Embrace Your Dark Side for a Brighter Life

When I tell you to accept and embrace your dark side, I don’t want you to become depressed, mean, or otherwise evil. Instead, I want you to find genuine happiness in the right way. Let me explain.

Everyone has a dark side, so it is something that we need to be aware of and accept. Even angels are often depicted carrying swords as a constant reminder that to be good, you need to be aware of the constant conflict with darkness.

This means that if you are predominantly extroverted, you aren’t predominantly introverted; if you are right-handed, you aren’t left-handed; and if you are predominantly logical, you aren’t predominantly creative or emotional in general terms (see Myers-Briggs 16 personality types for more info).

In other words, you can never be good at everything, and often being good at something makes you rather bad at opposing skills.

It is with this in mind that I discuss the duality of life theory, which states that you can always find something positive in a negative in every situation, and vice versa. For example, killing people is generally considered bad. However, killing someone in self-defence could be considered socially and morally acceptable. Conversely, eating “healthy” is considered the right decision. However, given the amount of unhealthy but delicious food in the world, it can be considered a dull practice.

In this way, there are many temptations, many things that we aren’t good at, and, as human beings, we are forever considered incomplete. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as this is exactly what pushes us forward and makes us work towards improving ourselves.

So if you are constantly working towards improving yourself, you are on the right path, and we are all applauding your dedication, vision, and progress.

However, it is harmful if you consider this forever incomplete state, your weaknesses, and your dark side as something bad, beating yourself up and punishing yourself for this apparent discrepancy. Naturally, this isn’t healthy, as being forever incomplete, you will always have something to be angry, sad, anxious, or otherwise experience negative emotions about.

So, it is rather healthy to embrace this part of yourself, learning your strengths and weaknesses, and setting goals, and mindfully and happily pursuing continuous self-improvement while striving towards that perfection that you can never reach.

Of course, another mistake you can make is to do nothing about your situation, altogether giving up, blaming others, cursing your fate, or even giving yourself an overly optimistic personal grade when, in reality, there is an urgent need to work on something.

So accepting and embracing one’s dark side is important because there is no way around it. It is better to be aware of our personal limitations rather than trying to run away from them.

Lastly, for more happiness tips and tricks, I highly recommend you to keep reading this blog. If you want to get more serious about your pursuit of happiness, then you are in the right place, as we have books and programs you can explore that are designed to take your happiness and well-being to its absolute possible level (which is why we call it Optimal Happiness).

I hope you will explore our offerings, in which case, I hope to talk to you soon!

Stay happy.