The Alchemists Clubhouse is a weekly newsletter of art, poetry, and coaching tips. Full members are invited to live workshops on Zoom and have access to the full archive of recorded workshops.
One of the first thought patterns coaches learn to recognize is the either/or statement. Once you start looking for this, you’ll hear it everywhere, including in your very own mind!
Either I have a loving partner or I have my freedom
Either I work overtime like a maniac and get promoted, or I leave at 5 and stay in the same job forever
Either I’m financially stable or I do work I enjoy.
Sometimes, a moment simply does contain two options, coffee or tea. But the either/or structure is so tempting for the brain that we tend to apply it in many places it does not belong, and that kind of binary thinking shuts down our creativity and eliminates the hundreds of other options we may otherwise have come up with. It’s the classic feeling of being “stuck” and not knowing what to do.
When you’re looking down the forked paths of an either/or, neither of which feel good or right to you, the first thing to do is to take a step back and widen your view. Take in the whole landscape, so to speak. Turn around and remember the bigger context of why you’re here in the first place.
Ask yourself, what is my deeper desire around this situation? Where did these two options come from anyway? What am I attempting to achieve through them? Where am I trying to go? What am I wanting to feel or not feel? Have or not have?
Imagine, for the sake of argument, that you suddenly remember your real desire is to drink and to nourish yourself by drinking. Now you can conceptualize more and better options: hot chocolate, lemonade, horchata, cherry juice, chrysanthemum liquor–you get the picture.
When we get stuck, it’s rarely just coffee or tea that’s available, especially if neither the “coffee” nor the “tea” are appealing, metaphorically speaking. We just can’t imagine what else might be there under the cloud of anxiety, pressure, or urgency. By asking yourself a few questions, you can often re-awaken your own creative thinking turn that fork into a starburst.
The structure of either/or thinking:
“I can either have or do or be ____ or ______, but not both.”
“I can either have or do or be ____ or ______, and that’s just the way it is.”
Questions to re-awaken creative thinking:
What is my deeper desire around this situation?
If there were no rules, what might I imagine to be possible?
What’s one tiny thing I could do to test out that possibility?
Want to learn more about the coaching process? Join me for an upcoming workshop called Basics of Change on April 17, included for full members of the Alchemists Clubhouse. Upgrade to full membership for $50/year or register a la carte for $25. For details click below!