The "Effortlessness" paradox
The backwards law of reaching your goals
We all have those moments where we want to be impressive.
You’re on a first date.
Finally, someone who is both intelligent and attractive, who enjoys all the things you love.
Long walks on the beach, Radiohead, and surprisingly even sprouts.
Amazed by this revelation and the fact you might actually be on a date to take seriously for once, you oddly start talking about sprouts too eagerly.
After 5 minutes the sprout-based conversation is still rolling as you occasionally mix in the other under-loved vegetable like turnips and radishes.
You realise it could be coming across as strange.
Now you are not too sure how you got into this corner and the only thing you can think about is sprouts which is the one thing you don’t want to talk about.
The minutes keep ticking by…
You divulge:
You’re favourite way to sautee sprouts
Making a sprout-based mash
The way your grandpa used to cook them in bacon and butter to make them taste less well, sprouty
The 3 best ways to serve sprouts at Christmas
(You’re beginning to sound like a YouTube video)Such wildly fascinating things like using them to make vegetable-based art, fun things such as hedgehogs, dinosaurs and smiley faces
(which of course still get eaten because you don’t waste sprouts, you mean you don’t waste food in general and you aren’t just touchy about sprout wasting. Oh MY GOD you have to stop talking about sprouts…)
After 10 minutes you haven’t even mentioned the dangerous topic of sprout-based farts.
It is becoming a bit of an unspoken farty elephant in the room.
(You know it. They know it. Everyone knows it)
As your brain is feeding you with ideas about the best organic markets to buy sprouts from you know you need to get out of this pressure cooker.
Arriving at this fork in your sprout monologue you defiantly state you don’t normally talk this much about sprouts because you “AREN’T WIERD!”
The soft noise of knives and forks on plates from other diners is frankly, deafening.
Is it just you or is there a loudspeaker blasting out the swallowing noises of the man on table 6?
To make it stop you mention that in fact, you don’t even eat sprouts very often because well errr, y-o-u k-n-o-w.
cough…
You haven’t quite explicitly stated the big farty elephant, but at least you’ve awkwardly alluded to it.
Now, feeling some relief that you’ve made it clear you aren’t a walking-talking fart machine and ready to hit REFRESH on the conversation, you suddenly realise you need to ask a question.
You ask if they’ve ever been to Brussels… 😑
You wish you hadn’t asked if they’d been to Brussels and pour yourself a pint of wine.
You will later regret the pint of wine.
Listening to them confusedly explain the time they went to Brussels on the Eurostar you reflect on what the hell just happened.
Instead of putting the Babe in Baba Ganoush, you’ve really put the Moose in Moussaka.
You don’t even know how your addled brain just thought of that analogy which makes no sense at all.
You really need a mega pint of wine.
Wine not.
Snap out of it
It’s odd that when we most need to be wildly impressive, the opposite can happen.
The harder you try to be normal, easygoing, and fun, the more unnatural and weird you are.
It’s a mighty inconvenient effect.
This effect isn’t confined to romantic relationships, nope.
Maybe at work, trying to get respect socially or beating your smarmy little shit of a stepbrother at Mario Kart.
The more we try to be impressive and control an outcome, the faster our plans blow up in our faces.
The effect we want is to step up and be awesome, “Hold my beer, why don’t you”.
The reality is more of a pathetic flopping about, “Please hold my hand… please”.
Mis-directed effort
It’s not just about how we come across.
In self-improvement, there is the “Effortlessness paradox”.
“The harder we try to change ourselves the more resistance we can encounter.”
Consider this.
What happens if you over-water a plant?
It dies.
When we want to grow ourselves, often the most growth happens when we ease the pressure to grow grow grow.
It’s like trying to plant a seed in a raging river.
Instead, we should allow natural change to occur over time.
Painful Paradoxes
If you’re anything like me.
Not only are you a ninja at putting your foot in your mouth at the most important moments.
You probably feel like a lot of the self-improvement narrative has got it backwards.
It’s alluring to think of self-improvement as this linear, predictable process.
There’s a comforting warmth to thinking that if we read enough books, follow enough routines, and stick to our goals, we will be on a fast track to the destination of a better version of ourselves.
The truth is, self-improvement doesn’t work that way.
It’s messy, full of contradictions, and often counterproductive.
Often, trying to fix yourself creates more problems than it solves.
The harder you try, the more you run into paradoxical wormholes—situations where the very effort to improve becomes the reason why you feel worse.
If you’re vaguely interested to hear about them, I spoke about 7 of them on my podcast.
7 Painful Paradoxes of Self-Improvement
It’s good.
On that, I hope you have a great Sunday 🌞
P.S…
If you ever wondered what happens when they fix a broken nose in a hospital (I have ALWAYS wondered this) and you also like watching videos of blood coming out of people’s faces.
I’ve got you covered this Halloween.