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A paradox is defined by the Oxford dictionary as a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true.
Britannica, however defines it as an apparently self -contradictory statement, the underlying meaning of which is revealed only by careful scrutiny.
It further adds that the purpose of a paradox is to arrest attention and provoke fresh thought, and that is exactly what interests me about Paradoxes. It requires careful scrutiny and its findings provoke fresh thoughts.
However, I remember a few words from my friend Praise Akpevwe about the paradox of life and I think now is the best time to share them with you following my previous publication on The paradox of mistakes.
Praise Akpevwe was a friend of mine in college with whom I loved to engage in conversations because of his thoughtfulness, vast reading and knowledge about the world wars and history in general. He was a voracious reader.
He provoked me to learn them and I can say that my findings have affected me positively. So yeah, these words you will be reading shortly will shift your paradigm and provoke you to think.
To have his words published on this website is a great honour and I hope to have him write here regularly as a full-time author at Hagios Akins.
More so, a quick one before we proceed. If you ever think of publishing on this website as an author, the opportunity is open now. Kindly use our contact form to indicate your interest in being an author at Hagios Akins company. Thank you.
Praise write-up
Some of the most truthful things in life are contradictory on the surface. They seem like impossibilities, yet reality proves them to be obvious over and over again.
You have to look a bit deeper, beneath the surface contradictions, that the real grains of wisdom emerge.
Below are some of the most powerful paradoxes of life:
1. The Fear Paradox
Dr. Paul Tournier, an astute Christian author, was once asked how he helped his patients get rid of their fears. “Oh, I don’t,” he replied, “that which does not frighten does not have meaning. All the best things in life have an element of fear in them… No endeavour is fruitful without fear.”
Fear evolved to keep us safe and enhance our existence has now grown into the greatest single threat to our humanity and our collective survival. Fear, at its core, is meant to keep you alive. It is an automatic response that protects you from danger often before you are even aware that there is something to be afraid of.
“Neurobiologists who have studied the emotional system show how it often reacts to the presence of danger long before we are consciously aware of it – we experience fear and start to react a few milliseconds before we realize that we are facing a snake.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb explains this in his book, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder.
Just as Frank Faranda highlights in his book “The Fear of Paradox” that most of our technological and social changes are simply more imaginative ways for us to run from danger and are not driven by curiosity.
Except for harmful activities, the things we fear the most are often the things we need to do the most. The more stuff you do that scares you, the less scared you are.
As the late entrepreneur, Felix Dennis writes, fear is what keeps most people from getting rich
“After a lifetime of making money and observing better men and women than I fall by the wayside, I am convinced that fear of failing in the eyes of the world is the single biggest impediment to amassing wealth”.
The good news is that the solution is just as straightforward: do more stuff that scares you.
The more stuff you do that scares you, the less scared you are.
2. The Failure Paradox
In today’s society, failure is viewed in a negative light. The most obvious example is in schools where students are discouraged from getting low grades. In the real world on the other hand, failure is just a pathway to success. Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”
This begs the question, what would have happened if he had given up after the 9,999th attempt?
Failure keeps your ego in check. It fosters humility, which is not only necessary for leadership but self-improvement. Intellectual humility means recognizing that we don’t know everything. It allows us to acknowledge our limitations, seek answers and accept new ideas.
Failure also gives you a new perspective. It was Ellen DeGeneres who said, “It’s failure that gives you the proper perspective on success.” Every success comes with hundreds (perhaps thousands) of rejections, blunders, and defeats all of which are just as important as the accomplishment itself.
Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.” In the end, it is not the failure that defines us but the determination to keep moving forward despite it.
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm” – Winston Churchill
You have to fail more to succeed more.
Our greatest moments of growth often stem directly from our greatest failures.
So don’t fear failure, just learn to fail smart and fast. Getting punched in the face builds a strong jaw.
3. The Wisdom Paradox
The old Socrates adage. Every time you gain a greater understanding, it creates even more questions than it answers.
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge….” – Charles Darwin
The wisdom paradox tells us that the more we are exposed to thoughts, points of view, new situations, cultures, ideas and facts, the more we appreciate just how ignorant we are and that the ways to see the world are virtually infinite.
Every time you learn something new it creates more questions in your head than the answers you have just assimilated.
4. The Speed Paradox
You’ve got to slow down to speed up. It seemed counterintuitive to say that to speed up, you must first slow down. We live in a culture where “Go, go, go,” and “Fail fast,” are norms where the goal is to build “high-efficiency workflows” and “cut corners” if you want to be heard and succeed. In our world, timelines are shorter, expectations are higher and you better respond “ASAP”.
And yet, moving too fast can cause errors, lack of innovation and strategic thinking, chaos and so much more.
We all make mistakes. However, when you are rushing through tasks you are much more likely to make a mistake than if you are going at a steady pace. Also, fixing mistakes can be costly and time-consuming.
5. The Effort Paradox
“The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.” – Adam Smith
“Satisfaction Lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory”. – Mahatma Gandhi
The effort, be it mental or physical, is a common feature of daily life and it is encountered every time we need to push ourselves. We regularly face activities requiring efforts of some kind or another.
It could be learning a new skill like; learning to play a piano, reading to pass an exam or gain certification. Putting effort into things is difficult and as such, humans and other animals tend to avoid effort, including the effort that comes from merely thinking things through.
In psychology, there is the law of least work where given a choice between similarly rewarding options, organisms learn to avoid those that require more work or effort. Recent theoretical and experimental work in cognitive neuroscience and economics has chiefly served to confirm and reinforce this view, concluding that effort is costly.
Another indication that effort is costly comes from the finding that people are often willing to accept fewer rewards to avoid effort. People will work hard to obtain something of value but also working hard can make those same things more valuable. Effort can even be experienced as valuable or rewarding in its own right.
While humans and other animals readily apply more effort for better outcomes, they sometimes view the same outcomes as more rewarding if more effort was used to attain them.
Effort itself can become a secondary reinforcer and reward by itself. Objects that one effortfully crafts and assembles oneself are valued more than the same objects that come pre-assembled.
6. The Icarus Paradox
The Icarus Paradox refers to Icarus of Greek mythology, who crafted wings but flew too close to the sun, so they melted and he fell to his death. What makes you successful can also lead to your downfall.
The Icarus paradox is a phrase coined by Danny Miller in his 1990 book. The term refers to the phenomenon of businesses failing abruptly after a period of massive success. The failure of the business is brought about by the very elements that led to its initial success.
The failure of the wings that allowed Icarus to escape imprisonment and soar through the skies was what finally lead to his death.
In reality, many extremely successful businesses often face problems maintaining their success.
In a 1992 article, Miller noted that successful companies tend to fail precisely because of their strengths and past victories, which gave them overconfidence in their strategies and cause innovation to come to halt. The strategies that drove their success, when employed in excess may lead to declining sales and profits and even bankruptcy.
Managers begin to make decisions based on past strategies that they mistakenly believe will always be relevant and become blinded to changes in the external business environment.
According to Miller, Success seduces companies into failure through fostering overconfidence, complacency, specialization, exaggeration and dogma.
I am confident that you have learned a thing or two from this article. However, I would like to add that Life itself is a whole lot of paradox. We live in a complex world and its forms do not end here as Praise may have outlined. There is a lot.
Remember the publication I mentioned at the beginning of this article? It is a complement to this article and I think you might want to check out:
See you later,
Yours Hagios Akins.