Paradox Mindset - A Path to Creativity and Success

Opposite poles attract. It’s true with magnet and life. Theory of duality binds and holds the Universe together. We know Newton’s theory, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” If you sow a seed below soil, the plant will grow above it. My spouse once told me perfect couple will understand each other, zero arguments. Yet, I objected to it. A couple can’t have similar thoughts always. Human mind has the power to think many opposite thoughts concurrent. These concurrent contradictory thoughts enable us to be innovative. Harvard University psychiatrist, Albert Rothenberg, found that revolutionary thinkers spent considerable active time conceiving multiple opposites or antitheses. Certainly, if Einstein didn’t think about rest and motion both, he could have eaten the apple and slept under the tree. A paradox mindset can help people leverage tension and produce creative outputs. We have a false theory that everyone doesn’t have a high IQ like Einstein or Newton. We can train ourselves to have an ingenious mind by cultivating paradox mindset. It can boost our innovation, creativity, and overall performance.

Step in, Step out

Whatever field you are in, try to get fully committed to your work, but 100% would ruin your performance and destroy creativity. It will restrict your power of thinking other way around. Switch between diving deep and floating atop whenever necessary.

Break the rules, but know the rules:

New inventions and technologies came to limelight only when human beings like you and me broke the rules in their field. Defy the principles, but know them first. Without knowing the law of balance, you can’t build a high rise building. It would collapse.

Embrace failure despite your intense resistance

After spending hours, when your work went into the drain, you will naturally feel to resist the failure. It is when you have to embrace failure. True innovation occurs when failure is an expected result of the process. Befriend your resistance to failure and make it a part of your creative process.

Be open to feedback but don’t brood over it

Feedback helps you to see your mistakes and area of improvisation, but if you let it sidetrack you, then you are sabotaging your creativity. Take the good from the feedback and move on. Dwelling on it won’t help.

Create and abandon

Stay focused, use your full emotions when you create. Once the creation phase ends abandon the result, get emotional detachment from it. It will help you in the long run to stay consistent.

Accept the tension and develop comfort with the discomfort

Life without tension is impossible. If one tension gets resolved today, another will wait for us tomorrow. Tension doesn't pose any problem by itself. It’s the way we react to it leads to anxiety and depression. We often take defensive approach when we face uncertainty in our life. We have to develop a mindset to develop comfort in uneasiness. Also, we can overturn it into an opportunity. This mere realization frees up mental resources and drives alternative solutions.

When you approach tensions with a “both/and” perspective while honoring their contradictory aspects, it will make you a more innovative and effective leader, You’ll find creativity within yourself that you never knew existed. It fosters optimism and resilience and allows space for both ordinary work and big dreams. 

So, a paradox mindset moves us outside conventional thinking and into new thought. It essentially provides our brains with a conundrum to contemplate, which likely occupies a part of our brain that employs logic and reason, allowing the creative part of our brain to generate ideas and possibilities.