Find Some Shades of Grey

One of the biggest causes of self-inflicted pain is the thought distortion known as all or nothing thinking. All-or-nothing thinking means thinking in extremes. You are either a success or a failure, lovable or unlovable. Your presentation was either totally good or totally bad. If you are not perfect, then you are a disaster.

How often do you do this?

This binary way of thinking does not account for shades of gray, and is the root cause of so many negative evaluations of yourself, others and situations around you. The evaluating and judging can be incessant.

Perfectionism causes much heartache. It’s an illusion. Some things are going to go wrong. Just because one thing goes wrong doesn’t mean the entire situation is a total loss. If I leave something out of a speech, that doesn’t mean the speech was a failure. A few people may not like it, but that’s okay and to be expected, and I don’t need to obsess on it.

The best thing is to remind yourself of the adverbs of frequency. They are: always, usually, often, sometimes, occasionally, seldom, rarely, and never. Also, the quantifiers of all, many, some, few, and none.

Someone recently told me, “I hate all men.” I said to her, “that’s impossible, you haven’t met all of them!”

Catch yourself when you start to get caught up in this. Interrupt yourself. Your inner tangent. Tell yourself there many shades of grey, and for your own sanity and happiness you’ve got to find some.