Holding Paradox: New Year, Whole You
TL;DR
Forget "New Year, New You." What if 2026 is about becoming more wholly yourself? In this episode, Nic explores the power of paradox (holding contradictory truths at the same time) and why it's essential for building authentic brands, finding joy, and navigating complexity. From AI struggling with warm blues to why having a niche doesn't mean your brand should be one-dimensional, this is about embracing the "both/and" instead of forcing yourself into an "either/or."
Key Takeaways:
- The one thing wholeness requires that most people try to avoid
- What social media algorithms demand (and why fighting it might be your competitive advantage)
- Why the best brands refuse to pick a side
- The paradox problem that took 14 hours and a locked hotel room to solve
- What joy doesn't have in common with happines (and why it's a good thing)
Resources & Links Mentioned:
- Citrus Program: Grab it now to join us Live
- Brand in a Week: Book a call with Nic
- Joy First Founders' Circle: Join our community
- Strong Ground by Brené Brown
-
Built to Last by Jim Collins
Welcome to 2026
Hello and welcome to 2026. It is here. It has happened.
I am coming to you from my cozy bed with my snoring Frenchie by my side. As always, I'm sure you will hear her at some point. I am sneaking away again for an hour of chat with you while my kids are happily watching Ballerina downstairs with their grandma.
My mom is in town from America to spend Christmas with us, which is such a treat. She's here for a month this time, which is awesome. And she makes herself busy doing all kinds of cooking and projects.
Grandma Sherryl's Greatest Hits
In our house, she's famous for a few things this time of year, especially gingerbread.
So we have a ritual of making gingerbread houses, which is a recipe from a very, very old cookbook, I think that belonged to her mom.
This year when she arrived, she did another thing that she's getting known for in our house, which is a sewing project. A couple of years ago, she bought me a sewing machine for my birthday and I was like, thanks, because I don't sew. I'd like to, but I'm just not in that phase of life right now.
But every time she's come over, she's done some really nice sewing projects, which has been great. This year she made some Christmas aprons. So the girls had beautiful little aprons to do their gingerbread houses in.
The Sourdough Journey
She's also become very associated in this house with sourdough.
She stole some of my incredible sourdough starter that I got from my mentor, Natalie, last January. So almost a year ago now, she took it home with her and went on a crazy sourdough journey back home in Seattle, which I think has been a part of her sort of joy first lifestyle for the past year.
But she brought some back with her and she's been making really great sourdough loaves and these really amazing crackers with the discard. I don't know if you do sourdough, if you're one of those COVID converts. I came late to the party. I only started last year, but she's got this great recipe for these crackers that you use the discard for and they are so good. I'll have to get the recipe from her and see if I can post it because my God, they are like life changing. They're so salty and nice.
Living Room Yoga and Handstand Chairs
And the other thing I think she's known for around here is consistently doing yoga in our not very large living room before bed every night.
My girls are always so excited. She brings this roller that she rolls on her back and they are always like, as soon as they get here, get out your roller grandma.
She invested in this special chair for doing handstands that she keeps here at our house. And when she's about to arrive, we get it out of the garage and we bring it in for her.
So those are some of the Grandma Sherryl quirks.
The One Phrase That Started Everything
But when it comes to things that she stands for or talks about, aside from phrases like "because I'm the mom" or "make good decisions," which were things she said that completely haunted my youth, over the last couple of decades, there is one phrase that I associate with her.
And it's the words both and.
I wanted to start this episode by talking about her because this episode has kind of been brewing for me. There's a book I'm reading and some feedback that's come in. And the writing of the Joy First book has kind of all brought this idea to the forefront.
But having my mom here, and she said it, I don't know, a dozen times since she's been here already.
This idea of the both and is core to how she lives, but she's also an executive coach. And so it's a big part of her coaching practice, leaving the door open for nuance and complexity, which is an important thing in corporate environments and leadership.
And what it's really about is holding the paradox.
What I'm Prioritizing in 2026
As I've been in that time of year where we're doing all this reflecting and sitting with the feedback we've gotten from our clients, thinking about what's ahead, what I want to keep, let go of, and as I've been writing the Joy First book, I've got a lot of clarity about what I'm prioritizing.
Which, of course, is joy.
We talked about that in the last episode. That's a really good one. If you haven't heard it, I shared some stuff for the first time from the book, sharing the joy codes and what joy is made of and how we find it especially during the hard times and how choosing joy isn't frivolous or self-indulgent but it's actually quite strategic and even a bit revolutionary.
The Other Guiding Light
But there's another guiding light that keeps showing up throughout this process with writing the book.
Something that also has shown up recently in feedback from our Founders' Circle members and client transformations. And definitely is very present in the way that I build brands and the way I've constructed the Colour Brand® method and the ways that I've tried to engage in conversation, especially after doing whatever it is, five years of kind of deep diving into anti-racism and learning about my own privilege and how to step into these conversations and listen.
Definitely, definitely still working on that one.
But I also think this idea is something that our collective future desperately, desperately needs.
And that is the ability to hold the tension of opposites. This idea of the both and, this idea of the paradox.
This Isn't Just Philosophy
And this isn't just philosophy. It's really functional to how we build brands. It's really integral to how we navigate our personal growth.
And honestly, I think it might be one of the most important things that we need to understand, embrace, accept, promote if we want to save our species and the planet, right?
Actually, I think pretty big stuff.
So, let's talk about paradox.
Welcome to the Joy First Podcast. I am your host, J. Nichole Smith. Today we are diving into the idea of paradox and holding opposites and the tension that gets inherently created.
What is a Paradox?
So let's start with a definition. What is a paradox?
Fancy word. Basically, it just means a person or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.
My Favorite Paradoxes
And they surround us everywhere, but as a designer and an aspiring minimalist, two of my favorite examples of paradoxes would be less is more, right? Often the idea that something very simple can be the most impactful.
Or the more you have, the less you want. The way abundance gets us out of that proving and striving energy and gives us clarity about what really matters.
The Joy and Anxiety Paradox
But as I've also been working on the Joy First book and sitting with the opposites inherent in being someone advocating for joy and writing a book on the subject, while I've also been personally struggling with a lot of my own anxiety and mental health stuff and like all of us managing a fairly constant barrage of dread and despair watching world events unfold, this idea has come up repeatedly.
Around what joy is and how joy works and that it inherently sets up this paradox where unlike happiness, which is the only thing you can kind of feel at a time, joy can exist alongside other feelings.
So we can feel joy and grief.
We can feel joy and despair.
And that's what I've been working on for the last year is how to embody that and how to really be that and bring that forward and be someone who advocates for that when I'm not someone who is joyful all the time.
And certainly for the last year, I've had a massive increase in my own anxiety and trying to manage like being someone struggling with so much anxiety while also being someone advocating for joy. It's a really complex thing, right? And it creates a lot of tension.
Our Members Are Feeling This Too
And this has come up for our clients as well. I'm obviously not the only one sitting in this paradox, especially around joy and the both and of holding joy and grief.
And our members have been sharing how grateful they are for our community as a space that helps them hold joy, prioritize joy, alongside dealing with despair, dealing with contentment versus ambition and gratitude, alongside grief and rage and all the other complex and challenging things we've experienced together.
2025 was a lot, personally for me, collectively for us, and globally.
And so what we've been building in the Founders' Circle is not some shiny, perfect version of joy. It's been a practice, right? Building a practice of being able to find and choose and share joy, even in a world, a day, a moment, a brain, a body that feels difficult or broken or totally overwhelmed.
The Book That Brought It All Together
And what's been really interesting is I've mentioned in the last couple of episodes, I've been reading Brené Brown's book Strong Ground, and this really brought forward the idea of paradox.
And when I heard her talking about it and when I heard her mention Carl Jung, who is sort of the founder of modern psychology and the guy who kind of created this idea of the archetype, so someone who's very embedded in the work that I do, I was like, we got to end the year talking about this.
It felt very serendipitous and it felt like the right thing to do and with my mom being here and being surrounded with this both and energy, it felt really important to talk about.
Making This Practical
So yeah, it's a big topic, but stick with me because I want to help make this practical and tangible and useful and give you something to work with.
I've got some journaling questions for you at the end of the episode that I think will really help create a space for some clarity and some reflection, which this year seems to be the perfect time for this.
If you're listening to this the day it comes out, it is actually New Year's Day. So hopefully you've got a couple of days of bit of downtime and it's the perfect time to be thinking about some of these bigger ideas.
The Tension We're All Navigating Right Now
So first, let's acknowledge the very real tension that we are navigating right now, especially if you are a business owner.
So one of the things that you will have had drilled into your head for the entire time that you've been in business, every webinar, book, workshop that you will have attended, read, etc. will be emphasizing the importance of a niche, right, of picking a lane.
And just like every good marketer or brand builder, I am one of the people who will be encouraging you to get more specific, to be more clear about who you're for and to make it as specific and narrow and simple as possible.
Because that's what makes the job of marketing, the job of selling easier and more effective.
What Social Media Algorithms Actually Want
And I would say that marketing and branding is kind of obsessive about this, but nothing is more obsessive than social media algorithms.
I can tell you after spending a few months recently really deep diving into what it takes to grow on TikTok and also seeing the ways that Instagram is changing, one thing became very, very, very clear very quickly.
And that is that social media algorithms want and need us to be super absurdly niche.
They want us to be so totally focused on one idea, one problem, one keyword, right? One topic, one subject exclusively day after day after day after day after day, right?
No nuance, no complexity, the same keywords, the same topic in a hundred different ways with 20 different types of content day after day after day.
Which of course, does not come naturally to most humans trying to express themselves or indulge their creativity or be spontaneous or build something they won't be bored of in a week, which is why I've always struggled with social media personally.
The Inspiring Handpan Girl
But I wanted to share this with you because there was an example recently that completely emphasized this, but also blew my mind a little.
So I have a friend whose husband has a really massive YouTube channel. They have like, I don't know, 12 million followers or something. I mean, it's huge, huge. They have a daughter. Her name is Flavia, and she has just recently, I think in March, picked up an instrument called the handpan, which if you're not familiar with it, it sort of looks like an overturned fire pit, sort of like a metal dome with some indents in it and you play it by just tapping on different parts of it. It has some dips and it makes beautiful, beautiful, beautiful sounds.
And she started playing it in March, just immediately had a knack for it, became obsessed.
And since March, she's posted about 30 videos of her in the almost exact same position playing very similar music on this instrument.
130,000 Followers From 30 Videos
And she went from zero to one hundred and thirty thousand followers in like six months**.
** Since discovering her two weeks ago and posting this, she's now up to 180k - that's 50k growth in just a matter of days 🤯 **
One hundred and thirty thousand followers, thirty videos, basically one piece of content over and over again.
And this was such a powerful lesson for me because it reinforced what I've already known and discovered about just how specific and consistent social media wants us to be.
But also, it was a really interesting, it really highlighted for me the struggle that I have with my own content creation and storytelling journey, because as humans, we are complex, we are multi-passionate.
We get bored easily and when we have a business that makes it even more complicated, right?
Like this little girl absolutely loves this thing. She's obsessed with it and her parents have kind of just taken a few videos and posted them for her so she doesn't have to deal with any of the social media side of it. I don't even know if she looks at the account.
The Joy Piece
And what is so totally clear alongside the specificity of this is the clarity of passion. How much joy there is in this thing that she loves, which is a side note we will talk about later.
But we're human beings, right? We're not content machines.
We're human beings. We're not content machines.
And especially when we complicate social media trying to grow a business there, we get really muddled up with balancing what we want and need, what the business wants and needs, our own passion and excitement with what the algorithm actually requires for us to get any kind of organic growth.
The Bizarre Tensions We're Living In
So we're living in this sort of bizarre tension of deep fakes proliferating while we really crave these passionate real experiences.
Our echo chambers isolating us while we desperately want and need real dialogue.
Binary thinking really starting to take over in our world where we're in this divisive black and white yes or no sort of binary where we know that the world is more complex than that and demands nuance.
And when it comes to this online stuff, performing consistently online and trying to project something niche and perfect while being really messy and complex humans offline.
As AI Gets Better
And as we descend deeper into a world full of AI generated everything where you can't always tell what's real anymore, right, it's going to get better and better and better.
Being able to step out of binary thinking, embrace the mess, I mean that quite literally as well, like we're gonna have to get less and less and less perfect and more and more raw with what we're posting.
But also being able to just sit with multiple things being true at the same time is not just a nice to have, it's essential.
The Paradox of the Algorithm
So while the algorithms are pushing us to have this one subject keyword niche, we have to be able to hold the nuance and complexity of things that are not oversimplified.
Which in and of itself is another sort of paradox, isn't it?
What Brené Brown Taught Me About Wholeness
So circling back to Strong Ground, this book by Brené Brown, which I do highly recommend (it's really good, no great surprise)... She talks a lot about paradox and she references both Richard Rohr and Carl Jung, who both speak a lot to paradox and they really reference it in regards to it being a key to wholeness.
So I mentioned in the title of this episode, not New Year, new you, but New Year, whole you and paradox becomes an essential key to unlocking, embracing, allowing, embodying the sense of wholeness that I think we are going to need like oxygen as we step into this new world.
Richard Rohr on Paradox
So Richard Rohr or Father Richard as Brené calls him says we must learn to accept paradoxes or we will never love anything or see it correctly.
We will never love anything or see it correctly.
That I feel is so powerful because we're all just making up stories, aren't we? But if we really want to love something or someone, we have to really see it for what it is and not what we want it to be.
Carl Jung on Paradox
And Carl Jung, who she also mentions, who I also mentioned is kind of deeply embedded in the work that I do, he believed that spirituality can't be separated from paradox and that basically paradox, that messy, complex tension of opposites is the closest thing to real life.
Which makes sense, right? Because it is as real as life gets. Real life is messy. It is contradictory. Multiple things are true at the same time.
The Strength to Hold Messy Tension
And what Brené teaches in Strong Ground is that we need to be able to develop the strength and the grounding to hold that messy tension, to hold the discomfort of two competing ideas, not until we oversimplify them into one, but until something new emerges.
We need to seek not to try and resolve the discomfort immediately, not to pick a side, not to force a tidy conclusion, but to hold it, stay with it, and let something emerge from that tension.
And this requires, and I'm quoting this here, cultivating a contemplative mind and practice, the ability to hold tensions without anxiety and without the need for immediate solutions.
My Mom Has Been Saying This for Years
So as I mentioned, my mom's been saying this for years with her both and advice, and she works with executives in some of the biggest companies in America.
But now she really focuses on purpose-driven companies. And obviously, in a corporate environment, it is so forced and necessary oftentimes, but certainly convenient for everything to be neat and resolved.
And so this is something that she is constantly bringing to her work of this reality that wholeness, which is where we want to be leading from, especially purpose-driven organizations who care about more than just the bottom line, it requires us to be able to hold multiple truths.
Being in communication, resolving conflict, creating growth, inspiring, innovating. It requires us to not just pick one truth, but to be able to hold multiple.
This is the root of our wholeness.
So it might not be great for clickbait, but it is great for joy.
This Shows Up in Business Research Too
But this isn't just spiritual or psychological territory. This shows up in business research as well.
So let's add in someone else Brené mentions in the book, Jim Collins, who you might know from Good to Great or Built to Last. And he talks about what he calls the paradoxes of liberation.
The Genius of the And
In Built to Last, he introduces the concept called the Genius of the And, and he says we need to reject the tyranny of the or and embrace the genius of the and.
Purpose and profit, heritage and innovation, structure and creativity, premium and accessible, not just purpose or profit, but both.
Not just how to honor your history or be ready for the future, but both, figuring out a way to have both.
Gritty Faith and Gritty Facts
And Brené talks about the practice she has in her business that has kind of emerged from Jim Collins' advice around embracing what she calls gritty faith and gritty facts, dreaming and reality checking those dreams, hope and the brutal truth.
And this I really resonated with because for over a decade in my business, we've talked about the madness to method spectrum and the fact that as entrepreneurs, many of us fall pretty heavily to one side or the other of the spectrum.
The Method to Madness Spectrum
So for me, I'm pretty heavily on the madness side.
And what that means in sort of this definition that I've created is like a lot of time blindness and creativity and innovation, imagination, vision, a lot of really great sort of visual creativity and dynamic relationship, presentation, human stuff.
And on the other side of the spectrum is a lot of what is certainly more praised in business. We have a lot of plans and systems processes, organization, being able to create a timeline and a Gantt chart, having very clean project management and turning everything into a method or a process.
You Probably Won't Change
And what I've experienced in 20 years of entrepreneurship is that if you fall heavily to one side of the spectrum, you are very unlikely to change. You're very unlikely to just be more of the other side of the spectrum.
But both are really, really important for great businesses and great brands to innovate, compete, win hearts and minds and money.
And so what I've always advocated is surrounding yourself with whatever the opposite that you are or making sure there's a good balance in your business of both. So if you're heavily one, you need to offset that with the other so you can get a mentor or a number two or a team or a coach or someone who kind of brings whatever it is that you don't have to really help you grow.
Both Matter
And so that really resonated with me, this idea of gritty faith and gritty facts. Like we can't all just be dreamers. There's a hard reality in business, right? And we can't just all be method. We can't all just plan or there's no magic. There's nothing for people to get excited about or attracted to when it comes to the actual purchasing.
So both are really important.
And I think this is one of the main paradoxes that we sit with as entrepreneurs is how to hold these opposites that we shouldn't put them into a hierarchy of one being more important than the other, but we have to be able to understand that both matter, both are important, and how to honor and support both to be able to have it all, right?
Purpose and profit, heritage and innovation, premium and accessible.
Not everybody who wants to be able to charge premium pricing wants to be an elitist, prestigious snobby brand. A lot of people that I've worked with want to try and hold the tension of both.
The 14-Hour Hotel Room Lockdown
OK, so I want to talk more about that, the tension of those opposites when it comes to brand building in a second. But before I get there, I want to take it somewhere very, very concrete that came up recently.
So as you may or may not have heard, I've recently launched this program called Citrus, which I'm obsessed with. It is so cool.
Basically, I've taken my Colour Brand® method, which is the way I build brands with these frameworks of personality types and archetypes and colour psychology. And I've built AI copilots to help you take all of what is in my brain and apply it without me very quickly, very affordably.
And so I spent weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks building these AI copilots.
And the hardest one by far was the colour copilot, where I have taught this copilot how to use both applied colour psychology and colour psychology. So both the personality type colour group piece, as well as what colours make us feel what things to help you build a psychologically sound colour palette for your brand.
When AI Got Confused
And when I was trying to build this, the reason this one took longer than all the others, one day I literally locked myself in a hotel and spent 14 hours nonstop trying to troubleshoot this copilot because it kept getting confused.
When I was working with ChatGPT to build the instructions to get the output that I wanted, I would say this blue is warm or I would say we need warm blues and I was trying to explain the difference between a colour being warm and a colour having a warm undertone.
A Quick Colour Psychology Lesson
So for example, give you a quick little lesson in colour to make this more clear.
But if you were taught colours in primary school, you would have been taught about warm colours and cool colours, right? Warm colours would be like red, yellow and orange, and cool colours would be like blue and purple.
And you might not have been taught about undertones. And what that simply means is every colour in the world can be divided into groups. And that is whether it has a blue or yellow undertone. It's either a warm or a cool undertone.
Warm Blues and Cool Pinks
So if we think of a colour like blue, a warm undertone would be like a teal or moving in towards turquoise. That would be a cool colour blue with a warm undertone.
And a cool undertone would be one that was much colder. So something like navy or more leaning towards the cobalts where it's like a blue blue, cold blue blue blue.
And so this makes sense to me. This is common knowledge in the world of colour.
But ChatGPT was really, really, really struggling to understand the difference between a cool colour and a cool undertone.
The Paradox AI Can't Handle
And this to me felt like such a great example of this paradox thing in real life where a cool colour can be warm and a warm colour can be cool.
So if we look at a warm colour like pink, a warm undertone pink would be like a salmon, something that's moving towards peachy or corally. And a cool undertone pink would be more like a Barbie pink or some of the baby pinks, which are much bluer, much less yellow and much more blue.
ChatGPT really struggled with this paradox that a colour can be fundamentally cool and have warmth in it or be fundamentally warm with a cool undertone and vice versa.
And AI really struggled to hold both of those truths at once. It needed it to be a binary.
Finally Finding the Workaround
And we did finally find a workaround, but it took me ages to understand that this is what was happening, is that it fundamentally didn't understand that a warm colour can be cool and a cool colour can be warm.
And this is the paradox of colour.
There are inherently warm colours, but they can also be described as cool. And there are no inherently bad colours, but there are colours that can have a negative psychological impact on us, just like there are no inherently bad people, but people can do bad things.
And a colour can seemingly be two opposite things at the same time.
And when you can understand this, when you can hold this tension, that's when you can start to create harmony. That's when you can start to create depth and nuance and these really, really great feelings that colour psychology allows us to do.
But you have to move beyond this flat one dimensional thinking into something rich and real and multidimensional.
The Magic Isn't just in the Extremes
The magic isn't in just the extremes, it's in being able to hold the tension that is inherent everywhere and not having to immediately try and resolve that discomfort.
So this is actually how the Colour Brand® method works, not just with colour, but with the frameworks that we use to build complex brands instead of just flat stereotypes.
The Problem With Most Design projects
Because the problem with that is one of the experiences that founders often have when they go to build a brand and they go to a designer, someone on Fiverr or Upwork or someone really good who's really visual, that person wants you to tell them what you want so they can create it for you.
And oftentimes that person will be looking to resolve any tensions that they see because they want to move you towards simplicity.
Which isn't inherently bad, right? We've already talked about how less is more. Simplicity can be great.
But when we are oversimplifying things, we often lose a lot of the meaning, a lot of the emotional connection, a lot of the places where our clients and customers can see and feel seen, that they can relate to us.
When We Flatten Out the Nuance
When we flatten out all the nuance then we start to risk building something very flat, very boring, very easy to copy and something that you are likely to get back and look at and think no this isn't it, this isn't me because there's a whole major piece of what you've wanted or tried to describe that has just been eliminated because it's too complicated, because it makes it too hard to be two opposite things at once, right?
How We Build Brands With Paradox
So when we build brands, I've built a framework to be able to name and hold and express that tension effectively and consistently.
Because when we use personality types and archetypes in our positioning, we put names and words to this tension, we find the key place where these opposites can be held and expressed with copy and visuals and imagery and pricing.
Then we are able to create the complex while also creating a first impression that feels harmonious and simple.
And this is how we do it inside the Colour Brand® method and how we build brands with paradox instead of these flat stereotypes.
Stereotypes vs Archetypes
Stereotypes are one dimensional. They are predictable.
Archetypes are dimensional, complex and rich. And most importantly, they are rooted in psychological motivations. And most of those psychological motivations, while simple, are nuanced, right, they have depth.
Picture a Luxury Brand
So for example, if someone says picture a luxury brand, what are you gonna see?
You're probably first gonna imagine black and white maybe gold or silver. You're gonna see a lot of white space, something that feels cold, minimal and all of these things are things we will associate immediately with looking or feeling expensive, right?
That is a stereotype. Yes. That is one version of luxury, one version, but it's the stereotypical version of luxury. It's the one that we've learned to associate with car companies and brands like Chanel.
It is one version of what premium can look like. And it is the one that has been sold as the version, right? The Rolex, Apple, Chanel version of luxury.
It's the Starshine version of luxury, but every personality type has a version of luxury.
My Version of Luxury
And what has been really interesting to me as I am no longer the broke college student I was when I started my business and have been able to build more wealth and have wealthier clients and go to more places that are very luxurious, what I've started to understand about myself is that my version of luxury doesn't look like that.
My version of luxury is not blingy or fancy or marble or cold or shiny.
I like warm, I like comfortable.
One of my big takeaways from visiting Necker Island a couple of times is just how much this, arguably one of the most exclusive, I guess we can call it a hotel resort in the world, feels like someone's living room.
And it's warm, it's sort of like Indonesian inspo, so it's a lot of warm woods and plants and tile and it's not shiny and it doesn't look fancy, it just looks, I don't know, simple and it's in this incredibly beautiful place and that is in one definition the absolute pinnacle of luxury but it doesn't look quote unquote fancy.
Luxury Can Be Playful
So what about luxury that wants to be warm or accessible or playful?
There's brands like Kate Spade, which has this black and white aesthetic, but also brings a whole bunch of playfulness in.
I talk about Virgin a lot, they're a really good example of a brand that has a really strong hold in luxury and creating luxury experiences and also holding a lot of silliness and play.
And that is where you're now in paradox territory.
And that's where it gets really interesting when we can hold open the possibility that the stereotypes that we have learned to associate with things are not the only version available to us. It's not the only way we have to build a brand. It's not the only option. And that we can be multiple things at the same time.
Airbnb: Global and Local
So look at a brand like Airbnb. They are one of the most global brands in the world. And what are they currently marketing? Being local, right?
They are a short stay brand and they advocate for feeling like you live here, for feeling like a long-term resident, they are holding this tension in their marketing.
Naming the Tension
So when we do it in branding, we identify personality types and archetypes, and these allow us to choose and commit to what the personality type, psychological motivations and tensions are, what's the hierarchy of that, and then we can name it and we can give it copy, imagery, colour, etc.
It doesn't mean we're going to be a hundred different things. We're going to be max three, depending on how nuanced we do it. One primary for sure.
But once we have a name and language and imagery and a psychological motivation that we're trying to be and hold, then we can create that tension like you would direct a symphony where there is a time and a place and an energy for everything. It happens on purpose and it happens consistently over time.
Where the Magic Happens
And this is where the magic happens, because this is how we create something emotionally resonant. This is how we create something that feels like it magically fits you and your ideal client can see themselves in it without you having to over explain everything all the time, because it happens in the first impression because of the way you've orchestrated this set of tensions.
The magic is in the tension. It's in the holding, I am this and this without resolving it into something more simple but less true.
The Labs & Co. Example
Another really good example of this is that I worked with some clients of mine. There's a nice video from them on the website if you want to go to go.joyfirstworld.com/branding, they talk about this experience.
But it's Nat and Bill, the brand is the Labs & Co. And they've spent a decade building this really outdoorsy pet photography brand, really, really rooted in the outdoors because they call themselves Outdorks and they spend a lot of their time outside.
A lot of their photography is known for being hiking in the redwoods, in the snow, in these beautiful meadows and outdoor locations.
Indoorsy folks Who Love the Outdoors
But they were also finding that they are really connected to home, too.
Like Nat is someone who I really associate with the perfect cozy meal at home and these kind of creature comforts of home. She's really, really good at creating that vibe. And a lot of their commercial work was inside. They were doing a lot of indoor stuff for brands and they were really feeling they needed this shift of not just making their whole brand about being outside.
And so they came to me and we worked with this tension.
Strong Roots and Freedom
And what we really discovered, we shifted their archetypes a little bit and discovered that the two are very connected, that the freedom to be outside was also rooted in having strong roots at home.
And so they brought in this both and, yes, we love to be outside and we love to come home. We love the warmth and the comfort of having strong roots and we love the freedom to get outside.
And I think it brought not only a whole new dimension to their brand, but it really resolved a tension that they were having because their brand felt oversimplified from who they actually were and who they actually wanted to serve.
We Are All Made of Contradictions
And this isn't just in our brands, right? The reason it's reflected in brands is because we build brands like personalities of people. We are all made up of contradictions. The question isn't whether we are contradictory. We are, obviously, undeniably.
The question is whether we can hold the psychological discomfort of that reality.
And this is something I've noticed over and over for years and years that people really struggle with this part.
One Foot in One Camp
And I've described it in the past as kind of having one foot in one camp and one foot in the other where we really, really desire to resolve this tension as quickly as possible because we find it uncomfortable.
We struggle with joy and grief. We feel like we're only allowed one at a time.
We struggle with ambition and contentment. It's hard for us to find the place where both have room.
We struggle with confidence and uncertainty. If there's any uncertainty, it's hard for us to find confidence.
We struggle with imposter syndrome. If we don't know everything, how can we feel confident being an expert in anything?
We struggle with freedom and structure. This is a big one most of us have learned if we've entrepreneured for any length of time and we value freedom, that we have to create some structure to truly feel any freedom in our life and business.
And we struggle with strength and vulnerability. We struggle to feel strong and powerful and also be vulnerable.
We Can Hold the Capacity for Both
And we are all on this journey as human beings.
Some things are going to be physically impossible at the same time, but almost always you can be one thing in one second and the next in another second. You can hold the capacity for both and we can do that in a way that doesn't just give us an excuse for constant chaos.
We need to be able to prepare. We need to be able to prioritize. We need to be able, in the case of brands, to get very clear and very consistent and do the same things over and over again to hold that tension and not just show up as someone different every single day.
This Isn't a Free Pass for Chaos
What I am not saying here is just giving a free pass for total chaos.
But because we've trained ourselves to feel like we have to pick, we have to be consistent, we have to pick a lane, especially online, right, where social media is going to reward that, we flatten ourselves and we oversimplify things where we are simplifying out the emotional resonance, which is the magic, which is what makes a brand actually work.
And then we wonder why we feel exhausted and why our brands don't feel like they fit us. That's one of the things I hear all the time is I just don't feel like this fits me. And this is often the reason why.
Why We Can't Articulate What We Do
And it's also connected to why we can't articulate what we do and we can't do that quickly and succinctly because we're complicated and there's so many things.
So again, we have to plan, we have to prioritize, we have to pare it down, but we don't have to flatten it. We don't have to oversimplify it to the point where we can be just like anyone else.
What It Costs Us When We Flatten Ourselves
What does it cost us when we do that?
It costs us authenticity, right? We are complex beings and when we pretend to be oversimplified, the gap between who we are and who we are performing is really exhausting.
And that's one of the things that has crumbled for me this past year is the ability to kind of perform, to hold that gap. And so I've had to do a lot of soul searching around my own authenticity.
And this is something that we are gonna have to prioritize as business owners, especially in how we show up online, because this is gonna become the most important part of any kind of organic growth on social media as we move forward and AI and deep fake and everything takes root.
We Also Lose Opportunities
We also lose opportunities because when we box ourselves in these overly narrow lanes, then we miss out and other people miss out on the next one, which is connection.
Where people don't actually relate to the perfection or the oversimplification because they relate to the complexity, to the mess and to the realness.
We Miss Out on Joy
And we miss out on joy because performing something one dimensional or pretending you're one dimensional is soul crushing. None of us are and none of us want to be that.
So we have to find a way to be able to hold this tension and also not just spiral into chaos.
We Miss Out on Impact
And we miss out on impact because the world's biggest problems are complex and they need dimensional thinking, not binary, right?
We are moving out of the binary world. We are saying goodbye to those oversimplified solutions and those oversimplified narratives of the past.
We've Got to Stop Creating Boring Brands
We have got to stop creating boring brands because we're afraid of complexity.
We are exhausting ourselves performing consistency when that might not be the thing we actually need. We are missing the fullness, the wholeness of being human.
And collectively, it's keeping us stuck. It's keeping us in this us versus them, divisive right versus wrong, this way versus that way stuff that has gotten really, really bad in the past couple of years.
To Move Out of That
And to move out of that, we are going to have to be able to absorb, expand our ability to hold multiple truths and to not immediately get tribal and put people in camps based on a single belief.
Climate change isn't going to be solved by simply picking environment over economy, right? We can't do that. We have to hold the both and of those things both being important because capitalism isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
And political polarization isn't solved by one side winning or one side bringing all the data to a fight of emotions, right? It requires holding complexity.
Social justice isn't just about reversing power dynamics. It's about creating something new that honors multiple truths.
How This Shows Up in Your Brand
So in your brand, this might show up as getting stuck between things you think you have to be or want to be.
Should I be premium or should I be accessible?
Or being paralyzed between structure and spontaneity when what you actually need is a blend of both.
Confused about whether you want to be an expert or whether you want to be really relatable where maybe the most compelling position for you is being a really relatable expert.
These are not problems we solve by picking one. These are tensions we hold until something new gets created.
My Invitation: New Year, Whole You
So here is my invitation as we step into the new year.
Instead of new year, new you, let's go with new year, whole you.
What if 2026, you gave yourself permission to:
- Stop flattening yourself
- Embrace your contradictions
- Build a brand that reflects your full complexity
- Hold multiple truths at the same time
- Find your strong ground to stand on while you figure out how to do this because it isn't easy
- Not force yourself to resolve it quickly, but be able to hold that discomfort
Joy Doesn't Equal Comfort
And by the way, this is one of the most important things I've discovered in my Joy First research, is that one of the most important parts of our joy is being able to get more uncomfortable, to hold that discomfort because some of our greatest joy comes the other side of really hard work, of really long waiting.
So don't assume that joy equals comfort. That's often happiness. Joy can absolutely stand and often is on the other side of hard work.
Common Tensions You Might Be Sitting With
So let's look at a few things that you might be sitting with, and then I'm going to give you a few questions.
Here are a few really common sort of tensions that I see that could go side by side instead of having to be one or the other. Some of them we've already mentioned, but I'll just give you them again.
In Your Brand:
- Premium and accessible
- Structured and spontaneous
- Thought leader and still learning
- Polished and raw
- Focused and multi-passionate
- Established and evolving
- Being ambitious and present
- Having a strategic plan and following your intuition
- Scaling and maintaining intimacy
- Being profitable and purposeful
- Having systems and soul
- Prioritizing growth and ease
In Your Life:
- Rest and productivity
- Confidence and uncertainty
- Strength and vulnerability
- Joy and grief
- Dreaming and reality checking
- Rooted and reaching
This is a Practice. Not a quick Fix.
This practice is not about a resolution.
It is about developing the strength, finding that strong ground as Brené calls it, to hold these tensions and to cultivate a contemplative mind that really wants to hold these tensions and can do that with less anxiety.
In My World
In my world, it means being able to name it so that you can express it expertly, so that you can have a complex rich brand and not a confusing chaotic mess, which is usually the point where people call me in.
That's what we created Citrus for. To have a brand that can be premium and playful, powerful and soft, rebellious and safe.
But that is not an easy thing to do without a framework. So definitely having frameworks like archetypes make it easier so that you actually have a plan and a path and you don't just feel confused.
So I will mention like it sounds obvious, but there is a method to the madness.
My Own Paradox Example
I have a really interesting example of this from my own life and this is again one of the things that drew me to actually recording this episode today.
As I've been writing the Joy First book and talking to agents and publishers and book packagers about my book, I noticed, I discovered about six months into this conversation that I had an assumption that I was sitting with.
I Am an Artist
I am an artist. I am a photographer, a designer, and I can do quite a lot of illustration. I love to make things beautiful. I'm a scrapbooker. I like multimedia, and I'm a writer.
And my last book was a coffee table book.
And I just sort of immediately assumed that if this book has a chance at being a bestseller, which is obviously my goal for the book, no guarantees, but I would love for it to have a chance at being a bestseller. And I would love for it to be given its best chance.
The I hadn't named
I decided somewhere along the way that for that to be possible, it had to be a black and white narrative nonfiction book.
I eliminated the possibility that the book could be a bestseller and have colour in it because of the pattern of what I've seen with bestsellers. Meanwhile, it is a book about colour, which would be very difficult to do in black and white.
So I've spent months really struggling with this and sitting with this. Like, how do we do the book in colour and not have it sit on the art shelf? How do we do a book about colour that is not too expensive to become a bestseller?
What If It Can Be Both?
And I didn't really realize that I had decided that it had to be one or the other, but I had.
And so in the last month or two, I've been like, what if it can be both? What if it can be a beautiful, colourful book that still has a shot at being a bestseller?
And I went and I looked for proof. What bestsellers were printed in colour? What size does it need to be? What's the price point need to be? How does it need to be structured?
What could this book look like where it can be in colour, it can be what it needs to be, and it still has a shot at getting on that bestseller list.
Five Questions to Identify Your Tensions
So I wanted to give you a few questions to sit with today to identify some of those places where the things that are really important to you, in your brand, in your business, maybe might have some of these assumptions or beliefs built in that might be getting in your way, where you're forcing yourself to choose when actually there could be a both and.
So I've got five questions for you and they're really about identifying some of these tensions for yourself.
So grab a journal, find a quiet spot and give yourself some time to reflect on these and you can pause after each one or you can write them all down and then reflect as you like. But here they are.
Question 1: What Feels True?
What are some things that feel true about me or my brand? Things I know to be facts or realities that don't seem very changeable or movable?
So maybe these are qualities like I'm ambitious, I'm creative. Maybe they're positive, maybe they're negative, like I'm disorganized. Maybe it's something you want, like I know I wanna make people smile.
Create a list of these things, write down as many as you can think of.
Question 2: What Feels Opposite?
After you've done that, move to the next question. When you look at everything listed here, next to each truth or belief, write what feels inherently opposite to you.
Sometimes it can help to start this with, so I can't.
So for example, I'm ambitious, so I can't ever rest. Or I'm creative, so I'm disorganized. Or I'm disorganized, so I'm a terrible boss. Or I want to make people smile, so I can't charge more.
Look for the places where there's a distinct connection of opposites in your mind or rules or assumptions that you are making.
Question 3: What Am I Trying to Hide?
The next question is, what contradictions am I trying to hide or resolve? What parts of myself am I editing out to fit into a narrow definition of what I'm supposed to be?
So for example, I'm confident in my expertise, but I'm uncertain about my next move. I'm grateful for what I've built, but I'm restless for what's next.
Where are there places where you're trying to be something you're not or trying to squish what you are into something smaller?
Question 4: What's It Costing Me?
Number four, what is trying to be consistent or one thing costing me in energy, opportunities, authenticity, joy? How would this show up in your messaging, your offers or your visual brand?
Question 5: Where Could I Say "And"?
And five, what's one place in my brand where I could say and instead of or?
Example might be instead of, do I position myself as a coach or a consultant? Maybe it's how am I both and what different words could I create to hold that?
Take your time with these. Don't rush them. Let yourself free write. Follow tangents. Contradict yourself. Like these are really juicy, valuable questions to sit and take some time with.
If This Is Resonating
Obviously, if this is resonating for you, this is exactly what we do in the Colour Brand® method.
So I would love for you to get a chance to dive into Citrus. We, as of the time of this recording, in about 10 days, we have another live weekend together. So it is a great time to get in. I will link that in the show notes so you can go check it out.
But it's a really great program to use AI that I've specifically built to walk you through some of this stuff, being able to find your central tension, the both and of your brand.
Why This Is So Important
And the reason this is so important is because after 20 years, I've realized that this is the place where most people are stuck.
It's mostly in these tensions that you're battling with that you either A, don't realize or B, don't have a solution for how to resolve them.
So Citrus is a great option. If you want to work together one to one, we have a few Brand in a Week spots available for 2026. So I'd love to speak with you about that. You can book a call with me on the website.
You Might Not Need to Resolve These Tensions
But my overall message today is you might not need to be resolving these tensions, you might need to find a better way to hold them.
Because these tensions are what make you interesting and magnetic and memorable. They're what make you hard to compete with. They are what make you, you.
And while it is harder and more uncomfortable to be able to name and hold and use those tensions, this is such an important part of how we are going to evolve individually and collectively as we move into the AI age.
My Plans for the Rest of the Day
So I am now, and when I'm finished recording this, I'm gonna head off for a long walk with the dog.
And I'm looking forward to contemplating some of this stuff for myself. I love the New Year's energy to ask these kinds of questions.
Where am I trying to force resolution where I could be holding complexity? Where am I making assumptions about if this, then that? And what would it look like to embrace more of this both and?
And I'm sure my mom will not hesitate to remind me.
Join Me in This Contemplation
And I invite you to join me in this contemplation, whether it's on a dog walk or chilling on the couch or in your kitchen whipping up some really lush comfort food or driving or flying home from holiday.
Take this question with you.
What if the new year isn't about fixing things that feel broken or becoming someone new or better? What if it's actually about allowing yourself to become more wholly you out loud in public?
Flaws and awkwardness and complexities and contradictions and all. Tensions that are held. Paradoxes that are embraced.
We Must Learn to Accept Paradoxes
Because as Richard Rohr reminds us, we must learn to accept paradoxes or we will never love anything or see it correctly.
And that includes ourselves.
And I think that's what we're all craving right now. And I think it's what we all need to be promoting. Loving ourselves and each other more fully with more grace, acceptance and compassion as we actually are.
To build brands that reflect reality and not some perfection performance thing. To create lives that honor complexity not conformity. To continue to have this practice of holding joy and grief and ambition and rest, confidence and uncertainty all at the same time.
To be whole.
The Algorithms Will Come Around
And bonus, I guarantee that those social media algorithms, they're going to come around.
We've tried to flatten ourselves for them for so long and very soon AI slop is going to mean that authenticity and connection, not perfection and flatness are going to be what help you grow.
So if you're all in on imperfect and whole, you are going to be in a very good position to grow in the coming year without having to jump to what these algorithms want right now.
Happy New Year
Happy New Year, beautiful humans.
Here's to wholeness. Here's to the both and. Here's to holding the tension and seeing what emerges.
Thank you for being here. I'll see you in three weeks' time for the start of season four.
xx - Nic
Want to explore the both/and in your brand? Check out Citrus at https://go.joyfirstworld.com/citrus or if you want to work 1:1 to find, name and leverage the tension in your opposites, book a call in with Nic at https://go.joyfirstworld.com/branding
