Paradoxical Truths

Over the years, I’ve come across some ideas that seem contradictory to conventional wisdom. Somewhat paradoxical in nature, these ideas have shaped my perspective to a good extent. Let’s see if they do the same for you.

So, here are ten not-so-obvious nuggets of wisdom:

1. Opportunities grow as you seize them.

Scoring that first job, that first gig is hard. That’s because you’re unknown. But once you start working, you build reputation in the market and more people start looking for you. Soon enough, you’ll find yourself surrounded with opportunities.

2. Desire is the cause of all suffering and progress.

While desire is the root cause of all suffering, if it weren’t for desire, we’d be stuck in stone age hunting animals for supper. Desire is the fuel that pushes mankind forward. And it does the same for you. Wanting something is the first step towards achieving it and making your life, and the world, better.

So instead of getting rid of all our desires and becoming a monk, we can limit them to one or two. If suffering is inevitable, it’s wise to find something worth suffering for.

3. Success and happiness lie in opposite directions.

The pursuit of success is not just different from the pursuit of happiness, it’s the opposite. Success demands you to be discontent with how things are, while happiness occurs the moment you decide to accept everything as it is.

4. Doing nothing is the hardest thing to do.

Try sitting still for some time. Close your eyes and do nothing. Don’t think about anything or anyone or any place or any experience. Don’t recall your past or plan the future. Don’t focus on your breath or any body part. Do nothing.

This is what we call meditation, the art of doing nothing that some people spend entire lifetimes mastering.

5. The path to interesting is boring.

A typical stand-up comedian rehearses his joke a thousand times to make sure it lands correctly. To gift you a 2-second laugh, he observes, writes, distills, rehearses, and performs the same joke again and again. Even though he gets bored to death, his act does not.

Same is true for any creative project — writing a book, directing a film, composing a song. The pieces that look effortless actually took the most effort. The pieces that seem natural were actually planned to the last bit.

6. If you want to make the wrong decision, ask everyone.

More people means more perspectives, more biases, more contradictions, more confusion. So, involving more people in your decisions doesn’t necessarily translate to better decisions. Usually, it’s the opposite.

7. It’s not a choice between quality or quantity. Rather, quantity enables quality.

When we think of high quality work, we imagine a person working on a single project for years, refining every detail, bringing it to perfection. But once again, the opposite is true.

Vincent van Gogh finished over 860 oil paintings in ten years. Tim Urban published more than 300 blog posts over a period of six years before he launched waitbutwhy.com.

Produce quantity and the quality improves automatically.

8. Try to impress everyone and you impress no one.

When I write an essay, I think of all the people who would be consuming it. Some questions arise in my head — would she like this paragraph, would he be able to resonate with the idea, is this interesting enough for this specific person.

And every time, I end up writing for one person — myself. I’ve come to terms with the fact that no matter what I do, I cannot impress everyone. Neither do I have the power, nor do I have the need.

9. Do everything you ‘should’ do and you end up miserable.

The word ‘should’ is used when you’re bound to do something that you don’t really want to do. “You should take that exam”; “You should meditate for ten minutes in the morning”; “You should marry this person”, and so on.

If you accept your family’s or peers’ or society’s opinions on how you should be living, what you should be doing, chances are that you will end up miserable. Cause you don’t want to do any of those things in the first place, you’re sad to begin with. And if you don’t get the promised outcomes, all that sacrifice is wasted.

So instead of asking what I should do, ask what I want to do. At least you won’t have any regrets.

10. Whatever you deny yourself will become your prison.

Desires don’t extinguish magically. If you resist, they grow. If you suppress, they resurface. So it’s better to fulfil them rather than having them dangle in the back of your mind all the time.

I believe that a couple of sentences don’t really do justice to these ideas as they are quite nuanced. But adhering to the word limit, I tried my best to articulate them.

Did you find these insightful? Which ones did you resonate with? You can reply to this email, or if you are reading this on the website, comment your thoughts down below.

Until next week,
Aachman