The origin of the idiom ‘between a rock and a hard place’ can be found in ancient Greek mythology. In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus must pass between Charybdis, a treacherous whirlpool, and Scylla, a horrid man-eating, cliff-dwelling monster. Ever since, saying one is stuck between a rock (the cliff) and a hard place (the whirlpool) has been a way to succinctly describe being in a dilemma. (source)

There is a simple strategy that I often use, both for myself and when working with students, that seems to help when I/they are stuck ‘between a rock and a hard place’. The strategy is to find a 3rd choice. The interesting thing is that the 3rd choice doesn’t have to be great, it can be worse than the other two, but it does something tricky to your brain. When you have to choose between two tough choices, you can think of it as a scale, and you weigh things on either side. The problem is that you think of one side and add weight, then you think of the other side and you add weight there too. Your brian does this indecision dance between the two tough choices, never really allowing you to pick one over the other.

Sometimes, by seeking out a 3rd option, you can discover something you would not have thought of when putting yourself in a dichotomy. However, if you are truly stuck between a rock and a hard place, you probably don’t have a good 3rd option and so the 3rd option is often even worse.

When you add a 3rd (undesired) choice, you can no longer look at the problem as if it is on a scale. The extra option becomes a comparison point for the other two choices. So what your brain does is that it weighs your original two options against the new option, instead of against each other. When this happens, one of those options will often seem better than the other, in a way that comparing just the two on their own didn’t.

When dealing with students, this also helps give them an ‘out’. Often a student is choosing between doing the right thing which is uncomfortable, or accepting a consequence. In this situation, it might seem logical for a kid to make the ‘good’ choice. However, an oppositional student, or a student that is embarrassed, might actually choose the more painful choice. It’s not like they are actually choosing it, they are choosing not to do the thing you want them to do as an act of defiance. A third choice takes away the oppositional response. Now they have to weigh three things, and the better choice looks significantly better than the other two.

So the next time you are stuck between a rock and a hard place, you can torture yourself with a tough and unclear decision, you can avoid the problem altogether (knowing full well that it won’t go away), or you can come up with a 3rd choice to help you decide… it’s up to you!