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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this video I'm going to talk about the importance of embracing paradox in your self-actualization journey we learn from history that we do not learn from history paradoxes are cool not only are they cool but they're also a necessity of life if you're going to be going through and you're going to be self actualizing and they're really not the problem that some people make them out to be so here we're going to talk about what we mean by paradoxes why paradoxes are not a problem why in fact they're a great asset to you if you're able to embrace them we're going to talk about how to go about embracing some of these paradoxes personally I love studying paradoxes there's paradoxes that I've discovered in science in mathematics and linguistics and in personal development and I'm going to give you a whole list of personal development paradoxes in this video so that you get a really good idea of what I mean by paradox the reason I wanted to shoot this video is because as now that we are getting into more advanced personal development stuff with actualized org covering more advanced topics what I'm seeing is that some people are having difficulty with accepting kind of contradictory notions especially when we're starting to talk about spiritual enlightenment and then how that connects back to the bait more basic personal development work that we do that we do and and when you're looking at both of these things they seem contradictory and when this happens what then happens after that is that basically you use this as an ego defense to avoid looking deeper into resolving these contradictions or even just accepting that these contradictions are are there as a part of reality and then this blocks you and prevents you from achieving the most advanced results that you can achieve with personal development just to put everything into perspective for you I talked about this theme a lot of my other videos but basically what I'm hoping you're getting from everything that you're getting from my videos is that you're getting this big picture understanding of reality and to me this is like an endeavor that you do and you undertake in your life is you say okay I'm really interested in figuring out how all the pieces fit together on a big picture a lot I want to know how my psychology works I want to know how life works and I need to know every little facet of that so I can put them all together I can create this giant jigsaw puzzle and each little piece that I put into place helps me see the larger picture that's what we're trying to do here because the value of having this big picture understanding is that you have the wisdom then to create whatever kind of life you want and you have the wisdom then also to live a virtuous life rather than living a shallow life when I see people living shadow lives it's mostly because I see that they don't have this entire jigsaw puzzle assembled or at least even a good chunk of it and so what they do is they waste a lot of time and their life they go down a lot of dead ends because they don't really see what's happening in life what life is they don't understand they don't ascend themselves so to resolve that what we do is we piece by piece start putting it together now as you start doing this one of the problems is that you get pieces that don't seem to fit or you get a piece you try to fit it in this corner over here but then you see that it doesn't fit in this corner so you scratch your head and you wonder and mmm where should this piece go and maybe you try the other corner and it doesn't fit there either and then you have to try in the middle and maybe it doesn't fit that either and then you just have to put it off to the side for a while until more the puzzle gets complete and then maybe you'll see oh it was supposed to go right here the whole time see but it this is like a process this is a multi-year long process this is really a lifelong process of doing this the puzzle is never fully complete you always keep discovering new stuff and sometimes the stuff you discover is very challenging intellectually it challenges you it jostles your pre-existing notions maybe it means you have to rearrange certain aspects of this puzzle maybe you thought that all I had this part figured out you get this new piece and you're like oh well that means that this whole part is wrong I have to reconfigure it some people really have problem with this they don't like doing this because their ego likes to be certain likes to be concrete but if you are not able to go through this investigative process and keep your mind open to the possibility that all maybe I don't have it quite right maybe these two pieces don't fit because there's something in my understanding that I'll figure out three years later if you don't have that kind of open mindedness then you're going to get stuck and I find that this is not only necessary for the advanced work in personal development but it's also necessary for even sometimes the entry-level work and I'll show you what I mean by that in a second when I start telling you all these paradoxes of personal development I actually wanted to create a whole video series of like 20 or 30 videos that just focus on the paradoxes of personal development cuz I find them so fascinating and also because understanding this stuff and understanding these paradoxes and accepting these paradoxes I think creates much better results for you in your life maybe I'll do that in the future but right now I want to go through and just give you a taste of what some of these paradoxes are so here they are the first example is something like this it goes like this on the one hand in personal development we tell you that you're perfect you're perfect as you are you're already complete yet on the other hand you must do self help you must do personal development you need to work really hard to actualize yourself so which is it am i perfect or do I need to work my ass off to self actualize how do you resolve that here's another one we tell you in personal development yes you have real problems in your life that need to be fixed maybe health problems business problems career problems whatever and we try to go to problem-solving mode and help you solve all these problems that you have helped you diagnose them and understand them on the other hand we also tell you but really your problems are ilusory they're not real problems and that in fact problem solving is not the best way to go about living a good life so which is it should I be solving problems or shouldn't I be solving problems how do i reconcile that about this next one one we tell you that relationships can give you lots of fulfillment and happiness and that relationships are one of the highest quality happiness's that you can have is deep relationships on the other hand we also tell you that relationships can never make you truly happy and that you have to make yourself happy from the inside and that you can't rely on other people to make you happy so how do you resolve that which one of those is true another paradox goes like this we tell you be wise don't make any unwise decisions in your life make sure that you're making proper choices so that you're not making the kind of mistakes that a lot of other people make in society on the other hand we tell you but some of the greatest people we know in history entrepreneurs business people whoever that their lives are constructed around their biggest mistakes and that failure is good then in fact the more you fail the better you become the stronger you become so which is it should I be worrying about making perfect decisions or should I be making more mistakes to avoid failure what should I be doing another one goes like this on the one hand we tell you think about your life contemplate about your life live a contemplative life where you're examining your life and you're planning on the other hand we tell you thinking creates neuroses don't think so much stop thinking how do you reconcile that what should I do should I think more or should I think less about my life about this one work hard to make yourself more attractive for the opposite sex so if you want that great girlfriend or that great boyfriend work on yourself to be more attractive than you'll attract that person that you really want on the other hand to be the most attractive don't work at it at all who will be detached be independent from outcome don't rely on to the person don't be needy don't even try to act attractive don't even think about being attractive so how do I resolve that should I be thinking about being more attractive and working hard on that or shouldn't I be how about this next one to get into a relationship don't need the relationship which basically say states that if you really need a relationship badly you're desperate for one then you probably won't get one because no one wants to be in a relationship with you on the other hand if you're very independent and you don't need a relationship at all and you don't want one then everyone wants to be in a relationship with you because you're not needy about this one be present how many times do you hear be present in personal development circles be present be in the moment be in the now the power of now so we have people telling us to be present and then also people telling us but delayed gratification is good don't focus on the present people who focus on the present are hedonistic instead focus on the long-term perspective plan prioritize your life properly don't live in the present moment live for the future how do you reconcile these two here's another one on one hand we tell you be very careful with your mind and your ego because it's very deceptive so you can't trust yourself because you're deceiving yourself all the time with stories and philosophy you create in your mind on the other hand we also tell you but trust yourself in fact if trust yourself completely to be successful and really fulfilled in life so which is it am i deceiving myself and should I not trust myself or should I trust myself completely how do I resolve that another one goes like this never quit persevere we like to champion perseverance and personal development so never quit on the other hand prioritize and cut your losses early so that you're not going down a dead-end so which is it should I never quit and persevere all the time or should I quit the things that aren't working for me how do i resolve that how about this one the paradox of happiness to be happy don't think about happiness if you're thinking about happiness then you're not actually happy to be happy you need to be happy in the moment so what should i do should I not worry and think about happiness at all if I do that won't I be like the rest of the people in the world who are not happy or should I think and plan and strategize about happiness in which case I'm thinking about happiness so much how can I be happy what do I do about this next one be selfless right that's a virtue to be selfless to not be selfish but to be selfless work on yourself really hard so if you want to be selfless be more selfish and if you're selfish you won't be selfless so what should i do should I be more selfish or be most be more selfless how do I resolve that about this next one to be the most authentic self that you can be eliminate yourself eliminate the ego you want to be the most authentic human being you can be well eliminate your ego and aren't you using your ego to want to eliminate the ego bit of a paradox there and then the mother of all paradoxes which is the paradox of spiritual enlightenment which goes like this on the one hand you exist on the other hand you do not exist literally so what is true do I exist or don't I exist how do I make sense of this and then I like this last paradox which is what I call the mayor of the meta paradox and the meta paradox goes like this well on the one hand Leo you're telling me to embrace paradox which means that I should be open to certain contradictions in my worldview on the other hand you're telling me to create this perfect worldview this jigsaw puzzle of understanding which every piece fits together perfectly so how can I do both how can I accept paradox and also build my model of reality at the same time and yeah that's an additional meta paradox so you can see we have a lot of paradoxes here these are just the paradoxes of personal development there's more this is just kind of the tip of the iceberg there's also paradoxes in Sciences in the physical sciences and mathematics and linguistics I encourage you actually go out there and not read up on these paddocks and just embrace them and study them and kind of immerse yourself absorb some of them into your system rather than what I see a lot of people doing which is kind of getting standoffish as soon as they see a contradiction or a parent paradox and then they can't hold the paradox they're not able to hold it in their mind and what this actually says is it doesn't say so much about the quality of the information or the the error in the ideas that you're being presented but it actually speaks to your closed mindedness and your neuroses now you might say but Leo shouldn't paradoxes be resolved after all we don't want contradictions in our worldview right and that's generally true but you also got to understand that when you are hung up on a paradox usually it's because you're coming from an insecure place and so this is not a problem with the inherent ideas or the theories but it's mostly a problem with you and your insecurities and you need to feel certain most people really really really like to feel certain in their mind and in their worldview and when your mind doesn't feel certain about something its agitated this is called cognitive dissonance but this is not like a science problem this is not a problem with reality this is the problem the ego so yes in general you want to be correcting contradictions and you want to be trying to understand as much as you can with your mind kind of grasp stuff but also you have to recognize kind of the limits of your mind and you have to recognize that this process of grasping at stuff this is a lifelong ongoing process so it's not like you just hear some ideas and everything is great some of these paradoxes that I just listed off to you has taken me years of personal development work and experience and study and reading a bunch of books and listening to seminars and thinking about it on my own to finally get a resolution of it years and some of them for me are still not totally resolved so what does this mean this means you have to treat your mental model building kind of like a ongoing process like it's always under construction you can never put up a sign and say okay I'm done it's completed there's always more maintenance work that's being done there's always new pieces that you're putting into place basically it's kind of like you're assembling an infinite jigsaw puzzle there's not a hundred pieces not a thousand pieces there's an infinite number of pieces and so in your entire lifetime you'll never piece everything together and in your entire lifetime you probably won't resolve every contradiction in fact I want you to do a little experiment with me right now in a second I'm going to ask you to just pause and I want you to just look around pause the video if you'd like just look around but I'm going to be looking around too so you can do it with me while you're watching the video just take like 10 or 15 seconds to do with me get very present in the moment I want you to take your focus off the video and what I was saying just look around and just get in touch with reality reality is happening around you right now but a lot of times we get out of touch with the moment just get in touch with the moment and I'll tell you why it's important all right ready go okay good did you look around you get InTouch present in the moment well what happened there when you were looking around did you see any paradoxes happening in reality were there any glitches in the matrix were there any discontinuities were there any contradictions floating around you are there any contradictions actually inside of reality if you look around and you're honest with yourself then the answer is no there's no real contradictions anywhere in reality so then where are the contradictions and what are paradoxes if paradoxes don't really exist what are they well paradoxes are a function of language and they're a function of your minds desire to conceptualize and model reality inside the brain so as you're going around you're looking at life life is very rich very complex there's so much happening in life that even the most advanced supercomputer could not simulate it in fact if you think about it then you could not simulate reality inside of another system because that system would be itself a part of the reality so you can't simulate reality reality is like the ultimate simulation of itself so when your brain is trying to run a simulation of reality the problem there is just fundamental the problem is that there's always going to be a lack and what we naively assume is that well because we have science and because we have mathematics and because we have all this fancy technology nowadays and we you know we're human beings now we feel like we're masters of the world we've pretty much taken over the world our technology is so awesome we can send people into outer space successfully so because of that we know all reality but actually that's not what's going on what's going on is like we have a very limited understanding of reality based on certain concepts that we've created certain models and these models are very very simplistic so you look at reality and then you basically take all this vast richness and then you draw it in a little schematic form on the back of a cocktail napkin and then you tell yourself look I figured out reality it's right here on this little cocktail napkin in this little equation or in this little theorem or in this little formula but that's that's very very limited and we need to recognize the inherent limitations in that process and so while conceptualizing and modeling stuff might be helpful in certain situations we don't want to go all out and just assume that oh well then this is the end-all be-all and that our models and our cocktail napkins are somehow actual reality we don't to make that mistake and so basically when you recognize all this then you start to recognize that mmm you know I probably shouldn't be taking my concepts too seriously this jigsaw puzzle that I'm assembling is not the end-all be-all it's probably not the actual truth it's not not the actual reality it's just an approximation and even in the best imaginal imaginable case it's probably a very very loose very poor approximation of reality and so any kind of contradictions that I find any kind of difficulty I have in combining two ideas or reconciling a couple of ideas or fitting everything together and some grand theory of everything those are really problems of my own mind and of my own ego not problems of of nature and so let me just kind of chill out and not be so serious about it let me embrace the paradox let me look at these paradoxes and say cool let me just play around with them let me experiment with them let me go try out both sides of the paradox and just see what happens what the results are and then I'll trust that over time stuff will click for me my intuition will kind of figure stuff out and even if there's something that I can't quite reconcile that's okay it's not the end of the world reality is still whole reality is not affected or threatened by this in any way that's very natural and you want to be able to keep these contradictions in your worldview for potentially years on end without needing to find that security and that certainty see so many people claim to security uncertainty this is kind of like the default operation of the human mind the human wat mind likes to be certain when it's uncertain it feels afraid it feels insecure it gets angry it gets frustrated this is called neurosis right self-actualized people have an increased tolerance for paradox and contradiction rather than a decreased one sometimes they're irrational people as rational people we get hung up on this idea that everything needs to be very rational and we take our rationality so seriously but as Abraham Maslow talks about when you describe self-actualization you double up did a lot of study on self actualized people what he discovered is that they're they're more comfortable with accepting paradox and the average person more comfortable this is what makes them wiser this is what makes them more open-minded more open to new ideas more willing to explore the intellectual landscape whereas the people who are more like normal people they're the ones that cling to beliefs and they're the ones that wrap up their ego in their worldview and then this creates all sorts of problems down the road the most important reason that you want to start getting cool of paradox is because if you want to be following along with some of my spiritual enlightened this will be a massive massive theme and all those videos that there's going to be lots of paradox very deep seeming paradoxes which are going to boggle your mind and instead of shying away from them I want you to be like oh this is cool this is exciting a new paradox let me go explore in fact what I want to leave with you with is I want to leave you with an assignment in the the bottom in the video description I'm going to leave a link to a Wikipedia page which has a bunch of different paradoxes and you can go and you can start exploring like I said there's paradoxes within mathematics within science linguistics and all sorts of other areas of life so it's cool to just go in there and start to dig around and just to see what are the paradoxes what have other people said about these paradox because there's been a lot of great thinkers throughout history that have faced these paradoxes from the ancient Greeks and Romans all the way to modern physicists mathematicians and philosophers really hard-nosed guys so you can go through and take a look at all those that will be a good kind of homework assignment for you to help you to get comfortable and be cool with your not knowing not knowing is not a bad thing not knowing is a good thing alright that's it I'm signing off go ahead post me a comments down below click the like button please also share this video with a friend and finally come and sign up to my newsletter right here at actualize that org it's a free newsletter I release new videos every single week videos on self actualization topics I'm really excited to be talking about more advanced topics paradoxical topics topics that will really challenge your understanding of life and yourself and of course help you to create that kind of fulfilling extraordinary life that you want so this is not just philosophy but we tie the philosophical and abstract concepts in with actual practical reality so even when we're talking talking about stuff like spiritual enlightenment all of that will tie back in with your own happiness your own fulfillment your own success in life so it's all coming together if you really want to create a powerful self actualized life then my advice for you is to do it on a consistent basis if you like this video watch the next one watch the next one watch one every week watch a couple every week do this for a few years and you'll keep shocked at how different your life is how much you've grown on the inside and then how much your outside circumstances reflect the new inner development that you acquired alright go ahead and up right now you