In a recent conversation with my daughter a situation with a probation client came up. She’s in school pursuing her bachelor’s in social work (BSW) degree and I sometimes share stories to “infect” her with my skewed views about life.
As I shared about an encounter with a probation client recently, an image came into my mind. The legal system deals with the black & white of the law, you complete treatment, or you don’t; you complete your community service hours by the deadline, or you don’t; your drug tests are clean, or they aren’t; but we as change agents, as life coaches, as probation officers…we operate in the gray constantly. The gray is the transition period in any change process.
At one extreme, you have the white and at the other extreme, you have the black… at one end you have the “precontemplation stage”, at the other you have the “maintenance stage”; everything in-between is some blend, some combination of black & white making up many more than “fifty shades of gray”. The gray is a place of transition where we can slide backwards or inch forward at every decision point you face during an hour, a day, a week.
- Do I pass on that bagel in the office?
- Do I skip that workout?
- Do I make time today for writing?
- Do I avoid those people/places (for whatever reason)?
On and on throughout each day we face those decision-points that make up the gray. Hopefully we are winning more than we’re losing daily…if so, we begin to see consistent progress. If we’re losing more of these decision-points, we’ll begin to feel the slow slide backwards.
As I considered this image in my mind, I realized how we can be guilty of operating in the black and white in our own lives without honoring the transition work taking place in the gray. I’ll talk more about that in a moment.
Let me share the situation with my client and then I’ll talk about how I see this applying in all of life…not just within the legal system.
Here’s the situation
I inherited a client on his 4th DUI charge in January, and ever since I began meeting with him, I’ve had a sense he keeps his cards close to the vest. He consistently appears guarded, keeps his responses short, and I end appointments feeling like we never get anywhere productive. I’ve confronted him along the way and allowed him to give pretty lame explanations, even responding once or twice with, “okay, that’s the story you want to run with…I’ll run with it for now”. Basically, I’ve tried to be patient and look for opportunities instead of forcing something to happen.
Finally, in late August during an office appointment, I called him on some things and was blunt about what I suspect, that he’s continuing to drink, taking zero-accountability, and that there is nowhere productive to go but back to Court due to his numerous technical violations. His response took me off-guard.
This blue-collar, guarded guy showed me a crack in his tough exterior; with a shaky voice, and eyes beginning to get teary, he shared that he is working through stuff that he’ll never share with anyone (Hmmm…is this his LIMP?). He appeared scared and I sense he felt exposed and vulnerable. Looking back, I sense that had I tried to press him on what those issues were, I would have been backing him into a corner. He gave me nothing more in that appointment, but he didn’t retreat into his typical guarded position either.
Good enough…we got somewhere today. I am hopeful that is the breakthrough I was looking for.
Fast-forward a month later and he came in for an appointment in September. After some very quick small talk, he informed me he was out with his mother over the previous weekend and drank two beers. He admitted it was a stupid choice and he shouldn’t have done it…but he did.
NOTE: This came from a guy who previously attributed any positive drug tests to overuse of hand sanitizer and body powder that had .01% alcohol! To finally admit he drank is a significant breakthrough to having a real conversation about his relationship with alcohol.
SHADES OF GRAY
In my world, the DA and Court typically look at things through a black or white perspective. They would likely see this as a technical violation requiring a consequence, and they’re not necessarily wrong. But I fully believe dropping the hammer on someone making progress through “the gray” could possibly be a setback to the change process.
In this situation, I see a glimpse of transition beginning to reveal itself. This guy who previously hadn’t shown accountability is now trusting that our appointments are a safe place to become more transparent…not fully transparent, but more transparent. See, I still think he’s feeding me some BS because I suspect he wasn’t with his mother, I suspect he was out by himself or with coworkers, and I suspect it was more than a couple beers…but now I’m in the weeds.
His confession allowed us to have a great conversation about his relationship with alcohol; we had a great conversation about decision-making, about walking in wisdom, of understanding patterns in life and learning what it’s going to take to break those patterns. More importantly, I believe the trust is increasing and the bullshit is decreasing, and trust is absolutely necessary to navigate the gray.
Here me on this point because whether you’re a change agent in the lives of others, or simply the change agent in your own personal process, I believe it is important to look for the change within the shades of gray. The continuum of shades between black and white could literally be infinite, and some changes may be so minute (my-NOOT) they are impossible to observe with the naked eye (take a closer look at the picture at the beginning of this post.) This may be the case with the previous appointments with my client between January and July when I thought nothing constructive was happening. Perhaps a foundation of trust was being constructed and I was simply unaware.
Let’s transition off this guy’s situation and talk about how this concept applies to us.
BLACK & WHITE…THE COLD HARSHNESS OF PASS OR FAIL
As I shared this idea with my wife, I began to consider how our thinking patterns can become so harsh toward ourselves when we operate in the performance-based, outcome-based, pass-or-fail world of black & white.
Take the situation of a friend of mine. He has a dream career he’s wanted for years, and the past few years he’s been taking some positive steps in that direction. He has no experience at the level this dream job holds, but a position recently came open and he made the decision to get his resume prepared and apply.
In a black & white world it can be like this: if you got the job, congrats; if you didn’t, you failed. Never mind that he had the courage to take the steps to get his resume ready; that he put his name in the hat to be considered; never mind that he stepped out of his comfort zone and put himself on the line to be rejected or accepted…in the black & white world, if he doesn’t get the job, he fell short.
Operating in the gray, we see several positive steps accomplished which I mentioned above, but most importantly, he gave himself permission to believe he was qualified for the job. The only failure would have been to shut that door himself.
Let somebody else shut the door…but don’t you dare shut that door on yourself!
WHAT ABOUT WITH WEIGHT LOSS?
If we go by the black & white of what the weight scale reports, we can be in jeopardy of looking at our efforts as either success or failure. Did you lose or did you gain?
The gray may be:
- Did I break that habit of eating a donut at the coffee shop today?
- Did I stay away from the junk food people bring into work?
- Did I show up for my workout despite not feeling it inside?
- When I went out with friends, did I make a healthy choice?
- Did I stay away from seconds helpings…
On and on we can go with examples of small decisions that are made throughout each day. Making favorable decisions may not add up to any change in what the scale reports when we step on it after one or two days, but if we consistently make those good choices more often than not, if we begin winning more than losing at those temptation crossroads, eventually the scale will be forced to reflect the positive changes taking place within the gray.
ONE MORE EXAMPLE
My wife stepped away from corporate life to start her own business 5 years ago and it’s taken about 4.5 years for her to realize she is successful. When she measured her success by the black & white of income made, she would feel discouraged. This discouragement would occasionally lead to her looking on Indeed and other job search sites as she considered returning to the corporate life she was so unhappy in.
Change was happening; growth was taking place; connections were being made; brand-recognition was being established…none of this was captured by the black & white report of income made.
Here we are in year 5 of her business and she’s put together some great quarterly numbers. Did she begin doing something differently in year 5? Not really, although she’s always been open to looking for new ways to build her business, the primary observation I can make is that she has simply been consistent, made good choices, and worked hard. As James Clear said in his book Atomic Habits, “change can take a lifetime until it happens all at once.” In her case, success was building, it was coming, the Gray testified to it, but the Black & White only recently reflected this truth.
THE BLACK & WHITE HAS A PURPOSE
I want to give a shout out to the black & white because we need to have that clear vision of what we’re after and what we want to move away from. I need to know if I’m moving toward that healthy lifestyle or moving away from it; I need some objective truth to point to if I’m going to say I’m becoming a writer. The black & white has its place in the change process…but, we spend so much time in the gray, so I will assert that we need to begin understanding there are shades of gray and change is more than a succeed /fail concept…it’s a long continuum where we clear the closet of skeletons, exercise demons, silence voices in our head (or of doubters around us), destroy bad habits, implement good habits, and transition into that better version of ourselves which is out there waiting to be lived.
Thanks for taking the time to hear my thoughts. Challenge me on perspective. I’m in the gray and constantly want to be moving forward.