Find your colours

Colours can both affect and represent mindset, moods and emotions

With Blue Monday just around the corner, I've been thinking about colours - not only how they both symbolise and affect moods and emotions, but also about my own relationship with colours, and how they can represent me and the things that are important to me.

What's your favourite colour? I realised last year that I'd been answering this question wrong the whole time!

My answer WAS green. I have green eyes. I have a green car. I love being in green spaces, and spending time in nature. I love how it represents growth. I love green.

But it's not my favourite colour.

You see, I answered 'green' because it was a good answer.

As a boy growing up in the '80s, you were expected to pick a safe, acceptable 'boy-like' favourite colour. 'Blue' is always a safe bet, but a little bit obvious. And as much as I like blue, its calming effect, its depth, and its ability to add striking contrast to landscapes, it didn't really do much for me. So I decided to be different (but still safe), and went for green.

And every time someone asked me my favourite colour over the next 30+ years, I never thought about it, and always answered the same. Green.

What prompted me to change my mind?

At the start of last year, after the announcement of lockdown 3, I felt stuck. Lacking momentum, I was trying to be everything that people expected me to be. I was trying to set up a business that would be acceptable to the masses. I was bending to please clients. I was putting out bland messages, I was trying to be everything that I thought was expected of me as a person, company, family man, friend, colleague and husband.

I realised at this point, the colour that I embodied was beige.

I hate beige. To me it represents doing what it expected of you. Living up to expectations. Fitting in at work. Not upsetting people. Being what you think people want you to be. Doing what you thought other people thought was right. Hiding your true colours, and everything that makes you, you.

Beige is what's left over when the colours have drained away. It's not got the purity of white, just a slight hue left over where the colour used to be.

And I realised that by choosing 'green' as my favourite colour all those years ago, and sticking with it every year since, I was actually CHOOSING to be beige. Because as much as I love green, it's not one of the colours that I would say embodies me the most.

My favourite colours are red and black.

Red is fire, excitement, danger, risk. It embodies the fiercely passionate side of me when I'm at my most excited, alive and joyous.

Black is depth, the unknown, the dark side. It is the honest self that lurks within each of us, often hidden from view (and obscured by the beige). It is everything that beige is not.

Looking back, the times I have embraced these colours and embodied them have been the most exciting, intense and joyous experiences in my life. Pardon the pun, but everything else pales in comparison

Recognising this is one thing, but living it is another. As much as I pushed last year, as much as I achieved, I'm still feeling a little beige right now. Maybe it's 2 years of Covid, lockdowns and home-schooling. Maybe it's a mid-life thing.

But beige isn't good enough.

For all the goals we've set, the intentions we have and the life we're aiming for, we should also give consideration to what gives us joy, and find ways to BE who we ARE to make MORE of those moments.

Maybe this year we should just strive to be true to our colours.