Living in the overlap
It started with maths homework.
My eight-year-old and I were working through divisibility exercises - which numbers divide cleanly into which, and why. And somewhere in the middle of finding patterns, a thought arrived that had nothing to do with long division.
12 is divisible by 2. And 3. And 4. And 6. All at once. It doesn't have to choose. It belongs to multiple sets simultaneously without contradiction.
And I thought: neither do we.
The cost of "or"
We live in an increasingly "or" world.
You're either professional or authentic. Optimistic or realistic. A leader or a follower. Leftist or right-wing. You care about people or you hold them accountable. You have faith or you have ambition. Pick one. Declare a position. Plant your flag.
But "or" is a small word with a large cost. It flattens complexity into false choices. It takes things that were designed to coexist and forces them into competition. It reads half a sentence and acts as though it's the whole.
I saw this play out this week in a conversation about an organisation's refreshed purpose statement. The statement had two parts - connected deliberately by an "and." Two ideas that together expressed the full intent of the organisation's reason for being.
There was criticism about one half of it - how it could be interpreted negatively.
That's not unusual. It's what "or" thinking does. It simplifies. It narrows. And in doing so, it quietly undermines the very thing it's trying to serve.
The "ands" I found on my run
I went for a run this week - unplugged, as usual - and the thought kept developing.
I found myself naming my own "ands." The places where I've had to resist the pressure to choose when no choice was actually required.
I can be a loving parent and be firm about certain things. Not loving or firm - both, depending on what the moment calls for.
I can be a leader and a follower. The same person, different contexts, both roles equally real.
I can appreciate stoic principles without being labelled a stoic. I can take what serves me from a tradition without being owned by it.
I can care deeply for people - colleagues, communities, those I serve - and still not endorse some of their behaviours. Care and accountability aren't opposites. They're partners.
None of these "ands" are comfortable to hold. They require more of you than a clean "or" does. But they're more honest. And they're more human.
The overlap is the point
In my coaching practice, I work with clients to map the various dimensions of who they are - their strengths, their background, their values, their areas of interest and energy. I literally draw it out. Overlapping circles. A Venn diagram of self.
And the place I always point to is the centre. The intersection. The overlap.
That's where uniqueness lives. Not in any single circle - not in the professional identity alone, or the cultural background alone, or the values alone - but in the combination. The place where all of those things meet and produce something that nobody else can replicate in quite the same way.
Most people are afraid of the overlap. It feels ambiguous. Harder to explain at a networking event. Less clean than a single label.
But ambiguity isn't the same as confusion. Operating in the grey - holding multiple truths simultaneously - isn't weakness. It's the most sophisticated leadership capacity there is.
The overlap isn't the compromise between two things. It's where the most interesting and most powerful territory lives.
The panel
This week I sat on a panel with two remarkable women - both working in the arts in Wellington. One holds the TEDx licence for the city. The other runs a venues company filling a real gap in the live music and events space. Both building something meaningful in a city that needs it.
The host had brought us together with a simple and generous intention: to create circles of optimism with like-minded people. Not to paint a picture of doom and gloom but to ask - what are you up to? What's next?
In the conversation and questions that followed, two things surfaced that stayed with me.
The first: people are yearning to find their purpose. They just need help getting there. And it starts - almost always - with sitting alone with yourself more often. Unplugged. Listening. Seeking clarity with the genuine intent of finding truth. Not consuming. Not performing. Just being still enough to hear what's already there.
The second: feeling like an impostor can happen to anyone - at any level, any stage, any credential count. And trying to fix it from the outside doesn't work. More qualifications. More achievements. More external validation. None of it touches the root.
Because it's an inside job. An identity question. And, as I've said before, you can't answer an identity question with a certificate.
Both of those insights are "and" thinking. Purpose isn't found in the noise or the stillness - it's found by choosing stillness in the middle of the noise. Confidence isn't external or internal - it's built by doing the internal work while still showing up externally.
And the host himself - someone who holds eternal optimism alongside full awareness of everything that could justify the opposite - is living proof that hope and realism aren't an "or." They're a chosen "and."
My kind of person.
Final thought
So here are the questions worth sitting with this week:
Where in your life are you forcing an "or" that was always meant to be an "and"?
What are your own "ands" - the combinations that make you specifically you - that you've been treating as contradictions instead of assets?
And when did you last sit with yourself, unplugged, long enough to hear what's actually in the overlap?
Because the overlap isn't the problem to be solved.
It's the point.
Go on. Take the Next Step.
