Many years ago I learned about the yin-yang symbol and it immediately resonated with me.\u00a0 The balance of everything.\u00a0 Not that life is as evenly balanced as the symbol, yet the idea that with everything, there is another perspective or aspect that we might not think about or even realize.\u00a0 Initially for me it was that it wasn’t all black or white, that there is a lot of gray – the mix of the black and white.\u00a0 And even if it appeared to be one thing, it didn’t necessarily make it so.<\/p>\n
Life is constantly changing, sometimes in large ways, more often in small ways that we might not recognize.\u00a0 We’re shifting sometimes from day to day.\u00a0 I know I will go through phases where a temporary collection of things that are piled up will just about drive me batty, while there’s other times that I can accept that it’s only temporary and also accept that it will get done in time.\u00a0 There’s a great organizing book that talks about this early on, the natural fluctuations that we all go through again and again over our lives – Making Peace with the Things in Your Life<\/a> (review coming next week).<\/p>\n The extremes of black and white are on a spectrum, if we didn’t have darkness how would we know light.\u00a0 And vice versa.\u00a0 How often do we get caught up in thinking in terms of all or nothing?\u00a0 Consider your language – as this can be a clue, do you say things are always or never…?\u00a0 This is an extreme – how often are things \u201calways\u201d or \u201cnever\u201d, if you would pause to play devil’s advocate? That’s probably why it’s called black or white thinking – it’s ignoring or discounting the gray between those two extremes.\u00a0 When we’re really caught up in this, we miss the pieces that would shift us back to the middle ground.<\/p>\n There’s also the idea that within each of these extremes, there is a part of the opposite. Although my understanding is that the symbol isn’t about positive and negative per se, this is part of how I look at this symbol.\u00a0 Even with the most negative experience, there is something positive that you can take away from it.\u00a0 On some level this ties in with what I said above, nothing is truly black or white – these are extremes.\u00a0 From my perspective, there\u2019s always something you can learn from your experiences \u2013 if not about yourself, about someone else, or the situation.<\/p>\n I now wear a pair of yin-yang earrings at all times, an expression of my belief that we might not see the whole picture immediately, yet it’s there. This image is my reminder to look deeper, and to not stay in one extreme for too long. I was so fascinated with this idea that when I was searching for a cat to be company for the one I already I had – I picked an all white kitten, a good match for the all black one I already had. They were my yin-yang cats, a reminder that things balance and aren’t always what they appear to be initially.<\/p>\n It’s all about how we look at things. The perspective we take or more importantly how we challenge our perspective, looking for alternatives.\u00a0 And there is a balance to life \u2013 even if it doesn\u2019t appear to be true at the moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This symbol is an example of perspective. The black and white are two extremes on a spectrum; tied together as it were. Find a way to challenge your own thinking to find the middle ground and change your perspective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10,18,9,15,14],"class_list":["post-1060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personaldevelopment","tag-behavior","tag-goals","tag-motivation","tag-resources","tag-reversals"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-h6","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1068,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions\/1068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}