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Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Why you always have more options than you think you do

Osundolire Oladapo Ifelanwa
6 min readJul 14, 2021
Image credit: Jon Tyson on Unsplash.com

“I don’t have a choice?”

How many times have you said this while facing a personal or professional dilemma? Perhaps many times. In this conversation, I would like to share with you, why “I have no choice” might just be a lie your mind likes to tell itself.

Image credit: @Johnnyabroad on Unsplash.com

Imagine you are a sailor on a boat in the middle of a storm, unsure of whether the boat will survive the battering waves. For a moment, you consider your OPTIONS “Do I grab a life vest, jump into the sea and swim; or keep rowing?” What CHOICE would you make?

The above hypothetical scenario is a familiar one in our everyday decision-making. Do I eat breakfast or not? Should I buy the Tesla or the Mercedes? Do I speak up or stay silent? Do I vote for Trump or Biden? In each of these scenarios, we are locked into a binary frame where our choices are either/or, and we find ourselves restricted to choosing between two options that appear to represent the entire spectrum of what is available to choose from. When neither of these options present a convincing CHOICE, we may find ourselves saying…

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Osundolire Oladapo Ifelanwa
Osundolire Oladapo Ifelanwa

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