his company.
And yet, I’d also advise most people to cut down on meetings, briefings, thinking and just take action every day. Because it’s through action, that the path clarifies. Only by taking an extra step forward, you can see another piece of the road open up ahead.
Both positions are extremely wise. And – potentially – extremely wrong.
5. Spiritual Seeking
This is a field where the paradox becomes so apparent.
On the one hand, you have line of thought that goes like: you should be seeking and working hard towards enlightenment as if your life hinged on it.
On the other hand: seeking is what stands in the way of finding. Enlightenment is already here and all you have to do is to drop all the seeking and realize what is. There’s nothing to do.
What’s the truth? Both! It depends on what side of the spectrum you’re at. To the lazy, the non-seeking advice is just a delusion preventing him from doing the real inner work! But to the ardent seeker who keeps banging his head against the wall for years and years, his scrupulous work is the last thing standing in the way!
You cannot skip the hard work, saying it’s all about surrender anyway. But you also can’t fake your surrender, unless the hard work exhausts you and forces you into an authentic form of surrender.
6. Dating
Try to impress or just be natural?
Potentially both are the silliest advice, although both are useful at different stages. Just like any field, there’s a learning curve to presenting oneself, reading feedback from another person, body language, and dealing with social situations in general.
So, the ‘just be yourself’ advice is patently silly for a starter. Nobody is ‘himself’ in social situations anyway: according to PhD.Walter Mischel, there’s no such thing as a personality that you carry across different situations, the way you do with your body, but rather a series of behavioral signatures, that you develop in response to different sets of situations.
Therefore, a sound advice for a starter is to understand that he can develop behavioral signatures which are more charming and seductive, versus signatures that ultimately repel the opposite sex.
However, once these patterns – repeated or rehearsed over time – develop into something we might call charisma, charm or attractiveness, how useful would it be to forcefully try to make an impression? That’s when it strats to backfire,
Hence the sound advice here becomes: be yourself. Relax.
It’s a bit like coaching a beginner at tennis, vs. a professional during match play. You’d never tell a beginner who’s never handled a racket, just relax, play naturally!
A good coach constantly pushes you to focus on the mechanics of the movement until you get it right.
But to a pro, what use would it be to consciously focus on the mechanics of the backhand? It would only backfire and get in the way of his game. Hence the right advice is: be yourself, relax, play naturally.
7. Work or Play
Another great paradox. Some gurus argue that we should follow our passion and if we find out what we like, we’re never going to feel like we’re working, because work becomes play.
But as others have repeatedly pointed out, we don’t become good because we enjoy something, rather we usually start to enjoy something, the moment we become good at it.
Think about the term play. If you’ve ever played an instrument like guitar – which I’ve done for many years – at the beginning it doesn’t feel like play at all. You can’t properly strum the chords, the guitar emits disturbing sounds that have little to do with music and you develop blisters on your fingers, wondering how on earth professional guitarists make this living hell look so smooth.
But then in a few months or years of hard work, you really get to flow with it and you can play a song on autopilot, while you do other things such as singing, moving around the stage and losing yourself in the emotion of the melody. What was once hard work is now pure play.
But then if you want to improve further, it never ends. Maybe you want to learn a more difficult song and there you go again.
You need hard work if you want to enjoy playing, because without competence you cannot play the most beautiful songs. But you also need not to lose sight of the playful aspect and passion, or you’re just going to get lost in the dry technicality and strip music of its art and beauty.
So what’s the right advice? Sometimes you need to rediscover play, sometimes you need to rediscover hard work. Preaching hard work to a workaholic is like giving drugs to a junkie, but so is preaching play to a hedonist. Again, good advice potentially turned terribly wrong.
The middle road
We had this short exploration of paradoxes, just to get an appreciation of our idea: all advise can be ultimately proven wrong.
So, what are you going to do with this knowledge?
First, realize that whatever has been working for you for a long time may have not only stopped working: it may have started backfiring. Sometimes you have to start doing the opposite of what you’ve been doing for so long, in order to keep growing. Such is the paradoxical nature of reality.
Secondly, realize that all advice is relative and entirely falsifiable. All advice should not be taken as the solution to a dilemma or a definite answer. Rather, you should view it as a series of nudges coming from different angles and pushing you in different directions.
The way you make the most of it, is by welcoming these little pushes in different directions as opposing forces with the combined effect of just keeping you from sliding off the middle of the road.
Also published on Medium.
