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Ever notice how your brain loves putting things into neat little boxes? Today we're going to talk about breaking binary thinking to open up to possibility. You're listening to Relish, the podcast for people ready to stop chasing self-improvement and start savoring their lives. If you're tired of the hamster wheel of healing and hungry for more joy, presence, and meaning, you're in the right place. Hello friends. Welcome back to week two of the Relish Podcast. I am your host Alysia and today is another quick bite to help you relish your day. If you're enjoying the early stages of this podcast, please tap follow or subscribe
so that we can keep journeying together. Today I want to dive into something super important yet sneaky that I'm going to keep building on as we go in the future. And that is binary thinking. You know, when things feel black and white, either or, good or bad, our brains love binary thinking because it feels safe. It feels certain. But life just isn't that simple, is it? So, of course, our brain needs concepts to categorize information, but it is inherently limiting. Uh, an obvious example is something like racial categories based on skin color. You got white, black, brown. These groupings reflect simplified societal labels rather than biological truths. Uh you know there's so much nuance and
variation. Being mixed race myself, I have never neatly fit into any racial or ethnic box. You know, and society tries to kind of handle that complexity by adding a mixed race category or box. But where do you draw the line? You know, is someone exactly 50/50 like me? Maybe they're 25,75. I mean, eventually it becomes clear that these categories are arbitrary. They are social constructs that only feel real because we have collectively agreed that they're real. But why do our brains create these binary categories at all? Neuroscience knows, of course. So every second your brain is processing about 11 million bits of information but consciously you can only handle guess any guessers any
guessers 40 okay I mean 11 million per second to 40 consciously my brain can't even comprehend that so to manage the overload your brain has to create these shortcuts That's called schemas. Uh, and that's how it categorizes experiences into these neat little boxes like good, bad, safe, unsafe, familiar, unfamiliar. Um, this relates to predictive processing, something that we're going to dive more deeply into on Wednesday, but essentially your brain predicts reality based on these simplified categories. Now these shortcuts are crucial for surviving and functioning but they become limiting when mistaken for fixed truths rather than fluid concepts. And this rigidity
is exactly how biases form. And when those unconscious assumptions are left unchecked, they can unintentionally perpetuate harm. And that becomes the roots of isms like racism and sexism and abbleism and so on. So of course someone might not consciously intend harm but harm can still happen. The impact is real. And I find that we run into binary thinking in personal growth as well. So take authenticity for instance. It can be tempting to think I am either authentic or I'm not. As if there's this, you know, neat little line between the two, but you zoom in closer and it's of course not that straightforward. The reality is nuanced. It's fluid. It's not binary. I think that this is true with
many of our negative conditioned patterns as well. So take something like setting boundaries, this behavior as an example. Okay? Is setting a boundary inherently authentic? Maybe it is today or with this particular person or with this specific situation. Maybe it is. Or maybe it's coming from fear or subconscious conditioning. I know I can kind of compulsively set boundaries to protect myself. I'm not going to I'm not going to look at my phone. I'm not going to respond to my that person. Whatever. That's not authentic. Okay, that's that's conditioning. That's a compulsive pattern. So, authenticity isn't binary.
It's contextual. It's nuanced. Now, another sneaky way that binary thinking shows up is in what's called absolutist thinking, using words that are absolutes, like always or never. Um, have you ever caught yourself thinking or saying, you know, this always happens to me or, uh, you never listen to me? When these definitives creep in, it's usually a sign, at least for me, that I'm stuck in my fixed mode. I'm trapped in narrow, rigid thinking. So, that keeps me stuck in black or white, either or thinking. But freedom comes from embracing the gray. And gray isn't just uncertainty.
It's possibility. The gray is where curiosity and creativity really thrive. It reconnects us with presence and it expands us beyond the fixed patterns. Now, binary concepts initially do help us to understand ideas. But if we're not mindful, they can trap us. Okay? So freedom comes from shifting our mindset from the either or to both and thinking. Either or says I'm either authentic or I'm not. I'm reactive or I'm responsive. But both and says, hm, I can hold multiple truths. I'm authentic in some ways and still learning in others. I can be reactive at times and responsive at others. And sometimes, this is what I've been finding, both conditioned and authentic can happen at the same time.
This is the gray area. It's about seeing complexity and possibility rather than rigidity and limitation. So last week we explored reacting versus responding which at first glance might seem like a binary framework. But remember these aren't boxes to trap us. They are tools for awareness, presence, intentionality depending on how we are relating to them. So today's episode builds on that by adding nuance. Rather than saying you're either reacting or responding, I want us to explore this as more of a spectrum. Okay? Maybe it's you're operating from either a more fixed place or a fluid place. I'm going to name fixed mode as the autopilot we talked about. Reactive, compulsive, um, habitual. It's protective. You cling to
certainty because it feels safe. Now fixed mode arises because of our past experiences, our past conditioning, those subconscious protective patterns and the fear of uncertainty. It is rigid. It's predictable. It feels safe, but it often keeps you stuck. A lot of times when people awaken to self-help, um, they realize they've been operating in a fixed mode, repeating the same thing over and over, wishing, you know, somehow it's going to turn out differently. Sound familiar? Now, fluid mode is responsive. It's conscious. It's curious. It's adaptable. It embraces uncertainty, complexity, possibility, being willing to not know and coexisting with that unknown. So it's more expansive, it's creative, it's
authentic. The irony of course is I'm you know technically here using a binary framework fixed versus fluid to teach this concept but at its core this is an invitation to actually break free from the binary thinking. So instead of viewing you know it as respond versus react and them as strictly binary opposites we can recognize them as a part of a spectrum you know from fixed reactivity toward fluid responsiveness. So in the fixed mode, you might have black versus white, like they're opposites. But in the responsive fluid mode, you have black, you have white, and you have all the gray in between. It's fluid. It's a spectrum. So I believe many personal growth practices do aim to actually shift from fixed to
fluid. That's their intention. But unintentionally, this is what I've seen in working with people and my own journey. unintentionally they can become like fixed versus fixed, rigid, stuck. Um, and so I think it's crucial to explicitly acknowledge the importance of this fluidity, especially in spiritual development because that's what nondual awareness really is, freeing yourself from the limits of your model and embracing both. And so I invite you to just reflect on this and kind of check in with yourself throughout the day. You might ask yourself, am I in fixed or fluid mode right now? Am I stuck in either or, black or white? Um, if you're in that kind of thinking, what might it
look like to shift toward both and or living in the gray? Okay, fixed mode craves control. It craves certainty. Fluid mode, it's fluid. It's adaptable. that invites curiosity and possibility and that both and thinking is much more expansive. It gives us a more expansive experience of reality. Now, here's another reframe that I want to challenge around our binary conditioning. Neither mode is inherently good or bad. Okay? But they offer vastly different experiences. I mean fixed and fluid respond react.
Actually both can connect us to joy in a way in different ways and we're going to talk more about that in the coming weeks. So a quick bite reflection for today. Are you choosing fixed mode because it feels safer or are you open to fluid mode and the growth that it offers? On Wednesday this week you have got a full entree episode coming. Um this one coming might be my favorite yet. We are going to dive into the neuroscience behind fixed and fluid modes because your brain literally defaults to fixed mode. And shifting into that fluid mode involves rewiring your relationship to uncertainty in your nervous system. So that is your quick bite for today. Maybe it wasn't so quick. Maybe I went a little bit over.
Um but I hope that you found it nourishing a nourishing snack of insight. If you did, please take a moment to tap subscribe or follow, rate, review the podcast, help it, you know, ripple out the love, and please come and find me on socials, tag me, Alysia Shake. Let's connect and let me know your thoughts. I hope you have an absolutely beautiful rest of your day. Relish as many moments as you can, and I will see you back here on Wednesday.
