This month, I wanted to share a great question that was sent into me by one of our Certified Color Code Trainers. Her name is Lisa Hall, and she does an amazing job. Recently, a participant of hers who had attended a Color Code training in the past asked the following question after learning about the Character Code.

Here’s the question, “If our Driving Core Motive does not change, then why not just take the Character Code assessment?’

This is actually a great question, and I can understand where the participant is coming from – especially since we’ve all been conditioned to look at behavior-based personality models. In fact, if this were a behavioral model, the best thing to do would be just to take the Character Code assessment!

Of course, it’s not a behavioral model, and so it’s an important question to carefully consider.

I think you have to look at your Driving Core Motive or “DCM” as the engine that powers the rest of your personality – your needs and wants, your instincts and preferences, the values that you adopt and even the behavior you learn to display. Your DCM is innately present at birth, and as your participant correctly mentioned – it does not change throughout your life.

That means that your need for Power, Intimacy, Peace, or Fun (depending on what your DCM is, of course) will always be there no matter what. You can’t discard it or change it. It is, therefore, one of the very most critical pieces of self-awareness you can have. It will explain why you do what you do and why some things are easy for you to accept or to change while others are terribly difficult. It is also critical that you learn to value your DCM no matter how frustrating it might be at times.
Learning to value yourself is the first, essential part of the personal growth process. You have to know “how you are” naturally to know where you are going. Acceptance of that Core Color ensures that you will be striving to change for the right reasons (meaning that your motives for wanting to change will be clean).

If it were not so, and we tried to change because we never developed a sense of intrinsic value for who we are (i.e., we never learned how to have self-esteem), our efforts to become something else would always leaving us feeling unfulfilled. Even though our behaviors might change, we would still feel a nagging, unsatisfied need from our DCM that was not being fulfilled.

The key is to learn to value your Core Motive and then look for ways to add to it. We can keep all the good stuff and eliminate the behaviors that we don’t like while we strive to add strengths from the other Colors as well.

That’s why we start with the Color Code and then move on to the Character Code.

I guess you could say that it helps to know (and love!) your natural self when you are trying create your future self.

I hope that helps you all.

Very best of living!

Jeremy

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.