I’ve been sitting with a tension in myself that I see everywhere in my coaching work, especially in women. I tend to take responsibility for a lot, more than my fair share. When something goes wrong in my orbit, my first move is inward: How can this be fixed? What do I need to do? This preference has real upsides. It also has a shadow side.

The people who are best at taking responsibility are often the worst at forgiving themselves, and sometimes others. Responsibility and forgiveness aren’t opposites. They’re a polarity: two interdependent values, each with real upside, each incomplete without the other. Too much responsibility without forgiveness becomes controlling and exhausting. Too much forgiveness without responsibility looks like under functioning and unreliable.

We face polarities everywhere: in ourselves, in our teams, in complex situations. Change and stability. Candor and diplomacy. Accountability and compassion. Both true. Both useful. We can’t solve these. We have to learn to navigate them.

The trouble is we default to Either/Or thinking, sorting everything into this or that, right or wrong. The moment something feels contradictory, we reach for resolution, cutting it in half and calling it whole. We also tend to lean hard on our preferences, especially those poles that feel like parts of our identity. 

Emerson and Lewis describe in their book “Navigating Polarities,” that the work is learning to harvest the benefits of both poles while watching for signs that you’ve over-indexed on one. For me that sign is exhaustion or resentment. I’ve been carrying something I didn’t need to carry alone. That’s my cue to lean toward forgiveness. Not as a value. As a course correction.

That’s how you navigate a polarity in life and within yourself. You don’t resolve it. You notice when you’re holding too tightly to one pole, acknowledge what you’re losing there, and make a small deliberate move toward the other side. Sit with the discomfort and watch what shifts.