Solomon’s Paradox
Solomon’s Paradox is the term given to a common phenomenon: our ability to give sensible, rational advice to others but not being able to follow it in our own lives. It’s named after King Solomon, a figure from the Old Testament who was renowned for his legendary wisdom but who struggled to follow his own advice when faced with personal choices. In the book of Proverbs, Solomon writes about the dangers of marrying many wives, saying that ‘he who loves many women is not wise,’ yet he went on to marry around 700 wives himself, a decision that ultimately led to his downfall by turning his heart away from God. Another example was his decision to build a temple for God: in the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon writes about the futility of building great things, saying that ‘all is vanity’. However, he built a magnificent temple for God, which contributed to him becoming proud and arrogant. Solomon consistently sought wisdom and wrote about leading a good life but failed to apply his knowledge to his personal life.
My ‘Thought for the Week’ with our students explored the logical reasons why most people find it difficult to follow the good advice we give to others: when we’re thinking about the problems of other people we are usually objective, rational, calm, and balanced; when we’re considering our own problems, we are usually emotional, irrational and volatile.
It also suggested that there are two simple things we can do to help us overcome Solomon’s Paradox.
The first is to create space: Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor who wrote ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ wrote about the power of space:
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.
Our immediate reactions are almost always emotional, and we make bad decisions in the heat of emotion. If we make ourselves pause (whether it’s seconds, minutes, hours, or days) before reacting we’re much more likely to be able to respond in a way that will be more helpful when it comes to tackling the issue we’re having.
The second is to ‘zoom-out’. We live our lives ‘zoomed in’ most of the time, and when things go wrong this can make the situation feel much worse than it is. One way to ‘zoom out’ is to imagine we’re in the future and to consider what our 70-year-old self would say if they were giving us advice? They would likely be calm, rational and able to put things in perspective.
Whenever we’re finding it difficult to follow advice we know we would give others, these two techniques help us take control of whatever situation we find ourselves in, and come up with ideas of how we can get out of it.
Have a great weekend
Best wishes
Michael Bond
