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.

I have to begin this with one of my favorite quotes by Marianne Williamson in “A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of ‘A Course in Miracles.’”

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine ….  And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

I was reading a book the other day, and this quote was in the chapter about acknowledging one’s gifts. It was the strong spiritual nudge I needed.

Because there’s no other way to put it: I’ve been playing small and sitting on my creativity rather than sharing and celebrating it. I’ve been listening to that well-meaning but scared little voice (“Stay safe. Don’t put yourself out there. You might get hurt. What will people think?”).

Williamson’s quote always makes my eyes prickle with tears, and makes me want to cape up and stand in my power. So, in that spirit, I’d like to introduce my first book, “The Journey to CALM: A Perfectionist’s Guide to Letting Up, Slowing Down and Finding Peace.”

It’s a little book of lessons I’ve learned throughout life and some tools I use to move through challenges and cultivate peace. I would love to hear what you think.

We all have situations in our lives that cause us uncertainty, anxiety or fear. Perhaps it’s a presentation to senior executives, a job interview, speaking before a crowd of hundreds of people, or even just having a difficult conversation with a child.

Imagine yourself in that situation and think: “I hope this goes well.” Observe how you feel when you say that to yourself and what you’re thinking.

Now imagine being in the same situation and think: “I trust this will go well.”  Observe how you feel and what you’re thinking.

When we simply hope something goes well, we still leave open the nagging possibility that it won’t. In this context, hope can be timid, and that’s a crafty back door for fear to sneak in. If I just hope I do well on my speech, I might start to focus on what could go wrong: I’ll forget the CEO’s name, my face will freeze on the screen with my mouth open, I’ll suddenly develop Tourette’s syndrome, etc. When we rely only on hope, failure remains an option.

If we go into the situation trusting we’ll do well, we eliminate the possibility that it won’t. We focus on what might go right – not what might go wrong. Instead of feeling reticence and dread, we feel self-confidence and even anticipation. If it’s an important presentation I’m preparing for, I might visualize the CEO catching my eye and smiling at me, trust that I will find the right words at the right moment, and hear the audience clap enthusiastically at the conclusion. With trust, there is no room for worry about fear and failure.

“As a species, we should never underestimate our intolerance for discomfort.” -Pema Chodron

Never has this been more evident than now, when our world is full of fear and suffering – physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

It is not in our nature to turn on our heel, face fear and say “You don’t have any power over me.”

Instead most of us, to one extent or another, are in full fight or flight. To get rid of this uncomfortable energy, we might attack or blame a person, politician or country for the situation. I suppose attacking offers a temporary release, but then what? We’ve not solved anything, just spun ourselves up even further.

Or we go into full flight mode and find any activity to escape the panic, boredom or fear we’re feeling.

So, we find ourselves standing in front of the refrigerator – again – to the point where you swear you heard the fridge say, “What the hell do you want now?”

Some may have started drinking more frequently, justifying their overindulgence with the excuse, “Who wouldn’t want to drink given what’s going on?”

And others may just shut down, going back to bed (literally or figuratively) wrapped in a gray blanket of learned helplessness that in some twisted way makes us feel safe.

Anything to ease the anxiety.

But other than a momentary reprieve, our boredom, our panic, our overwhelm are right there waiting for us after we’ve come out of our sugar coma, cursed our hangover or forced ourselves to get out of bed because there are kids to feed and work to be done.

If you’re someone who has that mental secret sauce to flex through this chaos and not let it shake you to the core, congratulations, you get the Unicorn Award of 2020. For the rest of us though, if attacking doesn’t kill the feelings or fix the situation, and if escape just makes it worse, then, God help us, what are we supposed to do?

Exactly the opposite of what our fight or flight system is telling us.

When we get scared and then upset at ourselves for being upset, we practice self-compassion. We talk to ourselves like a frightened child: “Honey, it’s okay. I know it’s tough, anyone would be really worried or depressed in this situation. You’re doing a good job coping. We’re going to come through this.”

After we can be loving and kind to our scared self, we can practice compassion toward others – remembering even when we’re rattled or edgy that peoples’ reactions and decisions may be different because everyone is on their own path. That old guy who barked at you for going the wrong way down a new one-way aisle at Kroger’s is likely really scared too, and he’s trying to control something to alleviate his inner chaos.

The hardest thing we can do, but the most effective, is to just sit with the emotion. Fully. Fearlessly.

This is not for the faint of heart. Because your brain will shriek that you are destined to die a protracted and painful death if you allow yourself to fully feel the grief and panic. It wants to you ease that feeling right freaking now, with a fourth cocktail or a pint of vanilla ice cream and a jar of hot fudge sauce.

But in those times, we can remind ourselves, very gently, that we are not our feelings. Our feelings are a byproduct of our thoughts, and we aren’t our thoughts either. Just realizing that we aren’t our feelings or thoughts is enough to bring some measure of relief.

If we go further, and really, really try to become aware of the painful emotion, we can get curious, try to locate it in our body, maybe give it a shape or try to figure out what color it is.

Or we can just sit. For one moment at a time. Until the emotion, like Carl Sandburg’s fog that arrives on little cat feet, arises from its silent haunches and moves on.