Rule #1 - Life Is Never Black & White

Here we go, "Ray" or "Rule" number one. This is not only important but helps build the foundation of the rest, leading up to the final most important rule for living a joyful life. This basic principle is one we have all heard before but probably never put much thought into; life is never black and white - nothing about it is. Growing up we see the world in only two ways - good and bad. Everything is either one of those things. As we grow though we learn to realize that most things in life fall somewhere in between in the grey area, between the black and white rules and restraints our society has put into place. So much stress and worry come when we try to put something into that black or white area when it won't fit and nothing we do can change that. An example is that of labels, meaning the kind that we as a society place on each other in order to categorize. On the surface this isn't a bad thing, as humans when we meet someone new we base our initial encounter off what we have come to believe about similar people we have met in the past in order to better understand and grasp a new situation.

Problem - we are all more than a label. So much more.

The problem comes when labels turn into stereotypes and carry negative connotations. When we start to assume things about people before we get to know or even talk to them we are using those predetermined connotations against ourselves. Stereotypes are nothing more than set ways of thinking  in terms of black and white. You are either a good person or a bad person. You are rich or you are poor. The list goes on and on into infinity. Black and white can be applied to people, emotions, actions, beliefs or anything else you can think of. We try to compartmentalize and understand the world around us by setting up "shortcuts" in our mind to help us think and asses new situations faster as we face them. Problem is that we as humans aren't that predictable because we are all individuals with our own likes and dislikes, tastes and preferences; our fingerprint on the world so to speak. Think about it this way, do you want people to make up their mind about you before you ever even speak to them just because they assume something about you? No, of course not, no one does. We want people to recognize, accept and value us for who we really are - a million shades of grey. Example, if we had a list of all the traits any one human possesses/could possess and all the possible answers we could see just how different we all are while still being so very much the same. Even just one of a million questions different makes two people ever-slightly different shades of grey. The shades of grey out there are endless and limitless. While our mind may want to default to it's pre-set thoughts and notions it is up to you to train yourself to think differently. You must remind yourself constantly that things are not concrete, that there are rarely any rules that can't be broken in certain circumstances.
So much stress and anxiety come from worrying about things that aren't "normal" or "perfect" and working out in our minds what we can possibly do to not necessarily make the situation right, but to make it normal. Make it look right. After I get in a fight with someone or even say something hotly to a coworker I spend hours and hours beating myself up for possibly being perceived as mean or cruel or a bad person. I can't see myself as human, flawed - I tell myself I should be held to the perfect standard and when I can't possibly live up I berate myself endlessly. I am still teaching myself how to take a step back and see that just because I did one thing I am not a bad person and I don't need to spend the next four hours freaking out in my head for nothing. Accept reality and adapt to it. Another example, there are so many nights where I come home from work and I spend most of my night worrying obsessively over one of the client's at the houses (I am an RN who works with adults with disabilities) because they haven't gone to the bathroom or they aren't eating or their seizure activity has been up or their behavior is out of control. I have to remind myself, all the time, that my worrying does nothing except stress me out so that if I was ever needed in an emergency I would be too distracted to handle it right. I tell myself that normal people get sick and have problems and have to learn to live with them. These guys tend to have more health problems, worrying because something wasn't fitting exactly into a box wouldn't do any good for anyone. Peace comes in accepting that in this case the "normal" isn't what it normally is.
When you refuse to forgive your friend after they sincerely asked forgiveness for betraying a confidence you are automatically lumping them in the "bad" group because of one mistake. A mistake that they apologized for. How many times a day do you apologize? How many times a day should you be apologizing? Seeing things in black and white comes from stereotypes and pre-conceived ideas about how a certain group of people are. Allow yourself to see the grey in people, in situations and most importantly in life. The more we try to force life into our own mental constraints the more anxiety and angst we give ourselves. Be open to accepting the world as it is, stormy and grey. When the thunderclouds are rolling in and the air gets that smell you know rain is coming. Those clouds, as they pass slowly overhead, are layer upon layer of different shades of grey and black and white. It could be raining in the driveway and the sun could be shining in the backyard. It could be sprinkling on one side of the road and pouring rain on the other. Things are grey, the only black and white that exist are mixed together to form the ever changing tapestry of life.
If you are having a hard time think about it like this instead: there are an infinite number of numbers between 0.0 and 1.0, it doesn't have to just be 0 or 1.