Studies of highly creative people and highly successful people, such as the one by the psychologist bestselling author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, have shown that a dynamic set of seemingly opposing characteristics is a very important part of what makes them tick. 

“Contradiction” or perceived cognitive dissonance is hard for our brains to process, so we often categorize the world and people into boxes, think even of our of ourselves as being either at one or the other end or the other of the spectrum for many personality traits. The world isn’t so simple and neither are we. The good news is that our “contradictions” can actually be quite complementary, not only to each other but to our success in life.