The Paradox of Inspiration

You know the saying, “less is more”. Often, things seem to work in contradictory ways.

Some examples:

You need to spend money to earn money.

This doesn’t just apply to forming your own company. Sure, when you start a company, you have investments to make. So, in order to get up and running and start earning money, what you have to do first is spend money. But even if you’re just applying for a job this applies too. In order to make a good impression, you want to look good and be nicely dressed, you investigate about the company that you are applying for, maybe you prepare your “speech” for the interview, and so on and so forth. This costs money and also time (in which you cannot earn money in other ways).

Loved ones stay when you let them go.

A relationship can only work and grow if both parts are in it because they want to and they could leave anytime. If one of both people is forced to stay in the relationship out of whatever reason, it puts pressure on both people. The relationship is not going to work. So, when one person tries to hold onto the other person too much, it might ruin everything. Whereas, if both people manage to let the other person have their freedom (whatever that means in their relationship), both of them can grow together.

“Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” ― Richard Branson

The same applies to companies. If the company tries to keep their employees small in order to be able to control them and because they are afraid that if they train their employees well they will carry that knowledge to some other place, the company will never be successful. Whereas, if the company invests in the employees so that that they can grow and help the company grow, they might not even want to leave.

A similar thing happened in the German Democratic Republic.

From what I heard in interviews, people liked living there in general. They just didn’t like that they were prohibited to leave if they wanted to. They didn’t want to leave, they just wanted to be allowed to choose. And because they were forced to stay, they wanted to go.

It’s the same with your creativity:

If you force yourself to be creative, to come up with brilliant ideas right in that moment and you’re angry with yourself that doesn’t work immediately, you are shutting yourself down creatively and the more you try to get ahead, the angrier you get and the less productive you are. But if you let go of it, all of a sudden while you’re brushing your teeth, or when you’re about to fall asleep, that brilliant idea might come.

The paradox in all of the examples above:

The more you force something to happen the less likely it will happen. Let go of things and they appear.

Learn to let go: