I "cat sat" earlier this year - an 11-year old neighbor was going on vacation and I offered to cat sit in my home, thinking that this would be easier for me than running over to their house to check on her. Wow, was I wrong. Jessica (the cat) spent her first hour navigating the perimeter of my home, then decided to perch for hours underneath the couch. I was thankful that she found her litterbox, but was concerned that she barely ate or drank the first few days. What was particularly distressing (for Jessica and certainly for myself) was when Jessica decided to sit at the top of the stairwell and hissed, growled and fanged at me each time I needed to traverse the stairs. I was held hostage in my own home! But my experience was nothing compared to how disruptive it must have been to her to be in completely new surroundings without the security of her 'mother' nearby. While I could use logic to understand her behavior, who knows what she thought of mine. Jessica taught me many lessons during her two-week stay, not the least of which is how terrifying it can be to feel out of place or be out of sorts. Although she had a few familiar objects (such as her toys, food and water dishes, bed), she didn't have the most comforting objects available to her and didn't know when or if they were coming back.

There are times in our lives when we can't use logic to fully understand a situation, and may feel similarly scared. In these instances, look around to identify trustworthy sources of comfort and safety. Making sense of the event may come later, but solace can come anytime.

Black and white thinking is like a light switch - it's either on or off, light or dark, good or bad. Nothing in between. When we are working toward more 'gray' thinking with one's gray matter, think about changing that light switch to a dimmer switch. You can still turn the light on or off if you need to, but you also have the option of modulating the amount of light to the setting that you need. If you find yourself regularly thinking of aspects of your life in absolute terms (e.g., good/bad, success/failure, happy/devastated), challenge yourself to determine what the 'gray' would look like. What possibilities lie between the two ends? Why might this be important to know? Because black and white thinking limits our options because it only presents us with 2 conclusions, whereas gray thinking can open our minds to a broader set of interpretations, and therefore a broader set of solutions. Exercise your gray matter regularly to find the gray options.

What kinds of results do you want for your life? What do you want to be different than it is right now? Results can be thought of as a simple equation:

RESULTS = MOTIVATION x ACTIONS

If you have a lot of motivation toward change, but aren't taking any action, you aren't likely to glean any results. How does that work? Well, remember from our arithmetic days that the product of any number and 0 is 0, so if your actions are a '0' then you are going to have '0' results. Similarly, if you have no motivation to change, you aren't going to have any results. Your best strategy to achieve the results that you want is to make sure you are motivated in the proper direction, and then take action toward achieving those results. Having only half of the equation is going to net you a zero. But if you have a lot of motivation and are taking a number of correct actions, you will reap the rewards of significant results. Go get 'em!!!