Assume a world of binary and everything is either good or bad. This sounds simple — every time I do something it's either good or bad.

What makes this more emotionally involved is: when things are good you have so much to gain. But when things are bad, not only do you experience something quite horrible — you also lose out on the good that you would have had, had you gotten the good result.

The Parable of the Plank

Imagine you have to walk across a plank from one end to the other. Easy. You don't even have to think about it.

But now suppose the plank is at a 1,000 meter elevation, and on the other end is a winning pension lottery. Binaries may be simple from a cognitive perspective, but they are not simple from an emotional one. We like to think we are mostly rational creatures, but our day to day is mostly driven by our emotions.

The Problem

Given these two facts — (1) you're most likely living inside of a binary and (2) your experience inside binaries is always stress-driven — it makes sense you would feel lethargic, drained, paralyzed, afraid, and unsure.

What If There Is No Bad Choice?

You're at a free lunch paid for by your work and you're at a buffet. Let's assume that all choices at the buffet are equivalently good. Then there is no real risk, there is no real gain. You would just eat whatever you feel like eating. Me personally, I'm a chow mein kind of a guy.

How do we get to that state where there is no bad choice? We have to understand that bad is a contextual quality.

I break my leg after a nasty fall and that seems bad compared to not falling. But what if I narrowly escaped a certain death by pivoting and breaking my leg? I'd much rather have a broken leg than death. There is nothing about breaking my leg that's inherently good or bad. It depends on context.

We call something something depending on the context. This is easy to see outside of your life. But what if I told you there is nothing about your childhood or upbringing that's good or bad?

Why We Resist This Idea

This is when the internal resistance kicks in and people start shutting their ears off. This is not because we're stupid or doing something wrong — it's an innate human tendency. There is a certain line where if an argument crosses it, people automatically close their eyes and start being angry.

So we cannot confuse the reality of defining quality by context versus an event in my life having definitive quality. In reality, both are defined by context, but our human tendency interferes in alternative interpretations of our lives. We resist what one might call gaslighting.

Key Insight

The more we are able to identify the reality of quality by context in action, the more we get to observe it in our lives as well. I was fired from my job once. At the time it was the worst thing that could have happened. But through multiple instances of observing how one bad event could be good and vice versa, I learned how to re-interpret the story of my life.

Experience-Favoring Over Risk-Averse

With this ability to observe things flexibly, what opportunity arises? This allows you to be more "experience-favoring" instead of "risk-averse."

Every action you take gives you a certain set of experiences. These experiences are learning opportunities. The more you accrue experience, the more well-informed you become both in terms of knowledge and wisdom.

I'm quitting my job soon. This will be a different experience from living a life with a job. It is not bad, it is not good — it is a different experience. With this experience I will learn what the difference is between a stable, fixed income versus a random, variable one. I will learn how to become a more committed content creator. I will learn how to live in a different continent.

And in the end, I may have to take a job again given some circumstances. But if and when I return, I will have a new perspective on having a job because I learned so much about not having one.

The possibilities of life are available to you. But you are less likely to explore them if your perspective is warped by a false binary of good or bad that doesn't exist in reality.

Take your good or bad and practice seeing the differences outside of the good and bad. Note the bad from the good and good from the bad. With repetition, your outlook on life will greatly change.