Color affects mood; mood affects perception.
Please discuss. How does this play out in life?
I’ll start us out. Life is what we perceive it to be. What we think and how we feel—both emotionally and physically—affect how we take in our experiences. They are shaped by our underlying beliefs about life, largely affected by events in our past.
Perception, then, is very subjective and unique to each of us. Faced with the same experience, we all feel and view it differently. This is readily exemplified by varying eye witness accounts of the same crime scene or car accident.
If follows that if we don’t enjoy something going on in our life, we can change our experience by shifting our perception. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t ever change things to be more conducive to our happiness. Sometimes that is the very right choice. Frequently, a personal attitude adjustment, an internal realignment of perception, is all that is needed to make life more enjoyable. The concept of a glass is being half-empty/half-full/refillable illustrates this.
Today’s message invites me to play with and observe my reactions to color. What hues am I consistently drawn to? How do I react to their opposites on the color wheel? Do I have emotional associations with particular colors? Do I prefer bright colors or subdued shades? How might my preferences reflect or influence what is going on inside me?
I’m further beckoned to note how color affects my mood and to use it actively as a tool. I can experiment using it to shift my perceptions —wearing specific hues of clothing; donning jewelry with certain colored stones; viewing colored mandalas, drawing, coloring, or painting with colors that speak to me; gazing at color samples on my computer monitor and drinking them in; adding more color to my decor. It’s time to explore a more colorful world!
How about you? How do you relate to color?