Some of the most mind-blowing truths
in life are paradoxes.
Stick around and I'll share 15 of my favorite ones with you.
So what the hell is a paradox?
A paradox is something that is seemingly
contradictory on the surface,
but turns out to be true or valid
when investigated more closely.
Paradoxes have this really satisfying effect
on our minds where they twist it in a pretzel
and turn it into like a figure eight or something,
like it's a chicken and the egg type thing going on.
In my 10 plus years researching and studying
and writing about psychology and personal development,
I've consistently found that some
of the most important truths that we can understand
about ourselves, tend to be paradoxical.
So in this video,
I'm gonna share 15 of the most profound paradoxes
that I've come across.
And if you can think of some
that are not mentioned in this video,
please post them in the comments below
and we'll give it a thumbs up.
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Number one, 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 I tell you, it's why I told it to you.
Curiously, if I'm always telling you things
because I think it will make you like me,
that will cause you,
that subtext will cause you to distrust what I'm saying.
Now we've all had that experience
where we've had somebody follow us around
and just agree with everything we say,
and it is fucking annoying.
So please have an individual fought.
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 number two.
The more you fail the more likely you are to succeed.
It's incredible how many examples there are
of this in the world that are...
I'm not even going to go into them.
I mean, it's logical, right?
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.
And whatever fucking cliche about
failure there is out there.
Paradox number three.
The more something scares you,
the more you should probably consider doing it.
Now, obviously this doesn't apply
to like jumping out of a moving vehicle,
or getting in a wrestling match with a grizzly bear,
or handing a handgun to a small child.
I 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 the shit out of us.
And why is that?
Well, it's 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.
And so, 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 number four.
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.
So 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,
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,
as a way of avoiding dealing with our own shit.
Paradox number five.
The more connected we become with the world,
the more isolated we seem to feel.
Now, this is a fascinating paradox,
because with the glories of the internet and the YouTubes,
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.
I mean, it used to be back in grandpa's day.
Like you knew the people down the street,
maybe you read the local paper
about the mayor or the city council,
and it felt like you could do something about it.
It's like you could March down the town hall and be like,
"I demand more parking spaces."
And actually have an effect on your life.
But today, we're aware of problems
that affect the entire planet.
There are literally thousands of people talking
about any given topic online at any given moment.
So it creates the sense of,
"Well, what the fuck can I do about it?"
And we feel like we can do nothing.
Paradox number six.
You can only have a happy relationship
if you are happy being by yourself.
If you have some hole 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 are going to become emotionally dependent
on that other person.
And because you're emotionally dependent on them,
you're not gonna have a good time.
It's gonna be ugly.
It's gonna be like a fucking rollercoaster,
high-highs, low-lows,
and it's gonna go, "Ooh"
And you're gonna puke everywhere.
And then your partner's gonna get mad at you
because you puked on their new shoes,
and you're gonna feel awful
because you depend on your partner for happiness.
And so you buy him new shoes,
but you don't have enough money
and so you have to buy it on credit.
And then your partner starts cheating on you
because you don't have any money.
And then you puke again.
And it's bad.
Just be happy alone.
Paradox number seven.
The more you learn,
the more you realize you don't know shit.
I heard a really cool analogy about this one.
So it was like...
It's called 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, there's like two or three things
"that I don't understand, but I get the basics."
But as you learn more in 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 of shit that people have gotten wrong.
And so you get this paradoxical fact where,
the more you know about a subject,
the more you struggle to talk about it,
because you realize all of the things you don't know.
And this relates deeply with paradox number eight,
which is, 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 wants sum
this up quite eloquently when said that,
the problem with the world is that fools
and fanatics are so sure of themselves
and intelligent people so full of doubts.
Paradox number nine.
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 shit out of you,
it makes everybody think you're courageous and powerful.
So it's like standing up in front of a bunch of people
and being like, "Yeah, I'm actually pretty fucked up.
"I drink too much and puked on my partner's shoes,
and they broke up with me and slept with the mailman."
Everybody's just like,
"Oh my God, so brave, I love this guy.
"I wanna hang out with him, I wanna be friends with him,
"I wanna have babies with him."
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 number 10 is something that's commonly
known as the paradox of choice,
which is, the more options you have,
the less satisfied you will be with each one.
So basically it's like,
if you sit down at a restaurant and they have four options,
you'll pick one of the four options
and you'll probably be pretty satisfied with it.
But if the menu is like the fucking cheesecake factory,
and there's like 45 pages of options,
you will spend the next 30 minutes of your life agonizing.
Well, you'll agonize why the fuck
you're at the cheesecake factory,
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
Goodwill opportunity cost.
When you've only got four options,
you're only giving up three potential choices.
Whereas if you have 400 options,
now you're giving up 399 potential choices.
And that hurts a little bit.
Paradox number 11.
The more you force a relationship,
the more likely you are to break up with a person.
This is a something that I feel like everybody
has to learn in the hard way.
I certainly did when I was 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.
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 that the fact that you feel guilty.
And 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 gonna 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're like,
"Well, if I 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 number 12.
The more you're able to love yourself,
the more you'll be able to love others.
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,
forgiving of mistakes, grateful for successes,
then that is gonna 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 gonna be able to do that with others either.
Generally speaking, we tend to treat ourselves
the way we treat others and vice versa.
And so, if our relationships are deeply fucked up
and incredibly judgmental, and highly controlling
and constantly anxious and insecure,
that's probably how we are on our own as well.
Paradox number 13.
The less afraid you are of death,
the less afraid you are to live.
Life itself requires risk.
If you're gonna 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 or whatever.
If you're not willing to risk things,
then you're not gonna be willing to do things.
So the more comfortable you become with risking loss,
actually risking the ultimate loss,
which is the loss of your life,
the more free you are to actually live.
Paradox number 14.
The only certainty is uncertainty.
That is, the only truth is our complete lack
of knowledge of truth,
or paradox number 15, the only constant is change.
The world is always in flux.
It's always moving, it's always changing.
Anything that is true today
is going to be uncertain tomorrow
as we continue to grow, expand and evolve.
And so, learn to be comfortable in that uncertainty.
Or should I say, learn to be comfortable in that discomfort.
There's your bonus paradox.
If you have any others, leave them in the comments below.
And by the way, did you know that if you don't
want to like and subscribe a channel,
the best way to do that is to like,
and subscribe to a channel?
Yeah, that's totally a truth of life.
So fucking hit that button,
get your shit together,
and I'll see you in the next video.
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