Is it Good or Bad to Categorize Things as Good or Bad?

Answer: The title is a TRICK QUESTION! (Did I nail the click bait thing or what?)

I believe most things in life are pretty neutral. Neither good nor bad. Or maybe they’re both good and bad. Either way, I was a pretty “black and white” thinker until pretty recently.

Products, decisions, people, circumstances, pretty much anything… the main question I’d ask to understand something is “Is this good or is this bad?”

I still can tend towards that dichotomy from time to time. Great for engineering problem solving. Not as useful for understanding and connecting to the nuanced reality of the world we live in.

So as I’ve bopped along in life I’ve tried to replace “Is this good or is this bad?” with the question, “Is this helpful, unhelpful or neutral at the moment?” Or if I want to leave it a little more open ended, “What would be helpful for me in this moment?”

These evolved questions sum up a lot of nuanced things-

• “helpful/unhelpful/neutral” : While it’s still a categorical question, it’s dependent on my goals and priorities.

• “the moment” : This accounts for fluidity in those goals and priorities! And it can call attention to if a goal has momentarily slipped in priority… it can help me re-prioritize if needed in the moment.

• “for me” : This acknowledges that I know myself better than generic, wide-spread advice probably does.

A PRIME example of this – The other night I was getting ready for bed when I added a glass to my kitchen sink that was already full of dishes. The main reason they had piled up was because it was a busy week and generally my mental capacity was pretty tapped. So my goals and priorities for the week (to get acclimated in my new job, to maintain compassion for myself in a transitional season, and to eat most meals at home) aligned to say a sink full of dishes is “helpful” !

But this particular night, I saw the same pile of dishes and thought – “This pile kinda stresses me out.. What would be helpful for me right now?” Took a second, and decided it’d be helpful to do the dishes (and that a sink full of dishes was “unhelpful”).

Fascinating stuff, right? So the full sink was neither good nor bad. The choice to let dishes accumulate wasn’t good or bad.

I purposefully used this as one of the lowest-stakes examples. Because this applies dang near everywhere. I’ve had similar encounters with indulgent food, with exercise, with relational situations… The list goes on!

If you give it a try, let me know how it goes! 🙂