Thoughts on Colors

Back in April I took a workshop to help me identify my personality in hopes it might lead me to a new career. The workshop was based around colors. Personality traits were divided up into 4 colors and then everyone was tasked with figuring out what mix of colors they were. Everyone has all 4 colors in them, however generally they have one color that is their dominant color, with another color as a close second. These were called our primary and secondary colors and one of the main focuses of the workshop was finding those colors.

I bring this up because I've been thinking about the personality colors lately and how I relate to different colors. I will admit I found a lot of truth in the workshop and it has explained a lot about myself and my interactions with people.

My primary color is green and my secondary color is orange. Green is the color of logic and analytically thinking. Since green is my primary I spend a lot of time up in my head and I very rarely make decisions without thinking them through. However, my secondary color is orange. It is easy to ignore the secondary color and focus on the primary, but that is a mistake. Orange is fun loving, happy-go-lucky color. Orange people do not like rules, restrictions, or tradition. They are impulsive, free-spirited people. I don't have all the traits of an orange person, but I do not like restrictions, I can be impulsive, and I am definitely fun-loving. Mix the two colors together and you get a deeply thoughtful person who doesn't see the point of following rules that don't make logical sense and who doesn't see the point of performing activities that might not bring enjoyment or fun. You get a person who doesn't like to be tied down, yet who also doesn't like to do anything without a plan first.

One quick note: I am making some generalizations and assumptions in this post. Yes I realize that isn't always a wise thing to do, but just go with me.

In looking at my relationships I have concluded that I get along best with other 'green' people, with one notable exception. I have difficulties interacting with people who are green/gold. Gold is the color of family, tradition, and duty. Gold people strive to be the best at what they do. Gold people like to follow the rules and will do things simply because they are "suppose" to be done. Gold is the color I have the least of in my personality. In general I have trouble understanding gold people, but it is worse with green/gold people. Green/gold people are people who appear to me like they should be logical people, but who do things for what I consider to be illogical reasons. For instance, a green/gold person would defend a family member regardless of what they had done simply because they were family. Whereas I would defend a person based upon their merits and what they had done, not whether there was a blood tie there or not.

Gold primary people I don't have a problem with, in general. My BF is a gold primary person. He does some things I perceive as illogical, but that is okay because his primary motivation is not logic, it is tradition and family. Expecting him to be logical and think everything through all the time would be the same as expecting a dog to meow. That isn't to say that he doesn't think things through or that I don't hold him to standards I shouldn't. But that is another conversation entirely.

Bottom line, I think the only way to understand yourself is to process why you do the things you do and how you interact with people. By looking at myself and how I judge and interact with people, I can understand the reasons I act like I do. And then I can either enforce or discard those reasons. By looking at what is happening behind the scenes, I can learn to understand myself better.