I don’t mean with our hair, our clothes or our homes.

I mean inside – how we perceive and react to life.

Too often, and especially in times of stress, we default into seeing situations and life in black or white. Right or wrong. All or nothing. One way out … or no way out.

Black and white thinking is constricting. You lose your emotional peripheral vision. It’s like being in a dark hallway that gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Like your choices.

If we didn’t get the job we wanted, we think it’s the end of the world and life as we know it. If your partner snaps at you, we think OMG, that’s it, our love has turned to loathing.

But gray thinking is neither black nor white. It’s all possibilities in between. It’s more expansive. It says imagine that dark hallway has doors off it, as my coach Tara often reminds me. Doors to other possibilities.

Like: Instead of Armageddon, this rejection might just have opened up another door to an amazing job.

Like: Instead of we suck at being a husband/wife/partner, our spouse’s irritability might have been the result of a tough Zoom meeting. It’s not us at all. How freeing!

It’s not an instant thing to rewire the old polarizing patterns. It’s especially challenging if we’re perfectionists (guilty as charged). But it’s not impossible. When I’m in this constricting hallway, I try to expand my peripheral vision and look for doors … other possibilities. Sometimes I find them easily; other times I struggle.

But just the act of trying reminds me there’s a way out even if I can’t see it at first.