Open up to the benefits of tuning into your personal grey zone

‘Grey is the colour of intellect, knowledge and wisdom. It is perceived as classic, refined, dignified and conservative. Grey is a perfect neutral that lives between the extremes of black and white’

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Many people are conditioned into black-and-white thinking from childhood: good and bad, sad and happy, right and wrong. As adults, it’s easy to lean into these extremes to feel safe and make sense of life. But in doing so, it’s also easy to eliminate possibilities, desires and opportunities that fall into the socalled grey area that lies in between.

Also known as dichotomous thinking (a way of thinking in extreme opposites), it’s something that Albert Ellis, psychologist, psychotherapist and founder of rational-emotive behaviour therapy, refers to as ‘should-ing’, expanding on a theme first explored by German psychoanalyst Karen Horney. According to Ellis, when you constantly make ‘should’ statements, such as ‘I should have taken that job’ or ‘I really should go to the gym’, you block the ability to see and materialise your desires and wishes.

Beyond black-and-white thinking

When a person lives their life by rigid rules based on inaccurate expectations on how life needs to be, this can stir up anger and confusion. ‘I think we seek the black and white because there feels to be more predictability there,’ says psychotherapist, speaker and author Anna Mathur. ‘We like to know that we’re doing the right thing, but we have this continuous dissonance in this knowledge that, [while] we want certainty and clarity, if we can accept that we’re never going to have it (all the time), we can live far more contentedly.’