Fixing Yourself Isn’t the Answer: How to Embrace Paradoxes to Become Your Best Self
How many times in the last year did you make a resolution to change something about yourself? In the past month? This week? Were you going to get up every day at 5 a.m. to exercise? Prepare a healthy lunch to take to work? Write your gratitudes every night?
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
So many times in my life, I have pulled at my imaginary blazer, stood up nice and tall, and made a dramatic resolution that I was certain would make my life better. The truth was, I was going to war with myself in the name of change.
I was trying to fix myself. But was fixing myself the answer?
I have miraculously gotten out of bed at 5 a.m. for CrossFit classes, bitten my tongue instead of reacting impulsively to my spouse, and resolved to juice every single morning. I have journaled, set intentions, and written my goals on cards. I could go on and on about all of the things I have done in the name of being a better version of myself.
All of my behaviors that I deemed undesirable became public enemy number one on my hit list for change.
But what was “change” exactly?
I wanted to be better. I wanted to be the person I imagined would be happier, more complete, more fulfilled, and healthier. For many years change meant turning my back on pain, or that which I didn’t want, and moving toward a (perceived) more desirable state or circumstance.
In reality, it was more than that. I wanted to feel more in control of how I was showing up and I wanted to feel 100 percent authentically whole.
Sounds reasonable, right? Don’t we all want to feel whole? Wait…what does that really mean, anyway?
World-renowned psychiatrist Carl Jung focused his life’s work on his quest for wholeness. One of his most famous ideas was that wholeness comes from the conjunction of opposites.
He wasn’t looking for what two opposites had in common, but a new third entity. This new entity was based on experience and perspective and wouldn’t involve swinging back and forth between two oppositional places. He wanted to avoid reactivity and embrace creativity.
Real change is achieved not by solving problems, but through navigating the paradox in our lives, thereby giving rise to a new version of ourselves that continues to evolve, emerge, and reinvent itself.
The more we bravely face paradox as an opportunity for wholeness, the more real and lasting change we will bring about in ourselves — and the world!
Shifting our thought patterns and rewiring our processes isn’t easy. For most of us, either/or thinking is familiar and comfortable. We may not know another way.
Either/or paradoxical thinking isn’t all wrong, either. Most of the time it’s only partially wrong (or right). The good news is that all we need to do to escape these half-truths is to examine them — and put them through the process of exploration, reinvention, and curiosity.
Half-Truth #1: Wholeness Means Perfection
The paradox:
Perhaps you want to be present for your family and also to grow your business but believe your work will take you away from your family.
The solution:
We overcome the paradoxical thinking by getting curious about these tensions and examining how they live and express themselves in our lives. By doing this, we naturally give birth to a new perspective, a new relationship, a new feeling about ourselves — and the tensions.
Half-Truth #2: Trade-Offs Are Unavoidable
The paradox:
How many times have you heard the phrase: “You can have it all, just not at once”?
The solution:
Trade-offs are another way of pitting opposite desires against one another, making us feel trapped and exhausted.
It takes practice, but through contemplating the seemingly opposite energies of a “trade-off,” more choices become available to us.
When we stop seeing situations as “either/or” tradeoffs, we open our eyes to new ways. Suddenly, the list of items on the menu is long. We’re not only ordering from just a seasonal tasting menu; we can ask the kitchen to make us anything we want.
It’s the search for the pot of gold that is the real reward — not the gold itself.
Half-Truth #3: If I Can Just Fix Myself, It Will All Be Okay
The paradox:
Many of us have struggled since 2020 with our health, our careers, and our personal lives. We look for ways to fix ourselves to make things better.
The solution:
When we stop trying to “fix ourselves” and we lean into what is true for us in any given paradox, we get information in return. We feel resonance and emotions. We hear things differently.
With more curiosity and attention to language, our intuition provides more information about a situation than we could ever glean from critical thinking alone.
We don’t resolve paradoxes; we simply multiply our available choices and perspectives.
