Contradiction-People Make No Sense to Me

There is a lot going on in the world right now, and many of us sit in judgement about contradiction our fellow humans exhibit.

• We admire Mr Heart’s loving nature, but are baffled that he doesn’t support Black Lives Matter.
• Miss Grace says she thinks everyone is equal, but she does not speak out against racism.
• Mr and Mrs Charity volunteer at the community center for low income youth, but they don’t believe the police discriminate agains people of color.
• Mx Collective chants “all lives matter,” but they refuses to wear a mask in the grocery store.

Sometimes our beliefs, insecurities, or “triggers” interrupt our core values, creating contradictions.

Kindness is one of my core values, and an aversion to being mean has driven much of my behavior.

• I organized a rebellion against a bully, because he was being mean.
• I stopped dating boys that I did not like, because it resulted in their hurt feelings.

Awesome you say! Kindness is great! Everyone should be kind. Sometimes my beliefs, insecurities, and triggers supported my value of kindness, and  other times they contradicted them, and I was mean.

• My desire to be loved meant I usually bent over backwards to do things for people and to be nice to them. This need to be loved was in alignment with my kindness value.
• I formed a belief that popular people were mean, which led to unconscious behavior that made me avoid becoming popular.  As a result, I refused to be friends with popular kids, and was mean to them. A direct contradiction to my kindness value.
• I found out my ex broke up with his girlfriend to sleep with me, so I got naked, pretended I was going to sleep with him, and then left at the height of arousal. Mean–total contradiction to kindness.

More Contradictions

Mr Heart’s values love, but he suffered a traumatic experience at the hands of a person of color. He doesn’t even remember this, but it created an unconscious belief about certain people.

Miss Grace believes that everyone is equal, but she lacks the confidence necessary to speak up.

Mr and Mrs Charity’s volunteer with people of color, but their son is a cop. To believe that cops are bad means they would have to accept the possibility that their son is bad, and that they raised a bad egg. This could create an identity crisis, and topple their self worth and self identity.

Mx Collective believes that “all lives matter,” but he doesn’t believe that COVID is real. They thinks it’s a hoax. The possibility of a pandemic is so scary that their brain has to make up a story to deal with the stress of it. Yes our brains do this—all the time—they make up stories to avoid feeling uncomfortable.

We can not fully understand the dynamics of another’s mind. Hell, we often don’t understand the dynamics of our own mind, but we can take steps to clear out the insecurities, beliefs and triggers that cause contradictions with our values. Are you living the values you hold?

Do you want to change that?

Click here to send me an email about setting up an initial conversation.

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