At one of my workshops, I asked the room a question that has become one of my favourites.
"How many sides does a coin have?"
Almost everyone said two. Heads and tails. It's the obvious answer, and I'd have said the same for most of my life.
Then I pointed to the edge. The rim. A third side, always there, rarely noticed. And more than that: a coin isn't really a collection of sides at all. It's one thing. Heads and tails are just two ways of looking at it.
That small moment tends to land harder than any explanation I could give. Because most of us are living with the idea that life has only two sides, and we've been choosing between them for years.
How do I stop black and white thinking?
Stop treating the two sides as separate options and start seeing them as parts of one whole. Black and white thinking splits life into opposites, strong or weak, success or failure, and then fuses your identity to one side. When you stop needing to be either side, the split loosens and a much wider range of choices appears.
Where does black and white thinking come from?
For most people, it's learned early, and it made sense at the time.
A child needs simple rules. Good and bad. Safe and dangerous. Right and wrong. Those categories help a small person navigate a big world. The trouble is that many of us never update them. We carry a child's map into an adult life that's far more nuanced than any two categories can hold.
I grew up that way myself. I believed everything had its opposite, and that you had to be on one side or the other. Up or down. Strong or weak. Winner or loser. And I put a lot of effort into staying on the right side of each pair, which meant a lot of fear about sliding to the wrong one.
There's nothing wrong with noticing opposites. Up does have down. Pain does have pleasure. The mistake is believing those are the only two options, and, even more, believing that whichever side you're on says something about who you are.
Why does it feel so hard to hold the middle?
Because your identity is usually attached to one side.
If you've decided you're the strong one, then weakness isn't just an experience. It's a threat to who you are. So every moment of tiredness, doubt or need gets pushed away, fought, hidden. If you've decided you're a success, then any setback isn't just a setback. It's evidence you might be a failure. The stakes feel enormous, because they're not about the situation. They're about you.
That's why people get so rigid. They're not defending a position. They're defending a self.
And here's the relief in it. Strong and weak aren't who you are. They're states you pass through, roles you can play, experiences that come and go. When that becomes clear, not as an idea but as something you feel, the pressure drops. You don't have to be one side anymore. You can simply be yourself, and use whatever the moment calls for.
It's worth saying that this isn't about becoming vague or never taking a position. People who've loosened black and white thinking often become more decisive, not less. They can make a clear call precisely because the call isn't a verdict on who they are. If it turns out wrong, they adjust. The decision was never holding up their identity, so it can be changed without anything collapsing.
What changes when the two sides become one?
Your options change.
When you're stuck in either-or, every situation offers you two moves, and usually one of them feels unacceptable. So really you have one move, and you make it under pressure. When you can see the whole coin, the situation opens up. You can be firm and kind in the same conversation. You can admit a mistake without becoming a failure. You can ask for help without stopping being capable.
People describe this as a kind of resourcefulness. They stop reacting and start responding. They find they can think clearly even when things around them are messy, because they're no longer spending energy guarding one side of a line.
I've seen this at its most dramatic in a lawyer I worked with, whose story is one of the ones I think of most often. For years, this person had lived with an internal identity conflict, two sides of themselves at war. It resolved in minutes, through a deep identity shift. Not by one side winning, but by the war simply ending. That's what it can look like when the two sides stop being two.
How can I practise seeing the third side?
This one uses an object. You'll need a coin.
Put it in your pocket this week and carry it everywhere. Whenever you notice it, your hand brushing it, the weight of it, use it as a prompt. Ask yourself: am I seeing something in two sides right now?
You'll catch yourself more often than you expect. I'm either on top of this or I'm failing. They either respect me or they don't. This is either the right decision or a disaster.
When you catch one, take the coin out if you can, and turn it to the edge. Then ask a second question: what do these two sides have in common? What's the one thing they're both part of?
Sometimes the answer is obvious. Success and failure are both part of trying. Respect and disrespect are both part of a relationship that's still alive. Sometimes the answer doesn't come, and that's fine too. The point isn't to solve it. The point is to loosen the grip of either-or, one moment at a time. Over a few days, many people notice that the coin starts to do the work on its own. They feel it in their pocket and something in them relaxes before they've even asked the question.
At the end of the week, write down the pair that came up most often. That pair is usually pointing at an identity you've been guarding. It's worth knowing which one.
Is black and white thinking connected to overthinking?
Very often. When you believe there are only two outcomes and one of them is unbearable, your mind works overtime trying to guarantee the other one. It runs scenarios, checks and rechecks, rehearses conversations. That's one of the reasons people who think in extremes also tend to overthink.
It also shows up in perfectionism, which is really black and white thinking about your own work: either it's perfect or it's worthless. If that sounds familiar, where perfectionism comes from goes further into it.
Loosening the either-or tends to quiet both. When the stakes aren't all or nothing, the mind doesn't have to guard so hard.
What if I can't see past the two sides on my own?
That's common, especially when one side is fused to something painful from your past. The pattern can be very hard to see from inside it.
If you'd like to talk it through with someone who does this every day, Sara, our veteran RS Method Master Coach, offers free mentoring sessions. You don't need to bring a tidy question. "I keep seeing everything as all or nothing, and I'm tired of it" is plenty to start with.
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.