The "Either/And" Revolution:

Why You Don't Have to Choose

I am trying to have it all. A happy family, a working successful wife, a respected creative career, and fulfilling artistry. I am obsessing - mostly unconsciously - about how to make it all work. That is because I deep down refuse to accept that I have to pick just one of these. That I have to put up with the conventional "that is just how it is".

I am asking myself why. Why can't I have it all. Or can I at least try.

I speak 5 languages fluently out of about 10 that I tried to learn. The last one I learned in 3 months at age 40. I have three young kids that also already speak 3 languages. My beautiful wife works as a successful concert violinist and yoga entrepreneur. We live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I work as head of department for plastic, reconstructive and breast surgery at a large university hospital. I have a tenure as professor and scientific working groups at two universities. Out of the 8 instruments I tried to master I play two at an advanced amateur level and have been member in a wedding band for more than 20 years. I write and create music and art on the side. I run a podcast with my wife and have been teaching yoga and meditation for over a decade.

Apart from bragging is this to show that it is possible to have it all. It is hard to achieve. It is hard to maintain. It is extremely fulfilling. But it is doable.

We are growing up learning the lecture of having to choose. It is one of that defining key childhood messages: "You can't have it all".

But why? Why can't we have it all. Who decided that we can't have it all?

If you think about it, it seems to be more about societal prevention of individual exceptionalism. The unspoken assumption that if everyone would be exceptional and great, society wouldn't work. So better that no one is exceptional. And it does serve a societal goal - though more a communistic than an individualistic one. And definitely not yours.

Homeostasis

A solid natural principle underlying this, is called homeostasis. It is a principle necessary for survival that wracks havoc when applied to individualistic behaviour. Your body uses homeostasis for regulation of parameters. You have a baseline blood pressure. If you increase your blood pressure by running your body will bring it down to baseline once you stopped running. Similarly if your blood pressure drops your body will increase it again to come back to baseline. All fine.

You also have a baseline for your behaviour in your social groups - think peers and family. If the groups perception of a certain behaviour is too far away from the shared baseline, they will do everything to bring you back down to baseline.

That is why "you are the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with" (Jim Rohn).

Kids believe what you say

I've found myself guilty of having thrown that "You can't have it all' sentence at my kids at times of overwhelm or exhaustion. That might be the less philosophical and more practical reason why this sentence came into existance.

The issue with that is:

If you tell your kids Santa Claus exists - they believe you.

If you tell your kids the Easterbunny exists - they believe you.

If you tell your kids "You can't have it all" - they believe you.

As you did, when you were a kid.

A big part of growing up and of growth in general is questioning your assumptions and believes. This is where progress is made. This is what scientific discovery is based on. On that little question "Is that really so?"

So next time when you are confronted with an "either or" scenario, ask yourself "Is that really so?"

Paradoxically, popular superhero movies always play with these "either or" dilemma situations. Think the cable car scene with the Joker in Batman X. It is accepted for a superhero to solve these situations with "either and" and by so saving everyone.

The whole superhero story is also based on the concept of "everyday guy turns into superhero and stays humble everyday guy during daytime". Which gives you the allowance of turning yourself into a superhero whenever the situation requires that.

There is this heart warming story of a 5y old boy who manages to rescue himself and his baby brother from an apartment fire. He escapes through the barred window with his brother in a backpack, balances on a tiny rim on the outside wall to reach the next balcony. When they asked the rescuing firefighter how that was possible, he replied: Nobody told him that it was impossible.

This goes well in line with the saying of "Everybody thought it's impossible until someone who didn't know, came and just did it".

If you just move two letters a tiny bit, you go from "Impossible" to "I'm possible"

Let's come back now to our problem of "not having the cake and eating it too". Of course there are some choices that are defying the laws of physics and are as such impossible. Although that too is debatable, but we are not going there (yet) today.

But we have some sort of deep rooted sense of that you cannot have all the good things, and if you have too many good things it must be counter balanced with something bad. If you are a millionaire you for sure must be a terrible person or have done something shady - or something else that makes it possible for me to bear that you have something that I have not, but where I have the moral high grounds at least - "Yes, he may be rich, but did you know that…".

If you are married to a successful partner, your sex must be awful. If you have healthy and happy children, then you can't be successful.

If you this, you can't that.

And that is BS, pardon my french.

Again it is a question whom you are comparing yourself with.

And in reality it is the secret excuse of saying: I am not willing to do what is necessary, to have it all. To have a cake and it eat too. As that might require to bake another cake for example.

Pseudo-reasonability

We resolve our internal conflict of "wanting to have" two things but not being willing to "do the work" by moralizing the decision making. It sounds reasonable. This is pseudo-reasonability. But what a boring life choice to be reasonable.

Another reason for not daring to go after two things at the same time is the classical fear of failing. The fear of having to admit that it didn't work out. The fear of the Simpson's Nelson pointing at you in public with his defeating "Haha".

Susan Jeffer's book title "Feel the fear and do it anyway" describes the solution and hints at a general underlying superpower: Letting yourself feel your emotions without reacting to them.

We tend to get stuck and hung up on interpretations and mental evaluations, on mental models and moral convictions. They have their value but not as the permanent guiding structure of your life.

It is especially those moral convictions that imprison us. These absolute sentences that are supposed to make our life easier but actually result in the opposite.

Perfectionism - Shmerfectionism

One of these is the "Do it right or don't do it at all" fallacy.

It is one thing to take the Steve Jobs style of perfectionism to a product you are creating. It is another thing to trying to apply it to every aspect of your life. You can't and more importantly you shouldn't.

"I'm just a perfectionist" is one of these convictions that is just an excuse for inaction or fear disguising as moral virtue.

More often than not good enough is actually good enough. And this realisation releases pressure and allows for more creation in creativity in your life. In trying more "either and" and less "either or".

Or as my former mentor Brad Blanton uses to say

"Everything worth doing, is worth being done poorly"

There are of course exceptions to that rule - like in medicine, engineering and science, but that is not what we are talking about.

Sequentionalism

Most of us have our concept of time wrong. Multitasking is not real. You can really only do one thing at any given moment. You can do something completely different the next moment. By increasing the speed of switching between both instances you can create the illusion of multitasking. But it doesn't change the underlying reality of mono-focus and mono-tasking.

Your bodily functions are exempt from this, and that is mainly because they run on autopilot. So luckily for you, you can breath and think at the same time, or walk and talk.

Once you realise that because of that reality already flows sequentially, you can also realise that "either or" is a false dichotomy. Because you can turn it into an sequentially flowing "either and".

It then becomes more a question of how you allocate your time, plan and prioritise. And these are things you can learn and get better at, so that you can create more opportunities of inviting the idea of "either and" into your life. That is what I have been obsessing about the last 20 years. I want to say "either and" more often - how can I achieve that? What are helpful tools for that process? What can I learn or adapt from others in that context?

I have found many - ever changing, ever adapting - solutions along the way.

I want to leave you with a final thought:

Your current choices in life already make you live in an "either and" reality. It's though involuntarily and or unreflected choices. You are living a life where you decided you want to work AND spend x amount of hours on social media.

You are already deciding to pursue things "at the same time", most often from unrelated areas. If you allow yourself to do that with seemingly excluding topics, think through it and put in the effort - you will find that you can have your cake and eat it too.

To more in life,

Nicco

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