Thinking Gray

Have you ever heard the phrase,  the Devil you know is better than the Devil you don't ? Essentially, it means that you're more comfortable with the situation you know than with change. (when I say 'you', what I mean is 'the entire human race') What you know is what you  understand , what you can  predict ; it may not be perfect and you might not be happy, but it's familiar and you can see things coming. Change requires just that: change. Suddenly the world becomes unfamiliar and unpredictable. You  can't  see things coming, you don't know what will happen in the future. The change could be the  best  thing that has ever happened to you... OR it could be a thousand times  worse  than the Devil you knew before... Now, when I think about this I automatically think of huge changes, even though I know exactly where I'm going to take this train of thought. That should tell you how prone to  assumptions  the human brain is and how quickly we

Part 2 of this series reflected on the consequences of avoiding the so-called 'bad' traits about ourselves... see here  if you want a refresher. As with all things psychological, some of the ideas will resonate with you and others won't. Why? Because what you have experienced is not the same as other people. So, you might feel that this series isn't relevant to you because you feel like you've accepted your 'bad' parts and don't avoid them. However, I encourage you to read on because this section will challenge the idea of acceptance by asking, 'what does true acceptance look like?'. You may find that what you think of as acceptance may actually be more of a protective armour . (This post comes from a few different conversations, observations, and contemplations I've had, and I'm doing my best to articulate the idea succinctly. Always ask questions if I say something you find to be unclear, please!) Let's jump right in to Que

Part 1 of this series (oooh series!) discussed the automatic assumption we make that certain traits are  just  'bad'. I chose selfishness and neuroticism as examples to illustrate that there are also positive sides to these traits, and they can be very useful in certain  contexts . Hopefully you went through the same thought process using examples relevant to yourself. What's interesting about people, generally, (myself included) is that we can  objectively  see this, but putting it into  practice  is much harder. So while you may think, "oh yeah, I can see how selfishness is useful to me!" if someone were to call you selfish, you might still have a negative reaction to it; either  externalised  via anger, or  internalised  via sadness. (You're right, that categorisation of reactions is a bit simplistic given the range of human emotion) This brings me to Question 2:  Why are we so determined to avoid the 'bad' things about us? What is it about th

A friend of mine read my last post and she liked it (yay!) , BUT she said " it made me wonder, if people are judging me, what are they saying?! " Oops; there's an unintended consequence! Hopefully that hasn't happened for anyone else and, if it has, my sincerest apologies. I decided I'd continue on and discuss ideas around judgement ; specifically about the immediate negative judgement we jump to when we hear words like " selfish " or " neurotic ". Now, these are only two examples of 'bad' personality traits that I chose because I personally find them applicable, but you can apply this post to your... um... favourite traits (which you don't have to admit publicly, because it turns out that's more stressful than I thought it would be!). Moving on... We're all different in how we respond to being labelled with traits; we have a range of experiences and backgrounds , so we pick out different meanings and behave accordingly

I left off my last post by saying that it's really scary if you feel like the judgement from your internalised narrative (the 'other' voice) has merit; after all, who wants to admit there's something bad about themselves?! I certainly don't. Ask my partner: I'm still working on saying sorry when I'm *gasp* not entirely, technically, in the right (half joking) ... He's pretty content with a mumble and a hug but I can't imagine I'll get away with that forever. Sooner or later I'll have to accept the fact that I'm not always the best version of myself. So, this is a post for everyone who laughed at my 'funny because its true' issue... for everyone who thinks other people just 'let go' of judgement and brush it off like it's a piece of lint on clothing.  I probably will say things that will challenge you (I know because they challenge me too), but I hope that you can trust I'm not trying to hurt you and that I'

We all have voices in our head... Not all of them are pathological, and it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. It's normal; ever since human beings developed consciousness, we've had a stream of thoughts that flow through our minds. Those narratives are the 'voices' I'm talking about.  Some of them are encouraging. Some of them aren't. Some of them aren't even our own. Some of them are beliefs/ideas that we've taken from our parents/family/society and internalised (read: transformed) to sound like our own voice, so we think  that the idea is our own (and that it's  true) .  What's important is to differentiate between which voice is yours  and which voice has come from these internalisations.  (Now, you can make the argument that technically none  of those voices are really your own, because we learn and formulate beliefs from the external environment. That's a fun argument, but it's also an attempt to def