Dear Jeremy,

I recently heard somebody referred to as a “Healthy Blue”. Can you please explain what that means? Does it imply that somebody could be an “Unhealthy Blue,” for instance? Thanks!

Debbie

Dear Debbie,

How very observant of you! Thanks for submitting this question. I would love to explain what this means.

Anyone who has been around the Color Code for very long has heard us speaking in terms of “Healthy,” “Unhealthy,” “Charactered,” and/or “Dysfunctional”. For example, we may refer to somebody as a “Charactered White”.

Whenever you hear any of these terms, we are referring to a part of the growth process Dr. Hartman calls “The Charactered Path”.

Most people reading this will probably be familiar with Dr. Hartman’s first work, “The Color Code” (now available as “The People Code“). A smaller portion of our readers will be familiar with Dr. Hartman’s second book, “The Character Code” (now available as “Color Your Future“) and/or his third book, “Playing Life to Win“.

Those two books are followup works to The Color Code and they build upon Dr. Hartman’s understanding of personality and personal development.

The Color Code is a blueprint for first, understanding yourself and what makes you “tick”. This is accomplished through discovering and learning about your Driving Core Motive – the engine that drives your personality. The Color Code also teaches us about others and what motivates them to do what they do. The understanding of self and others enables people of all walks of life to significantly improve their relationships with others and therefore their own personal and professional effectiveness.

So, what happens after you get the Color Code?

The answer to that question is that you have to learn about how to change and develop yourself; how to break old habits; how to learn new skills, etc. That’s precisely where The Character Code comes in as outlined in Color Your Future and Playing Life to Win.

Obviously, we all change in life. Some changes are for the better, and unfortunately some are not. That’s where the “Charactered Path” picks up. We use the terms, “Charactered,” “Healthy,” “Unhealthy,” and “Dysfunctional” to describe which path an individual might be on at any given time. I’ll give an explanation of those four terms below:

• A “Charactered” individual is a person who is really working on positive growth. Specifically, what we mean is that this person is developing Color Code strengths outside his/her own Core Color. For instance, if a Red was to learn to be compassionate (a Blue trait) we would consider that kind of growth to be “Charactered”, because the Red is stretching beyond their natural strengths and striving towards positive growth.
• A “Healthy” individual is a person who is really good at working from his/her own strengths (inside his/her Core Color), but is not necessarily trying to reach beyond them. For example, if a Blue was found to be compassionate – even if that compassion was learned – we would consider that to be “Healthy” behavior. That means that the behavior is still positive, but it didn’t necessarily require someone to go above and beyond our expectations for them in their Core Color.
• An “Unhealthy” individual, then is a the opposite of a “Healthy” individual. He/She operates out of limitations inside his/her Core Color. An example of this would be an irresponsible Yellow. The behavior is limiting, but it is not necessarily uncommon for a person of that Color Code.
• Last of all, we have the “Dysfunctional” category. A person in this area is living out of limitations outside his/her Core Color. This becomes very problematic for that person, because their limiting behavior seems so unnatural, forced, or even purposeful. Their thinking is clouded, and they often struggle with carrying deep insecurities as well as appearing to be extremely incongruent in the eyes of others. An example of a “Dysfunctional” individual would be a irresponsible White.

I hope this explanation is helpful to you, Debbie. If you would like to learn more, I would recommend that you read, Color Your Future. It is an excellent book!

Very best of living,

Jeremy Daniel

Jeremy Daniel (Core Color: Yellow) has been working with the Color Code since 1998 in various capacities from training in the field personally with Dr. Taylor Hartman to designing customized corporate solutions and new training programs for various industries.  To ask about Jeremy’s training or speaking services, please email and inquiry to jeremy@colorcodetraining.com.