We say things like, ‘You could … You should … I would propose that you … You’d do well to … If I were you, I would …’, ‘Do this, think that, get on with it just as I say.’

That ‘language of advice’ is itself an interruption of the person’s independent thinking. When we use that language, we are requiring the person to think like us, in essence to become us. So the person’s mind becomes defensive. People resist having to think just like someone else. This requirement is demeaning; it is diminishing of the self. And so, what is offered in the language of advice is usually only partially heard and often rejected, sometimes out of hand.

But if instead we use the language of experience – ‘I discovered that … In my experience, I have found that …’ – or the language of information – ‘the law says that … research is showing that … so far the facts here are that …’ – or even, ‘if I were in your situation, I would …’, the person engages readily, accepting bits, rejecting bits, questioning bits. They keep thinking for themselves. They keep their own mind. They have not been required to become us.

I felt embarrassed and afraid that my colleagues wouldn’t keep me on the research team. My thoughts spiraled out to what I would do next, after dropping out of graduate school. This unhelpful reaction points to why each of us must learn how to take a deep breath, think again, and hypothesize anew. That simple self-management task is part of the science of failing well.

We’re self preserving. Most of us would never intentionally push someone else down to get where we want to go. The key word here is “intentionally,” because intention involves thought. When we’re triggered and not thinking, our desire to protect ourselves first takes over. When layoffs loom at a company, otherwise decent people will quickly throw each other under the bus to keep a job. Sure, they wouldn’t consciously want to hurt their colleagues, but if it comes down to “them versus me,” they will ensure they come out on top. That’s biology.

Here’s the second safeguard against binary thinking:

Safeguard: Come up with Both-And options. Try to find ways of combining the binary. Think not in terms of choosing either X or Y, but rather having both X and Y.

Roger Martin, former dean of the Rotman School of Management in Toronto, refers to this technique as integrative thinking. Rather than grappling with seemingly opposed binary options, combine them.

Many of us have a hard time learning from our decisions. One reason is that our thinking and decision-making process is often invisible to us. We inadvertently conceal from ourselves the steps we took to reach our final decision. Once that decision gets made, we don’t stop to reflect, but just move forward. And when we look back at our decision later, our ego manipulates our memories. We confuse what we know now with what we knew at the time we made the decision. And we see the outcomes and read them back into our intentions: “Oh, I meant to do that.”

If you don’t check your thinking at the time you made the decision— what you knew, what you thought was important, and how you reasoned about it— you’ll never know whether you made a good decision or just got lucky. If you want to learn from decisions, you need to make the invisible thought process as visible and open to scrutiny as possible. The following safeguard can help:

Safeguard: Keep a record of your thoughts at the time you make the decision.