018: Breaking free from the trap of either/or
Why integration creates more aliveness than choosing a side
Creativity is about connections, and connections are not made by siloing everything off into its own space. New ideas are formed by interesting juxtapositions, and interesting juxtapositions happen when things are out of place.
This quote from the founder of Sublime (a curated personal knowledge system in the form of an app) chimes with what I’ve always thought about creativity: it’s a way of joining the dots, seeing the links between things and bringing them together.
Our theme for June is Integration in all its forms. This week, the focus is on recognising the binary thinking (‘either /or’) that results in fragmentation—and how we might move beyond it to a greater sense of wholeness.
Twice in my life I’ve found myself standing at a career crossroads, convinced I had to choose: stay in my safe academic job or leap into the precarious world of creative work. The academic role had started to feel soulless. I was trapped in endless meetings and institutional politics. The creative path—writing and coaching—seemed like freedom, but brought with it financial uncertainty and a level of fear. What if it didn’t work out?
In both cases, the decision I took had different outcomes. I’ve written that story elsewhere but here I want to focus not on the results of my choice but how and why—like so many creative people—I was caught in the mental prison of either/or thinking.
What I didn't realise then was that this binary framework wasn't just limiting my career choices. It was suffocating my aliveness.
We live in a world obsessed with false binaries: commercial versus artistic; structure versus freedom; original versus derivative; practical versus creative. These either/or frameworks show up everywhere—from career decisions to our approaches to daily work—creating the illusion that we must pick a side.
In my academic role, I’d absorbed the message that creativity lived ‘over there’—in designated artistic spaces, pursued by people who didn't worry about fluctuating income. Real work, according to the voices I'd internalised from my family and society, meant consistent salaries and institutional prestige. Creative work was too precarious, too exposing, not prestigious enough.
But while trapped in this binary thinking, I was missing something vital: I was already being creative. I just couldn't see it.
The breakthrough: when integration reveals itself
The first realisation about my prison of either/or came when I was teaching an undergraduate literature class. Instead of delivering another dry lecture, I created a ‘brain-walking’ exercise—setting up stations around the room where students moved between different approaches to analysing a poem. As I watched them engage with the material in this kinetic, interactive way, I felt something electric: a fizzy energy of possibility and excitement.
I realised I’d been drastically underestimating what creativity actually was. This wasn't separate from my academic work—this WAS academic work, infused with creative thinking.
But the real breakthrough came later, in a meeting with my academic team to plan our induction programme for new students. Instead of enduring another ‘strategic’planning session, I introduced empathy maps—a design thinking tool that helped my colleagues understand our students' perspectives. Suddenly, the dry institutional strategy came alive with human connection and innovative possibility.
That fizzy energy I'd felt in the classroom? It was here too. In fact, it was available anywhere I chose to bring integration rather than choose a side.
If integration is more powerful than choosing sides, why do we get so trapped in binary thinking?
Our educational systems train us to believe there's only one right answer to every question. From early childhood, we learn that things are either correct or incorrect, appropriate or inappropriate, creative or practical. This conditioning runs deep, creating neural pathways that default to either/or thinking even when the situation calls for both/and solutions.
There's also a deeper social dynamic at play: complexity is uncomfortable. Holding multiple possibilities requires more cognitive energy than picking a side. Plus, choosing sides gives us a sense of belonging to a tribe. We know which group we're in, what values we represent and who will accept us.
But this psychological safety comes at a tremendous cost: the aliveness that emerges when we refuse false choices and instead ask how can I weave these seemingly opposing elements into something that transcends their individual parts?
Integration in action: a new way of working
Today, my work as a coach and writer integrates everything I once thought was incompatible. I use the improvisational flow of coaching conversations in carefully designed containers. I apply research methodologies to creative content development. I bring the interactive engagement techniques I developed in teaching to my group programmes and workshop design.
The magic happens in the spaces between these supposed opposites. In my coaching practice, when I plan I use spreadsheets and time-blocking systems—not to constrain my creativity, but to create the spaciousness in which generative thinking can flourish. Structure becomes the foundation for flow, not its enemy.
I see this same transformation in my clients. One of them, a coach, couldn't see that his brainstorming sessions were actually sophisticated strategic thinking—until he stepped away from his screen and let himself think on paper through journalling. The shift wasn't in the activity itself, but in recognising creativity where he'd been blind to it.
Another client, a copywriter who kept her fiction writing completely separate from her day job, discovered she could bring character-development questions to her business reports. ‘Who’s reading this? What do they need to know? What's their emotional state?’ It meant that her ‘boring’ corporate writing became alive with meaning and connection.
This kind of creativity is an integration of emotion, imagination and intelligence. We need all of it if we’re to feel fully the power of our possibility.
When we break free from creative either/or thinking, something profound shifts. It's not just about being more innovative at work—though that happens. It's about activating ‘what if?’ thinking as a way of being in the world.
My clients report feeling more expansive, more connected to possibility, more alive in their daily experience. They discover they have more choice about how they show up—in meetings, in relationships, in problem-solving; in life itself. They move from careworn patterns of thinking and behaving to fresh approaches that surprise even them.
This is the real gift of integration: it reveals that we don't have to settle for either/or limitations. We can be both strategic and intuitive, both structured and spontaneous, both practical and wildly creative. We can refuse the false choice and instead become alchemists of possibility.
The invitation to integration
Like a scrapbook artist gathering disparate materials—snippets of music, visual fragments, half-formed thoughts—we can learn to weave together what others might consider incompatible. We can bring empathy maps to strategy meetings, character development to business writing, brain-walking to academic lectures, journalling to strategic planning.
The breakthrough creativity we're seeking doesn't belong on either side of any binary. It emerges in the fertile space between opposites, in the integration of elements that conventional thinking tells us don't belong together.
The question isn't whether you should choose creativity or practicality, structure or freedom, safety or risk. The question is: what becomes possible when you refuse to choose sides and instead become an artist of integration?
In a world that profits from keeping us trapped in either/or thinking, choosing integration is itself a creative—and a radical—act. It shows us the way back to the aliveness that binary thinking has cost us; it creates the fizzy energy of possibility that's been waiting for us to stop choosing sides and start weaving new ways of being.
Your creativity isn't separate from your practical life. Your structure isn't the enemy of your flow. Your safety isn't the opposite of your growth.
They're threads waiting to be woven into something entirely new.
Love, Rachel
Community inspiration
Earlier this week, as part of the Stories of Creative Courage series, I spoke to about his creativity journey. Josh spoke about the shifts he’d made from shying away from being a leader to stepping into creative leadership as a filmmaker and now as a mentor in his role as founder of The Sober Creative.
Stories of Creative Courage with filmmaker and mentor, Josh Woll
From Hiding to Leading: how sobriety unlocked Josh Woll’s creative courage
This article by encompasses the wisdom of integration. Often, we think the solution to our work problems is ‘elsewhere’ (e.g. the work that we assume will be ‘more creative’ or ‘more meaningful’ or ‘more sacred’), when in fact we can start with what’s right in front of us.
Creative inspiration
Books on the topic
Both/And Thinking by Marianne Lewis & Wendy Smith encourages embracing creative tensions by defining polarity and managing it over time. It offers insights into how leaders recognise paradoxes and adopt both/and thinking instead of either/or approaches.
Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. Anything Kleon writes is just so fun! Chiming with the quote from Azout (above), in this book Kleon works with the idea that no idea is truly ‘new’: creativity comes from combining, remixing, and building upon existing ideas. This book is the perfect antidote to perfectionism and originality anxiety.
Free resource
This design kit from ideo.org is a brilliant resource. It’s a ‘field guide to human design’: a PDF that covers creativity mindset, processes of ideation/idea creation and implementation.
Try this exercise:
Each day, notice one moment when you catch yourself thinking in either/or terms. Take 10 minutes to write it down, identifying:
the situation (‘either/or’)
what assumptions were beneath it and how it creates a false choice
how you might reframe it as integration
For example, you might think: I thought I had to choose between being thorough OR being efficient when preparing for my presentation. I assumed that quality takes lots of time. The reframe is: what if being thoroughly prepared actually makes me more efficient?
Memorable quote of the week
Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one's being, but by integration of the contraries.
- Carl Jung
What’s next in your creative journey?
As your guide into creative courage, I'm here to help you transform those invisible blocks—the fear and shame that live beneath the surface—so you can express authentically and freely.
Here's how I can support you:
Make an appointment for a virtual coffee (free). I hold 3-4 slots every month for a 20-minute chat so we can either get to know each other, or reconnect. This is for everyone! Perfect if you’re curious about meeting new people and making, or deepening, connections.
Book a 30-minute Creative Breakthrough call (free) to gently uncover the exact fear or limiting belief sabotaging your creative expression so you can finally share your work with confidence
Read my manifesto for creative courage (free). Follow my story in serial form about the core principles of my creativity, my journey into creative courage and why I founded Wordplay Coaching.
Creative Courage Circle: an ongoing intimate group for deep creative healing and mutual witnessing, so you can express authentically without feeling alone on your creative journey. Membership is by invitation only—please contact me to explore this option.
Bespoke 1:1 Creative Transformation journey based on the principle of finding your Essence process. This entails 6 months of personalised integration work to embrace your hidden aspects and create from your complete authentic power.
Thank you! Needed this!
This theme of holding polarity and integrating nuance has come up a lot for me lately, so it synchronistic that I came across this article. I admit, it was humbling to discover that I am prone to either/or thinking even if I consider myself open-minded. We all have blindspots, it's good to know that.