When you suffer from black and white thinking or all or nothing thinking in between the contrast where there should be gray is, instead, doubt. Doubt is colorless but is also the reason we banished gray from our life scale. Where did we learn to let doubt have control? My first thought is that game we played with the field lily. You know, she loves me, she loves me not. The lesson was there can be love or no love at all. At such an early age we start believing that life can only exist in 90 degree angles and right triangles. There is no room for imperfection. Yes or no. No, which inevitably for people like us, means rejection and perhaps that is the truth of the matter in a particular circumstance. But we take rejection and translate it into things that were never even spoken. For me and perhaps you too it’s the translation that I shouldn’t exist on this earth anymore. That’s extreme, severe and untrue for myself and for you. That is why I believe black and white thinking is a severe problematic health condition. Especially when we tell ourselves the lie that we don’t have the right to exist like everyone else does. That is a problem.
Do you remember Bob Ross? The soothing painter of many things most notoriously trees on the Public Broadcasting System? Please, tell me you remember him! I don’t know if anyone who watched his show actually painted with him. Everybody I know watched him because he was therapeutic and reassuring. Even if you weren’t following along he made you believe you would have no trouble painting a landscape as successfully as he had just done with no problem. I don’t know if his job was to inspire confidence if it wasn’t, he did. He would often show you how you could turn what appeared as a flaw into something seemingly intentional. No panic, no worry, no focusing on the mistakes. In fact Mr. Ross is known for saying: “We don’t make mistakes, we just have happy accidents.” His ability to re-frame reflected that he had a healthy large gray area in between his black and white.
I believe we can be happy without being bitter. That’s my goal. That’s what I’m writing this for. to build my resiliency. To build my ability to re-frame. To build my belief that despite what I’ve been told, despite how I or we have been treated we do indeed have the right to live and enjoy life.
In my Bob Ross self-talk tone I’m going to continue to paint my gray area. I can not fill his shoes. I can only fill my own. I think it begins with the question. Did you ever notice how doubt doesn’t like to ask questions it likes to make matter of fact statements. To begin our painting process I think Bob would begin by asking “what if?” What if we are good enough? What if we do deserve to live? Lean into the process of painting gray by challenging doubt. What if we eliminated doubt all together? This isn’t going to be easy. As Mr. Bob Ross would tell us ” …You have unlimited power. You have the ability to move mountains. You can bend rivers.”
Let’s lean into this direction of thinking a little bit more and see where it takes us.
I wish you all a safe peaceful uneventful night. I hope to speak with you sooner than later.