#5- In the small, you feel big. In the big, you feel small.
A paradox necessarily contains its opposite; I love discovering and collecting them.
It seems to me a nexus of union between duality and the non-dual oriental philosophies.
Paradoxes, for me, are the point of union where the extremes touch.
And today, I want to share 5 curious paradoxes with you that will blow your mind.
Let’s start.
1. Impotence can empower you
“I have never regarded any man as my superior, either in my life outside or inside prison.” — Nelson Mandela.
Mandela spent a good part of his life in prison, but he used his rage, his anger, and his impotence as fuel. He became a better human being in prison, where most people feel powerless.
Mandela used to say, “If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy, then you become his partner.”
And that’s a brilliant statement. If you want to thrive in life, you must accept the limits life and your environment impose on you. And use that powerlessness constructively to change things.
Mandela did it, and so can you.
2. Too much good luck attracts terrible luck
“Fortune favors the bold. “— Virgil.
In Parcheesi, when you roll a double 6 with the dice, you roll again (good luck), but if you roll three times in a row double 6 (too much luck), your checker must return to the starting square (bad luck).
In real life, it’s the same, too much luck attracts terrible luck.
Alex Robertson won part of the EuroMillions lottery jackpot a few years ago. He refused to share the money with his children but bought a couple of expensive cars. His children, outraged, broke into their father’s house and smashed the cars with hammers.
In the end, Alex Robertson’s family was broken forever.
You may think this would not happen to you, but if you search the internet, you will find hundreds of examples of people who won the lottery and ended up having a hard time.
Nobody is bitter for a sweet, but eating sugar daily can make you have diabetes. This is the same. Having a lot of luck turns it into something that generates tensions between your environment and loved ones and ends up attracting bad luck.
3. Discomfort is the quickest way to comfort
“Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.” — Tony Robbins.
Tony Robbins established this principle of self-improvement. But people need to learn how to apply it. What Tony really means by that phrase is much deeper than “you’ll only change when you’re screwed.”
Tony proposes that you use pain as fuel. Tony has been getting into cold water every morning for decades, and Joe Rogan has been doing it too. But, he says, “enduring ice water is my first victory of the day.”
There is a legend that David Goggins records himself reading the comments of his haters on social media and then listens to them as he runs.
The point is that they actively seek out discomfort because they know it leads to comfort. So if you want to be abundant, you will have to face adversity, which is uncomfortable.
4. Losing yourself makes you find yourself
“Once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it or survived. You won’t even be sure the storm is really over. But one thing is for sure when you come out of that storm, you won’t be the same person who went into it.” — Haruki Murakami.
Losing yourself exposes you to uncertainty. And only by exposing yourself to the unknown will you learn who you really are.
To know your limits, you will have to lose yourself.
Facing the unknown will direct your attention inward, where your essence resides. You will search for answers there because you become your only resource.
And to survive the storm, you will have to know yourself.
5. In the small, you feel significant in the big small
“There are as many atoms in a single molecule of your DNA as stars in an average galaxy. We are, each of us, a small universe.” — Neil de Grasse Tyson.
In our little world: home, family, and work, we can be the Alpha and feel like demigods. But deep down, our reality is a tiny part of our neighborhood, an even smaller portion of our city, a little piece of our country, and a microscopic amount of the world.
Only when we more or less control our environment do we feel big, and when our world expands: we change partners, cities, and jobs; we feel small because we do not control the new variables.
The degree of control tells us how big we are, and since we do not really control anything, we know we are small.
We all feel small: even the biggest of us.
A virtual hug
AG
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