How to Navigate the 7 Paradoxes of Personal Growth
Updatded: August 28, 2021
Have you encountered contradictory advice on your path of personal growth?
I have, countless times.
You might wonder who to listen to or what to do. You might get thrown off your path for months. You might get stuck on one side of a polarity, believing it to be necessary or true.
For example, you might become so obsessed with goals that you neglect to go with the flow, missing out on unexpected opportunities.
I see these seeming contradictions as paradoxes. They appear to conflict on the surface. But when openly embraced, I’ve found both opposites to contain truth. And they often complement one another.
You can learn to navigate these seeming contradictions with grace. When you do, personal growth will become an enriching exploration instead of a confusing, frustrating, or frightening endeavor.
I’ve pinpointed seven paradoxes of personal growth. Likely, there are more. Get to know these seven and you’ll be able to take other ones in stride.
As you read through the seven paradoxes below, tick ones that cause you confusion or pull you to one side of the spectrum.
1. Focus on your goals. Be in the moment.
Don’t hesitate to be clear about your personal goals. A 2015 study conducted by psychology professor Gail Matthews at Dominican University of California has shown people who write their goals down accomplish significantly more than those who do not.
But once you set goals, don’t obsess about them. Over-fixating on goal achievement brings tension and stress.
Instead, relax the tight grip. Be here now.
The practice of present-moment mindfulness calms your mind. In my experience as a mindfulness teacher, it creates the space for new or deeper insights to arise. This can enhance your creativity, improve your focus, and help you with problem solving.
This ability to relax the mind can help you achieve your goals in a different way.
Take intentional steps to manifest your goals. But also hold your goals lightly, enjoy the present moment, and allow insight to arise from that mysterious space-time called “now.”
2. Love and accept yourself. Work on your weakness.
What do you love about yourself? Make a list. Read through the list and take in all the goodness your presence brings to this world. If negative self-talk arises, put it to the side for now.
If you want to grow, you can’t avoid looking at your weaknesses, mistaken beliefs, and unhelpful patterns. But it will be far easier if you allow self-love to be the foundation for an exploration of your faults.
Don’t overwhelm yourself. Take one fault at a time. Explore it in moments when you feel good about yourself, not when you’re feeling down.
Remember, you’ll never find a perfect person as long as you live. Learn to love and accept yourself while you simultaneously focus on healing unhelpful thoughts and behavioral patterns.
3. Go with the flow. Take action.
You’re not destined to continue the unhappy patterns you likely adopted as a survival strategy in childhood. But to move out of self-debilitating patterns, you need to have a plan of action and follow its steps.
At the same time, you never know what’s going to happen next. Life unfolds and sometimes presents you with unexpected information, fresh ideas, or new possibilities. Don’t get so locked up in your pre-set plan that you become inflexible.
Be open. See what life brings to you. Have the courage to go with the flow.
Your metamorphosis will likely come about through tiny positive steps, repeated again and again, in the form of choosing new thoughts, words, and actions. But it can also be radically informed by what unexpectedly flows your way.
4. Focus on the spiritual. Take care of the material.
Take care of your material concerns. But don’t be overly enamored of material possessions or pleasurable experiences. They don’t last. Attachment to the material brings suffering because everything changes.
On the other hand, if you want to explore your spiritual nature, you need a material foundation. Most of us don’t live in India where sadhus—spiritual aesthetics— live on the streets and receive monetary offerings, at least enough to get by.
If you’re really at the level of a sadhu, grab your spot on the dirt or concrete. Otherwise, be responsible for your material needs.
The spiritual and material aren’t opposites. As it says in the Heart Sutra, recited by Buddhists:
“Form is empty; emptiness is form. Emptiness is not other than form; form is not other than emptiness.”
5. Take your path seriously. Have a sense of humor.
You won’t make progress if positive change remains a nice idea, like a book you’ve left sitting unread on a shelf. Make personal growth a priority. Take it seriously. Create a plan. Make a commitment.
At the same time, don’t get too serious. Taking yourself and everything else too seriously makes you uptight, rigid, and unpleasant to be around.
Take a look at great beings like the Dalai Lama. You’ll notice his beautiful smile, ease of being, and unrestrained laughter. Blend spaciousness and ease with joyful diligence to achieve your goals.
Remember, we weren’t put on this earth to stress out.
6. Work on your own mind and emotions. Help others.
Working on yourself is not necessarily selfish, unless you only think of yourself. You have to start with yourself first to truly be of help to anyone else.
That doesn’t mean you should never help others while working on yourself.
Look at it as an exercise in proportions. At first you might spend eighty or ninety percent of your focus on bettering yourself. As you grow, this degree of self-focus can decrease while your focus on helping others can increase. All the while, your positive inner changes will impact others in a good way too.
In the meantime, if you’re overly obsessed with your own suffering and self-improvement, try lending a hand to someone else. It can put your problems in perspective. And you’ll feel the joy of making a difference in another person’s life.
7. You are perfect. You have flaws.
In various spiritual disciplines, it’s said your true nature — or whatever you personally call your higher self (spirit, soul, pure awareness) — is perfect, unchanging, and always present within you each moment of the day.
In that sense, you are perfect.
But you may feel like a non-stop flow of thoughts and emotions with no awareness of your true nature whatsoever. Your habitual tendencies combined with wayward thoughts and emotions draw you into trouble again and again.
Anger, frustration, self-doubt, fear and the entire litany of emotions are not the real you. But they can block you from any sense of enduring happiness.
These are the flaws we need to work on—the habitual patterns of body, speech of mind that bring suffering to ourselves and others. Instead of resisting them, pay attention to the patterns. Non-judgmental awareness will help you see where you can heal, change, and grow.
Your essence is perfect. As you peel back each layer of emotional, mental, and habitual habits, you’ll see that more and more.
Final Thoughts
To sum up, you’ll probably encounter contradictory advice on your journey of personal growth. These seeming contradictions are paradoxes that once understood can bring you into greater balance.
Here are the seven paradoxes of personal growth I’ve identified:
Focus on your goals. Be in the moment.
Love and accept yourself. Work on your weakness.
Go with the flow. Take action.
Focus on the spiritual. Take care of the material.
Take your path seriously. Have a sense of humor.
Work on your own mind and emotions. Help others.
You are perfect. You have flaws.
As you read through these seven paradoxes, did one or more capture a confusion you have? Do you feel stuck on one end of one of these spectrums?
If so, focus there. The answer is usually in the middle way. You can learn to spaciously hold and apply both truths in your life. They don’t have to be in exact proportion, one to the other. You need to find the right balance for you.
Apply this lesson as you meet contradictions on your path of personal growth. They’ll no longer faze you, but rather become a paradox to embrace.
Thank you for your presence, I know your time is precious! Don’t forget to sign up for Wild Arisings, my twice monthly letters from the heart filled with insights, inspiration, and ideas to help you connect with and live from your truest self.
You might also like to check out my Living with Ease course or visit my Self-Care Shop. May you be happy, well, and safe – always. With love, Sandra