In my own life, there’s a part of me that feels alive, expansive, ready to take big risks…and another part that slows everything down, questions it, and wants space to just be.

They don’t always work together. Over time, I’ve gone to both extremes.

There’s a famous Walt Whitman line:

“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”

And every time I hear it, it gives me permission to be messy on this ever evolving path of entrepreneurship.

But really, what do you when different parts of you want different things? When both of them make sense?

We’re holding multiple truths at once and trying to decide which one gets to be “right.” I think we call this “stuck” too quickly, when really it might just be complexity we’re learning how to stay with.

I notice it in my body. There are moments where I’m writing and something in me just locks up. My hips and legs brace and now it’s all I can focus on. I’ll be mid-sentence, and suddenly things stop flowing. What the hell just happened?

I try to decide, push through it, force clarity. And sometimes I just stop completely and walk away. From the outside, it can look like inconsistency, indecision, overthinking, over-explaining.

There’s a part of me that knows I’m bold. That knows I move toward things. And still—something in me doesn’t always move. It’s maddening at times.

What actually stops us isn’t confusion, it’s protection. I think a lot of us are actually feeling:

• “I don’t trust myself to hold this level of complexity.”

• “What if I change my mind?”

• “I just want relief from not knowing.”

• “I want someone to make it all make sense.”

If I only listened to the part of me that wants safety, I wouldn’t move at all. And if I override that part completely, I pay for it later in my body with aches for days.

I can see the logic in both. That’s almost the problem. I believe both sides.

I think part of it is we want a fixed identity, something stable to stand on. But that’s not really how it works. We’re not one thing. We’re a lot of different things, moving at different speeds. And maybe they don’t all need to be expressed at once—just safe enough to exist.

So, who’s running the show around here?

How do I not abandon the part that wants to move forward… without letting the part that’s afraid shut everything down?

I used to think self-empowerment meant having more clarity and answers. Now I’m wondering if it’s something closer to being able to be kind to yourself in the middle of contradiction without needing to resolve it immediately.

The question I’ve been sitting with is not: How do I fix this?

But: How do I stay with this and still move?