Human beings are extraordinarily uncomfortable with ambiguity. We resolve it as fast as we can, usually into a binary: this is working or it is not, they are trustworthy or they are not, I am good at this or I am hopeless.
The binary feels like clarity. It is very rarely accurate.
In relationships this shows up as character verdicts. He is selfish. She never listens. Once a verdict is in place, all subsequent evidence gets sorted into it — the confirming instances are proof, the disconfirming ones are exceptions. The verdict becomes unfalsifiable, and the relationship becomes a case being prosecuted rather than a thing being lived.
In organisations it shows up as strong opinions about people, formed early and held long past their evidence. Some of the most damaging things I encounter in leadership teams are three-year-old assessments that nobody has updated because nobody remembers forming them.
In your own head it shows up as identity claims. I am not a details person. I am bad with confrontation. These sound like self-knowledge. They are frequently just a description of what you have practised.
The grey is harder to hold because it requires you to keep the question open, and open questions cost attention. But it is where accuracy lives, and accuracy is what actually lets you change something.
A practical test: whenever you notice yourself in a binary about a person, force out three sentences beginning and also. He is selfish, and also he has never once let me down when it mattered, and also he was raised by people who taught him that asking is weakness, and also he has changed in two specific ways this year.
You will not enjoy it. You will be considerably more accurate.