As much as I love self-improvement and sharing it with others, I always pepper my insights with caveats. Nothing is straightforward. Every important truth is a paradox.
If you want to be successful, you need to be comfortable with holding contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time.
Most people can’t do this. They crave binary, black and white, either-or thinking. Either you’re on their team or not, agree with them or you’re stupid and evil, toe the line or get ostracized.
Well, you don’t need me to tell you how dumb this is because you already know. Even the people who do it, even if you do it, deep down, you know.
Deep down, you know the paradoxical truths that lead to living a successful life, but how do you bring yourself to act on the information?
I use the same process over and over to level up my mindset:
- Brainwash yourself to undo your binary societal programming. This means reading, studying alternative media sources, watching videos, whatever you gotta do
- Implement. Unless you test the theories you learn in self-improvement, none of the lessons will have an impact on you. Agree or disagree with a piece of advice? Go and see for yourself.
- Constantly question your thoughts and results; iterate. You should never be quite sure you’re 100 percent right. It makes no sense to guarantee anything in a world with so many variables. Attempt to be less wrong, not right.
Using this process, especially when it comes to the paradoxes of life I’m going to share with you, can and likely will lead to a better life.
Use These Extreme and Opposite Personality Traits
“[On what makes people successful] The first is a superiority complex — a deep-seated belief in their exceptionality. The second appears to be the opposite — insecurity, a feeling that you or what you’ve done isn’t good enough. The third is impulse control.” — Sam Ovens.
You need a delusional level of optimism to counteract all of the negativity, limiting beliefs, and social programming that permeates society.
The masses aren’t at fault. Honestly, the inevitable outcome of decades of brainwashing, political psyops and institutional mass conditioning based on perverse incentives is the vast majority of people living well below their potential and infecting you with that energy on accident.
Said better: don’t be mad at society, don’t look at other inherently worthy people as sheep, just understand what’s going on and prepare your mental defences against it.
If mediocrity is the norm, you have to think of yourself as exceptional.
You have to be audacious and borderline arrogant to believe that, somehow, little old you is going to be the one to break out of the system and live life on your own terms. You need balls, courage, moxie, a chip on your shoulder, whatever you need to navigate that minefield of achieving your purpose.
Then, at the same time, you should think of yourself as a worm loser nobody that has a ton of work to do in order to get better. See, most people do get the first part right… kind of.
We all have fantasies about being our super self-actualized self. We are arrogant. Even if we never do anything with our daydreams, we have them all the time and fancy ourselves better than the average person.
But, to be successful, you must escape “Potentialville.”
When you try to develop a skill, you’ll be confronted with feedback about how much you suck at it. It takes humility to admit you don’t know all that much and need to get better. It takes real courage to take genuine criticism and use it to improve.
There is a healthy form of self-doubt. This form pushes you to get better for the sake of getting better instead of egotistical reasons.
Your Purpose Means Everything and Nothing At the Same Time
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” — Alan Watts
On one hand, in the eyes of the universe, you’re already dead. Nothingmatters.
You shouldn’t care about success at all because success is just a figment of your imagination that mostly serves your ego and causes pain when you don’t get what you want.
All of these statements are…half true.
On the other hand, your life should matter to you — a ton. You only get one. As vast as the universe is, you look at yourself as the centre of it, and you will feel the triumph or regret of the path you choose before you die.
So what’s the answer? Detachment.
You can work extremely hard on developing skills, a career, a business, relationships, the perfect body, whatever it is that you want, without taking yourself all that seriously in the process.
Most people make the mistake of taking their life seriously and living below their potential — what a tragic combo.
I live life like a game that I’m trying to win, but I remember that it’s just a game. Because nothing matters, I treat life like everything matters.
Use These Extreme and Opposite Personality Traits
“[On what makes people successful] The first is a superiority complex — a deep-seated belief in their exceptionality. The second appears to be the opposite — insecurity, a feeling that you or what you’ve done isn’t good enough. The third is impulse control.” — Sam Ovens.
You need a delusional level of optimism to counteract all of the negativity, limiting beliefs, and social programming that permeates society.
The masses aren’t at fault. Honestly, the inevitable outcome of decades of brainwashing, political psyops and institutional mass conditioning based on perverse incentives is the vast majority of people living well below their potential and infecting you with that energy on accident.
Said better: don’t be mad at society, don’t look at other inherently worthy people as sheep, just understand what’s going on and prepare your mental defences against it.
If mediocrity is the norm, you have to think of yourself as exceptional.
You have to be audacious and borderline arrogant to believe that, somehow, little old you is going to be the one to break out of the system and live life on your own terms. You need balls, courage, moxie, a chip on your shoulder, whatever you need to navigate that minefield of achieving your purpose.
Then, at the same time, you should think of yourself as a worm loser nobody that has a ton of work to do in order to get better. See, most people do get the first part right… kind of.
We all have fantasies about being our super self-actualized self. We are arrogant. Even if we never do anything with our daydreams, we have them all the time and fancy ourselves better than the average person.
But, to be successful, you must escape “Potentialville.”
When you try to develop a skill, you’ll be confronted with feedback about how bad you are at it. It takes humility to admit you don’t know all that much and need to get better. It takes real courage to take genuine criticism and use it to improve.
There is a healthy form of self-doubt. This form pushes you to get better for the sake of getting better instead of egotistical reasons.
From Daily Medium’s Mind Cafe by Ayodeji Awosika 1/20/20, “5 Paradoxes of Life You Must Embrace If You Want To Be Successful.”