Unlock the Power of Connection to Resolve Color Conflicts and Heal Relationships With Common Sense

Hello Colorful Readers: 

This is a revised transcript of a PDXTALK I gave 8 years ago, in 2016. The crossroads where my passion and livelihood meet - Color Baggage, Care, Connection, and Somatic Beauty - converge in this exploration of human relationships and conflict resolution. As a color expert who has resolved conflicts in thousands of homes, I've discovered that the principles of color harmony extend far beyond paint choices. My talk delves into the power of connection and how fully understanding can transform not only our living spaces but also our relationships and personal growth.

PDXTALK

For the last 20 years, I've resolved color conflicts in over 3,000 homes through my paint products and services. I can tell you that regardless of the home's size, gender, culture, or circumstances I encountered - and I experienced a wide variety - I always resolved every color conflict through connection. Connection is the most incredible sense of all because it's common sense.

And I don't mean "common" as in ordinary, but "common" as in shared.

Common Sense Is Extraordinary

We can all feel when something is amazing because of its connection. We can also feel when something doesn't feel right due to a lack of connection. This belief in connection and common sense allowed me to resolve every color conflict.

We have primary senses we all already share. We've got vision, smell, taste, hearing, and touch. When somebody likes to fish, and someone else doesn't, that doesn't mean they don't share in common the same pleasure when something tastes good. This is the reason that, even if you hate purple, you would never take it out of a sunset because it feels so good. When life comes together in harmony, it's a beautiful thing. Lucky for us, harmony comes in color.

We also have secondary sensors we rarely talk about because they are so visceral; they feel. We have a sense of balance, time, temperature, and, the greatest sense of all, a sense of collective connection, a "common sense."

What makes common sense so extraordinary is that it comes with a care-reflex. 

Our Care Reflex.

The proof is in the baby. When a baby is born, we cannot help but care for a baby. That's how 8 billion people, regardless of circumstance, gender, or culture, got here. Everyone is born with the same care reflex, a reflex to care that keeps on triggering until we die so we may survive and thrive in our circumstances. 

It doesn't matter whether it's baby Moses going down a river or baby Carlos in the movie The Hangover when it's found in a closet; if you can't take care of a baby that is miserable because it has needs, you're going to try to find somebody else who will.

Once, a woman called me 13 times to rehash a color decision she agreed to, which I reinforced for her kitchen. She had initially called me because she had what I call "99 colors of beer on the wall" - a lot of yellow to choose from. You know how yellow-loving people are; they always think yellow will brighten their world.

I told her, "That connection isn't working here. Your common sense is saying, 'Please, let's not paint yellow." The reason is all that orange is in your wood floor, cabinets, trim, and the dining room furniture you love so much. If you painted those walls yellow, you'd be like a fly drowning in a pint of beer." We both laughed, and she agreed it made total sense. She could feel it in her body, but she couldn't see it with her eyes because her body didn't have the words to describe that feeling! You know, like a baby.

We're not doing orange. She didn't like purple. We only had red, green, and blue left. Blues and greens felt cold to her. "Red it is," I said.

We chose red. Each time she called, I reassured her, "Don't worry, WE got this."

On the 14th time, she called to thank me. She had a need to make her home warm, inviting, and beautiful, and she thought only yellow could meet that need. She had always loved yellow with red. Like a beautiful sunset, everyone else also loved her red kitchen. Red met her need to use connection and create harmony in her home, her baggage, and all.

We Are Our Senses

This is the physiology that allowed me to use color harmony and resolve thousands of color conflicts, as well as another kind I never thought I would be discussing with you today.

It all started with my assistant, Ashley, getting married, and her best friend and maid of honor had asked for a specific gift as a wedding present for being in the wedding. I know what you're thinking - "Oh no, she didn't. But she did.

Ashley was quite upset with her best friend. I suggested she tell her friend how she felt, but Ashley refused, saying, "She should know better. She doesn't care." Of course, she cares - she's your best friend, she's in your wedding party. But Ashley insisted, "No, you can clearly see she doesn't care about the gift I want to give her. And you know what? I don't care. I'm not going to worry about it. It's a wedding; whatever, I won't say anything. 

I thought to myself, wow, that's the opposite of what I learned about color-conflict resolution over the years.

Every single one of my clients really cared and wanted others to care about resolving conflict because they believed they "should've known better"; therefore, they sincerely wanted to know better to do better!

Several weeks after that conversation, the 2008 market and housing industry crashed, profoundly affecting my passion and livelihood.

I found myself with a lot of time on my hands. I began asking friends and family, "Are you in the middle of a 'should've known better' situation?"

The answer was always yes. If people weren't dealing with a current conflict, they had 20 billion others they were willing to share from years past. That's when I realized these conflicts were sensorial and never resolved in people's minds, bodies, and souls.

The "Should've Known Better Conflict" or SKBC.

The pattern is distinct and clear. The SKBC starts with someone doing or saying something they should know better than to do or say. We instantly lose trust that they care about what we care about or about us. We tell ourselves they don't care, we don't care, or "who cares anyway?"

We avoid at all costs to find out if this is true or not.

Meanwhile, we start to become miserable because the dynamic of not caring goes against our care reflex and the need to care about connection. 

We can't be around the person who started the SKBC without wanting to explode like a landmine or act fragile like an eggshell. It gets so hard that we often end the relationship because of blame or abandonment. The relationship ends, but the conflict does not. Years later, just hearing that person's name can produce an unwell, visceral feeling, like a dark, stormy cloud in the middle of a beautiful blue sky covering the sun. 

I interviewed plenty of people, but it wasn't until I had my own SKBC that I was able to understand the power of connection and its ability to resolve every conflict without a trace of misery.

I had a friend with whom I started a friendship under typical circumstances - our husbands got along, we had children the same age, and we shared neighborhood schools and auctions. We didn't have much in common, but we could drink wine, have dinner, and have a great time.

A couple of years into this relationship, she got breast cancer. Circumstances became serious, and we entered into a more intense stage in our friendship.

She went through chemo and then into remission. We celebrated her birthday that year as in birthing her new lease on life. My birthday was coming up, and the plan was to go out to celebrate with Margaritas. She forgot my birthday. I thought, "Hmm, she should know better. Then I thought, "I don't think she cares." And I said, "I don't care." 

But I stopped myself and thought, "No, I'm not going there.

"The next time I saw her, I said, "Look, you don't know this about me, but I really care about birthdays being a celebration of life. When you forgot mine, it felt like you didn't care about celebrating my life, and I acted as if you didn't care."

I thought she'd say, "Gretchen, I have chemo brain, and chemo people forget."

Instead, she looked at me and said, "Gretchen, you were one of the most important people in my life, and I love you so much. I'm so sorry." She started crying.

I was shocked. We hugged, and from that moment, our connection changed forever. It was never circumstantial again. We hugged and told each other I love you all the time. Two years later, her cancer came back, and my friend died. A week after her funeral, my husband and I flew to Miami. The first night, we went out to dinner and talked a lot about her. I remember going to bed and feeling very sad.

In the middle of the night, she came to me in a dream.

We were at the Fountain Blu beach bar. It was crowded. Loud music booming. I look across the pool towards the beach, and as people parted I saw a figure that was brighter than others, sauntering towards me in tight blue jeans and a coral tank top. A woman with stunning short black curly hair, looking completely tanned and radiant. When I focused on her smile, I realized it was my friend. At first, I thought she was talking but I couldn't hear her over the loud music, but then I realized as she got closer that she was singing "In the Arms of an Angel," the song they sang at her funeral. As she came closer, her gaze locked with mine, she hugged me very tightly as she went to kiss my cheek but instead finished the song in my ear. We both started laughing with joy. The hug felt so real, it woke me up.

That's when I learned we can transform ourselves and our relationships through the power of connection and common sense, regardless of circumstances.

When I was asked to speak at this event tonight, I knew I was expected to discuss color. But I thought, if this was my last day on earth, my last birthday, or looking at my last sunset, this is the one idea I want worth spreading like good paint:

We are born with a need to live in connection, making it the most extraordinary "common" as in "collective" sense of all, and all we need to do is C.A.R.E.F.O.R.U.S, as in:

C - Choose connection above circumstance.

A - Agree common sense is collective and extraordinary.

R - Reinforce, rewire, or release connections to be free of misery.

E - Expect everyone to have a care-reflex

F- Forge paths of connection to meet your needs.

O- Open your mind to senses beyond primary ones.

R- Recognize everyone's needs are the same, met in different ways.

U- Understand yourself to understand others.

S- Solve past, present, and future SKBCs, big and small, with care.

From my bag to yours,

Gretchen

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