The Wippe Paradox of day-to-day reality and your deeper aspirations

Toni Crow
Jul 16
10 min read

Updated: Aug 28

How Balancing Your Reality Fuels Conscious Evolution

Ever feel like you’re on a seesaw, constantly oscillating between projects, learning, work, and life’s myriad demands? That's my "Wippe" dilemma. Wippe [VEE-puh] is the German word for seesaw or teeter totter. To me, it feels like whiplash in an ongoing tug-of-war for focus.

Image: “Me” on the Wippe seesaw. Gemini generated.

This is one human's reflective exploration of conscious incremental evolution through applied learning.

What are you reflecting on? What are you playfully experimenting with in your learning?

Time, for instance, isn't just a clock's relentless march; it’s a mindset. Years ago, I shifted my internal dialogue from feeling "busy" to feeling "full," and noticed a profoundly positive difference. This is an example of experimenting and then adopting a practice that integrates my learnings, resulting in a significant evolution for me.

Both "time" and "busy" are four-letter words with weighty feelings that frankly stress me out. Choosing "full" cultivates a sense of "time affluence" rather than "time famine." Believe it or not, this feeling of time famine can be as impactful as job loss, according to Laurie Santos of Yale's Happiness Lab. I practice this mindset of fullness daily. Now I'm also experimenting with empty time and space as an element of that fullness.

Before we go further, what do I mean by “conscious evolution”?

First, terms like professional and personal development, self-improvement, and even change or transformation imply we are coming from a place of deficiency. There's something wrong with us that needs to be fixed! This alone spikes the stress response, and it does us a disservice by not acknowledging and leveraging our experience, natural and nurtured strengths, including our fluid intelligence and ever-crystalizing wisdom.

Do not discount who you are!

Evolution is a natural process. In this context, it is the conscious awareness of what we bring plus an unfolding of ourselves, through integrated, practiced learning and sometimes "unlearning," to incrementally become stronger at self-management (mind, body, spirit).

I feel this is a key to two things:

1. Energizing individual aspirations to be realized, including in well-being, performance, and relationships, plus areas like innovative leadership, or finding deeper fulfillment beyond traditional success metrics; and

2. Over time, our evolution as a species supports creating the future—for ourselves, generations to come, and for the world we live in and share with other living things.

A bit lofty? Perhaps.

Important? Definitely.

Neuroscientists like Michael Gazzaniga study how our brain directs our thinking and our behaviour, posing questions like do we really have free will? They see the non-conscious brain as far more powerful than our thinking brain and having huge influence in our behaviour. So, what if we can make more of the non-conscious conscious?

What are you thinking? What's making sense?

I regularly get coached to support my aims for conscious evolution and for well-focused choices and action, always keeping joy, love, and balance in mind. A deep desire to integrate what I learn, not just intellectually but habitually, fuels me. This means practicing what I learn, writing about it, reflecting, and taking mindful pauses.

I know this approach impacts learning beyond just collecting information.

Navigating Inner Conflicts

Despite "knowing" this, I still experience the seesaw effect. For example, my limiting beliefs:

Those pesky inner critics or saboteurs whisper about having too much to write, not enough experience, or lacking a clear method.
The time paradox: These same voices tell me I don’t have time to integrate and practice what I’m learning.
I also hear whispers that this is not as important as more practical matters of everyday responsibilities.

And it tilts the other way as my expansive beliefs outweigh these doubts. I genuinely believe small contributions, through coaching, writing, practicing and modelling my experiments, can help make the world a better place. Starting with me – the only place we can all start – and then by osmosis. Hopefully, by more and more of us.

I feel a "BIG thing inside" – a collection of decades of learning and experience that I hope can contribute positively to the world and humanity's future, creating ripples through space and time. I have this hope for all of us.

I firmly believe we have the unique capacity to evolve consciously and purposefully. How? Most pivotally, by learning to use our minds differently. Science shows that we can purposely nurture neurobiological shifts, translating into more generative ways of being, thinking, and acting.

In essence, we can shift the balance of fear and love-based thinking and motivations. I like to call fear-based the "push" and love-based is the "pull." What do you feel when you contemplate simply those words? Push. Pull.

Love is the only good reason to do anything!

~ A key line delivered by the character Destruction before he leaves his realm, choosing love for humanity over duty to the Endless. The Sandman [Netflix]. Screenwriters do come up with some doozie wisdom!

While fear drives survival and retains some rational role, it undeniably limits our capacity to think and feel generatively, keeping us from truly thriving. Besides, a lot of our so-called fears are imaginings and not worth the amount of energy they take from us.

As the saying goes,

"Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday...

And everything is fine."

Choosing love-based decisions helps regulate our stress responses and opens up access to greater compassion, curiosity, creativity, collaboration, and adaptability. This isn't just wishful thinking; it’s supported by many respected academics and thinkers like Dan Siegel, who studies awareness, brain structure and well-being and historian and futurist Yuval Noah Harari, who challenges us to evolve consciously in the face of change and challenges.

“The Choice for Conscious Evolution: How Love-Based Decisions Unlock Compassion, Creativity, and Adaptability.”

The real challenge for me—and perhaps anyone on this path of conscious evolution—isn't only knowing what to do, but actually "walking the talk". It's about putting acquired knowledge into practice for true learning and evolution, not just reading or writing about it. It’s like the difference between reading about how to ride a bike and actually practicing riding a bike. That’s what moves the evolutionary needle.

Making the Evolutionary Needle Move: Tangible Benefits of 'Walking the Talk'.

A critical point is that true learning comes from practice,

not just intellectual understanding.

The benefits are personal. For evolutionary impact, purposely noticing what effects of integrated learning through experiments and regular practice experiences are crucial. We need this to move from notion—the purely cognitive—to embodied learning, so we can have an impact that evolves something about us, discreetly or explicitly. These tangible benefits include:

Improving health
A calmer sense, a regulated nervous system
Increased capacity for presence with myself and others
Ability to think more broadly and focus generatively

When I consciously notice, I feel a quality of presence, a healthy, calm sensation. And by practicing these experiences more and more, I’m altering my mind, so old patterns are decomposing, and new habits are becoming embedded. It becomes my new normal, my new natural. This is true learning. And though it is incremental, I believe this is ultimately leading to evolution. As we broaden this understanding and practice through social awareness, schools, however, we can—I feel like this will collectively and incrementally evolve our very species and open up new hope for us and the world.

Yet, despite all this big thinking and gleanings of understanding, I still grapple with keeping up the learning integration and practice and focusing my time effectively, with balance. This is my Wippe seesaw.

My core values serve as a vital anchor towards my purpose and vision and for when confusion or overwhelm hits.

For illustration, my core values with how these show up and are defined according to my own dictionary, not Oxford or Webster's.

Authenticity: to be who we really are
Awareness: intentional openness, to feel and see what’s really here
Curiosity: to learn and to discover what’s really going on
Compassion: to viscerally feel and express love in how we be

We all have core values—aware of them or not. Defined in our own unique language. I hypothesized through writing this article, that our individual core values—yours, mine, everyone’s’—are rooted in what we could consider our fundamental human values: truth, trust, and love. These values ground my purpose and identity, even as I evolve.

Even so, even as my surfaced purpose remains solid, these days my vision itself has become fractured amidst "so many possibilities." As Robert Fritz, a notable management consultant, once put it: "It’s not what the vision is, it’s what the vision does." He also wisely noted, "If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise." This perfectly captures my internal debate.

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.

~ Robert Fritz

My current seesaw dynamic highlights two key challenges that emerged through being coached today: 1) re-freshing my vision and 2) having that vision live alongside "real life," rather than competing with it.

What do I mean by real life?

I invite you to think about what it might mean for you. There are spectrums. It could include:

navigating complex organisational politics
driving innovation in a competitive market
sustaining creativity amidst tight deadlines
bridging academic theory with real-world application

It can also include:

Paying bills and taking care of our homes
Growing the business and our teams (or family)
Ensuring we plan time with loved ones and family vacations
Prioritising our health and supporting others in their well-being.

These aren't obstacles. I recognize all of these are privileges. We “get” to do these things. They are also integral pieces of the whole, and the trick, and my challenge, is to balance them with the vision. Our deeper aspirations.

As the old saying goes, "Vision without action is fantasy; action without vision is chaos". And, as my grandmother would say, "Don't put your wishbone where your backbone ought to be" – a tribute to both grit and heart, in my mind.

The Two Feet of Purpose: Where Grounded Reality Dances with Boundless Evolution!

A vivid image emerged, serving as a dynamic visual and philosophical anchor.

My coach asked me for an image that perfectly captures this struggle. What bubbled into my mind’s eye is me with one foot firmly on the ground, representing the "realistic, reasonable and responsible” Toni. My other foot (still attached to my leg, I promise!) floats and dances in the air, as a representation of pushing the boundaries of my evolution.

This balancing act, this presence in both places, is my starting point. It’s a paradox: "it’s ok not to know + we need to imagine something."

Another useful metaphor is the sailing journey. We need a starting point and a course to chart. Knowing where we are and having an end in mind is crucial, even if we adjust our sails and destinations along the way.

What is that "foot in the air" leading towards? It’s a bold, slightly scary thought to say out loud, but I hope to contribute to the field by building and presenting a practicable theory of conscious evolution.

This may be an act of creation that remains personal, or it could extend beyond me. I wonder if this is something the world could benefit from, especially as humanity stands on the cusp of either great advancement or great peril. While I sometimes question my ability to contribute in this way, I believe in the potential impact of our collective efforts.

Of course, my practical, "foot on the ground" side immediately pipes up: "You should have been doing other, more practical things. Pay the mortgage, allow us holidays, save for retirement". I get it. I’ve made sacrifices, my family has made sacrifices, for me to pursue what I "cannot not do," transitioning from a lucrative career to diving deep into coaching and learning. I'm incredibly grateful for the privilege of continuous learning and growth, even if it is also expanding my coaching skills. But I also grapple with a feeling that this pursuit might be "indulgent". Am I truly worth it? Do I earn this luxury of learning and experimenting?

This internal conflict often freezes me, leaving the the seesaw stuck rather than on the whiplash setting. I realized today, while being coached, that my vision feels unclear.

I constantly struggle with balance, which can render me motionless. These feelings of doubt... oh, those saboteurs weigh heavily! Even though our saboteurs originate from love, they are now maybe 5% a message to take care and 95% fear-based and just not serving me!

I am grateful my coach reminded me today that my core values integrate into this picture. They are what strengthen both my feet. I can now see that the process behind these values is my "foot in the air," the very source of my energy. I can see energy cascading from that foot in the air.

The image is telling me to trust. Trust process, trust this emerging path. Wippe now: It's difficult to trust and to vision when burdened by emotional weight. So, I’ll be looking at that in my practices and experiments, and in our next coaching session.

I am reminded that aspects of my vision, my sailing course, remain crystal clear:

Coaching is where I'm meant to be
Learning is essential along with pushing my own comfort zone boundaries
Our upcoming book, "Sparks," is a key part of my journey (more on that another time)
My conscious evolution work and book is insistently bubbling up and has been for years

So, while the path ahead still holds uncertainty, the message is clear: trust my values and that foot in the air—the process. It gives me energy. It gives me strength.

Trust the Process: Your Core Values and Inner Journey are Your Energy Source.

What's your 'Wippe'?

How do you balance your grandest visions with the day-to-day realities?

Is there an image emerging for you?

Perhaps your core values can serve as your anchor, and trusting your inner process can be the energy source for your own conscious evolution. I'd love to hear your thoughts and insights.

If this resonates, and you're seeking to transform your own Wippe dilemma into a source of energy and conscious action, I invite you to connect.

Some sources:

Fast Company. (2024, December 10). A simple exercise from Yale's Happiness Lab that will help you make decisions that lead to long-term happiness. Jenna Abdou interviews Yale’s Happiness Lab founder Laurie Santos.
Siegel, D. J. (2020). The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are (3rd ed.). New York, NY: The Guilford Press; and related courses and resources
Michael S. Gazzaniga (2011)Who's in Charge?: The Neuroscience of Decision-Making, the Notion of Free Will and the Idea of a Determined World. Ecco
Yuval Noah Harari, multiple writings, books and talks including this one.
Robert Fritz (1994), The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life, Elsevier Science & Technology Books
Anything on "whole-brain" thinking. Or as I like to term it, "whole-being" thinking.