Finding Meaning in Opposing Ideas

What do you do when you come across conflicting pieces of advice? Instead of choosing one over the other, they become more useful when you can see how opposing concepts can actually coincide together.

Stick to your guns or quit while you’re ahead?

We hear stories about people that never gave up on their way to success. They are successful because they persevered. Then there are others that recognized opportunities to quit while still ahead to try something new and arrive at a happy place.

How do you resolve the need to keep going versus stopping or changing?

It can all make sense if you stay true to the problem you’re looking to solve, but change the approach to solution. Stay focused on the outcome, but the path there is open to interpretation. Keep the goal, change the solution.

This way of thinking is inspired by someone referring to politicians and political viewpoints. There’ll be disagreements, but where they overlap is what’s probably closer to some version of the truth.

Unresolved tensions

Some other ideas that I’ve noticed, but haven’t harmonized:

• What you see is what you get vs. You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.
• Two heads are better than one, but you can also have too many cooks in the kitchen; even three’s a crowd.

Next time you hear someone throw out free advice, instead of agreeing or dismissing, dissect it and see under what circumstances it could all make sense.