Look for a third option beyond the binary choice.
I’ve been noticing this pattern in myself and my clients where we feel stuck because we see only two options, both of which seem bad.
One client encountered a situation which didn’t feel right to him, but he didn’t want to raise a stink over it, so he decided to do nothing to see what happened. Those were the only two options he saw: passive wait and see, or aggressive conflict. Unfortunately, the situation got worse, and he was wondering whether he should have been more aggressive.
I pointed out that there’s a lot of ground between doing nothing and all-out conflict, so I asked him to generate some in-between possibilities. As he thought about it, he realized he could have checked with his peers or his managers about the situation to get their insights, he could have communicated his concerns to the involved parties more clearly, he could have been more assertive about what might happen (he had shared the information but people didn’t register the potential consequences), etc.
Another client shared that if they can’t be all-in at their job, they should leave, and again, I pointed out there’s a lot of ground between working 100 hour weeks and rage-quitting. Those are the extremes, but maybe let’s explore the territory between in smaller increments.
This sort of binary thinking is all too common. I regularly fall into it myself because it’s a function of the human brain – binary choices are less computationally expensive, so the brain naturally optimizes to save energy. And it’s hard to see your own thinking because self-awareness is also energy-intensive – it’s much easier to see faulty thinking or these false binary choices in other people than it is in ourselves.
So what can you do about it?
Find a thought partner to challenge your thinking, whether a peer, a mentor or a coach. If you can’t find somebody else, ask yourself what you would advise a good friend or mentee to do in your situation. De-centering yourself will allow you to see a broader range of possibilities, and by experimenting with those, perhaps you can get yourself unstuck from your binary outcomes.