Let me tell you about a client who didn't refuse herself anything when it came to either shoes or the color yellow.
She wanted a yellow kitchen.
She had tried 12 shades of yellow by the time I got there. Somewhere in her imagination, she knew what the room would feel, look like, and say about her once she got it. She thought only yellow could bring in the warmth she was looking for. She couldn't wait to put up all her red accents, like dishes and platters, to go with it.
She couldn't understand why she couldn't find the yellow; whenever she thought she had it, it was wrong. Not being able to trust your eyes is a scary thing. The lipstick that goes to orange, the shirt that makes your skin looks jaundiced, the bedspread that turned from purple to gray — we all have stories about how we just didn't see the color.
She didn't see the yellow that was already there in her kitchen. There were too many yellows in the room already. She was drowning in Lemon Drops. No yellow in the world would have worked; it was time to create a new magnetic color dynamic.
She had never considered the possibility of another color, the one she needed, not what she thought she wanted. What she needed came as a big surprise.
"You need red," I said.
She loved color. Her home had many other colors in shades of red, orange, blues, and greens everywhere. Orange (too close to yellow) was also not an option. With only 6 colors in the rainbow, she could do green, blue, purple, red, or white.
That happy feeling we get from a favorite color comes from our brain replaying the moment we first fell in love with that color. This sensory-driven memory is like a high-five wave in a stadium filled with cheering fans. We are a part of that color and experience a sense of belonging and identification in it.
I wasn't trying to blow out her love flame. Just the opposite. I wanted to fuel the fire and stoke that golden love.
To feature beautiful red cherries on top of a cake, the cake has to be any other color but red.
It wasn't easy for her. After our time together, she called me 13 times to question the red choice. 13 times, I reiterated the same thing: "The walls can't be yellow or orange. Since you don't like browns or grays, and blue, green, or purples feel cold to you, it's either red or white.
The last time she called was to tell me how much she loved the red and, to her surprise, how much others loved the red. It was all she could talk about. A magnetic color relationship intended to open her mind and light up her world expanded her kitchen and mind, attracting more of the same.
Cheers to living in love!
Yours,
G