Resonance

Tag: paradox

  • Cognitive Dissonance: Made for More Yet Settling for Less

    In the intricate landscape of human psychology, one phenomenon stands out prominently – cognitive dissonance. It’s the mental tug-of-war we all experience when our desires and actions clash, creating a sense of discomfort. In our previous post, we talked about the power of discomfort. In this blog post, we’ll dive deep into cognitive dissonance, explore its fascinating intricacies, and unravel why we often find ourselves yearning for more while settling for less. It’s an Aspiration vs. Aversion Paradox; an Ambition vs. Agony Misalignment; a Yearning vs. Yielding Dilemma; a Success Lust vs. Effort Dread; and a Hunger for Achievement vs. Fear of Endeavour.

    Example 1: The Unfulfilled Artist

    Imagine an aspiring artist who dreams of painting magnificent masterpieces. Yet, every time they pick up a brush, anxiety creeps in. The fear of failure paralyzes their creative flow. Here, the artist battles the aspiration to create art with the aversion to the effort and potential rejection it entails.

    Example 2: The Office Dreamer

    Meet Ellis, a corporate professional with dreams of entrepreneurship. By day, Alex excels in a stable job, but by night, the agony of unfulfilled ambition eats away. The misalignment between ambition and the comfort of a steady paycheck creates a constant struggle.

    Example 3: The Fitness Enthusiast

    Nana Ama yearns for a healthier lifestyle, picturing herself as a fit and energetic individual. Yet, when the alarm rings for her morning jog, she snoozes it, yielding to the comfort of her warm bed. Her yearning for fitness is in constant conflict with her yielding to momentary comfort.

    Example 4: The Procrastinating Student

    In the realm of academics, John has grand ambitions for a stellar GPA. However, when it’s time to hit the books, he’s engulfed by the dread of doing too many things at the same time. He desperately wants success but shies away from the most urgent and most important.

    Example 5: The Entrepreneurial Spirit

    Mark is passionate about starting his own business and envisioning financial freedom. But the fear of financial instability and the toil it takes to build a startup holds him back. His desire for achievement diverges from his anxiety about the endeavour.

    So you see? The devil can have you right where he wants you and it’s not even his fault or direct doing. This is the story of Africa. It has been the story of many great prodigies. It will be the story of great young minds with great potential. Yearning for more, yet settling for less. Craving the extraordinary, yet stuck in the mundane. Seeking greatness, yet ensnared in mediocrity. Chasing dreams, yet avoiding the grind. Hungry for success, yet fearing the effort.

    Call it whatever. A potential paradox. An ambition-agony misalignment. A desire-discomfort duality. An aspiration-aversion paradox. An achievement-anxiety divergence. You don’t have time saaa na 20 years aba. It will happen to someone you know. Don’t let it happen to you.

  • Paradox of Choices: Why Less is More

    You’re standing at a KFC counter for the 1st time staring at all the available meals. Your friend tells you to pick any food of your choice. Now you are excited and the succulent adverts for the food raise your expectations. Yet, you stand there for the next 2 minutes thinking about what you want. The waitress is growing impatient. You feel like you’re delaying so instead of making your best decision, you go with it and just buy something. Now you’re not so happy because you feel you didn’t have enough time to thoroughly go through all the available options.

    You’re thinking about what you could have rather bought although your food is ready. You’re already regretting your choice so the taste wasn’t so nice after all. You think the other one you didn’t get would have been better. This same scenario happens to you the next time and the next time after that. Now you think you’re just not good at making spontaneous decisions.

    Let’s look at it another way. You’re a girl and you’ve grown into a beautiful woman every guy will basically dream of. As a girl, it’s good to think of yourself as a hot cake. About 3 guys at a time are showing interest in you, not counting the side ones from guys you don’t even know. For a girl, 3 options is a lot, trust me. You don’t know who to choose, so you choose the tallest guy.

    After some months and a few misunderstandings here and there, you are now thinking of the opportunity cost. You should have rather chosen the guy with blue eyes. This tall guy is really annoying. You regret your choice and you eventually break up. You find yourself in the same dilemma next year and you make a sub-optimal choice again without thinking it through. It happens the 3rd time and now you think you have a bad taste in men.

    This is why people love living in a dualistic reality, where they reduce every option to just two. It’s either right or wrong. It’s either left or right. It’s either black or white. It’s either positive or negative. It’s either good or bad. Life is, however, more complicated than that. Sometimes our options are not ‘good and bad’ or ‘right or wrong’. It’s good vs better or somehow good vs slightly good vs not so good vs okay vs could be better. At every point in your life, you have a million options to take. However, we make choices based on the number of options available to us at the moment.

    The options may not even be related. Sometimes we think about what we could be doing when we are engaging ourselves in one thing. This raises our expectations for what we think we could be doing and reduces our satisfaction with what we are actually doing. Such a Paradox.

    I went to the pharmacy recently to buy paracetamol and the seller asked me, “Which one?”. Then she goes on to mention about 5 different ones. “Ei paracetamol too…”, I exclaimed! So I bought the less expensive one. Inasmuch as it’s good to provide options most times, too many choices for simple decisions can lead to choice paralysis.

    Imagine choosing what to do with your body nutrients; grow your hair, grow your brain mass, grow your hips? I know some girls would love that idea and would choose to grow their ass with all their body nutrients. Then their body would be like a raccoon after two weeks lol. Thus, our brain makes automated decisions for our physiology involuntarily of our conscience so we could focus on the most important; the input. We choose to feed our body whatever we want and our body takes it from there. Garbage in, garbage out. This burdens us with only choices of input rather than choices of input, processing and output.

    The more freedom you have, the more choices you can make, right? More choices = more freedom = more happiness. Well, it is so untrue. Life is so funny and paradoxical. Actually, the more choices you have, the less happy you become due to choice overload. If a company wanted to employ you and showed you 100 different employee packages to choose from, you would either lose your mind and be indecisive or make a sub-optimal choice. The more choices you have, the more unlikely you are to choose.

    Less will always be more. The lesser options you have, the more you can make the most out of it.

  • The Glorious Paradox in Recovery from Addiction

    There are a list of at least a dozen paradoxes in recovery, but they all begin with the big one: I had to be willing to give up to win against drugs and alcohol. Only when I was completely out of options did recovery seem like a viable option. From that one point we move […]

    The Glorious Paradox in Recovery from Addiction
    white oval medication pill beside blister pack
    Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

  • Life: An Endless Paradox

    We work harder, yet have low salaries

    We travel further, yet have no communities

    We have bigger houses yet smaller families

    More knowledge yet we know less

    More experts, yet more problems

    More pills and drugs, yet more people are sick

    More technology, yet less communication

    More quantity yet less quality

    Wealthy people, poor characters

    So much in the window, yet nothing in the room

    The more we know, the more we know that we don’t know more

    The more we have, the more we feel dissatisfied

    The more we focus on ourselves, the more selfish we become

    The more we help others, the more we lack help

    The more we search for things, the more we lose ourselves

    Life is simple, yet life is a Paradox

    Making things simpler is more difficult than making it complicated

    Simple is complicated, and making things complicated is also simple

    Emotions cannot be trusted, yet emotions tell us the greatest truths

    Faith cannot be proven, yet faith gives us the bravest courage

    Boldness is foolishness until it succeeds. If it doesn’t succeed, it remains foolishness

    Not seeing miracles make us lack faith, and our lack of faith is what keeps us from seeing miracles

    Fools think they’re wise, the proud think they are confident

    Those who have the confidence lack the intelligence, and those who have the intelligence lack the confidence

    Knowing too little keeps you in bondage, and knowing too much keeps you in bondage

    Sleep too little and you’ll wake up tired, sleep too much and you’ll wake up tired

    Expect nothing and you’ll never be disappointed. Expect greatness and you’ll one day receive it

    The bigger the hope, the riskier the moment

    The sweeter the love, the bigger the heartbreak

    The ones that love you the most are the ones that can hurt you the most

    Close yourself to bad things, and good things won’t also come in

    Open yourself to good things, and some bad things will also come in

    Life is a Paradox

  • Proverbs And Life: Such A Paradox

    I want to share another poem from my archive, written as a youth. It’s all about life, and I assure you, it’s not necessarily everybody’s truth. Remember that to each his or her own, as one man’s heaven is a next man’s hell.

    Envy not a man’s success, because you never know the things he gave up or even sell. I have seen the wicked growing old and flourishing like a big green bay tree. While the righteous dying young and perishing and losing their liberty.

    PROVERBS AND LIFE: SUCH A PARADOX

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