Weekly Tools and Tips to Improve Any Relationship
I was raised by a mom who is about as Blue as they come. She plans family events months (or even years) in advance, she is easily moved to tears, and she is passionate about her relationships. What throws me for a loop, though, is her secondary color is Yellow. Blues and Yellows are complementary opposites (emphasis on OPPOSITES), so it’s a combination that is hard for me to grasp. But something my mom always says, which is so true, is that her Yellow really shines through when she is on vacation.
One of my mom’s favorite things to do on vacation is to rent bikes and ride along the beach, park, mountain trail, or wherever it is we are. I have a memory of one family vacation to California when we were on a bike ride and my mom began riding in a “no biking” zone. My dad pointed out the sign to her, and she just playfully stuck her tongue out at him and kept going. She’s normally a rule follower, but if it gets in the way of her fun, she’s willing to break them.
It’s pretty rewarding as a daughter to see my hard-working, dedicated Blue mom become so relaxed and goofy on vacation. I think it’s so healthy that she gives up her “Blue card” once in a while and really leans into her Yellow secondary. It gets me thinking about how we all have secondary colors we draw strengths from, so maybe we should all take a vacation from our primaries once in a while when they are not serving us and learn from something different.
But how do we do that? The idea sounds nice, but it’s not easy to shed some of our lifelong habits, especially when they meet a need our driving core motive creates. For example, I am a Blue primary, and it can be very hard for me not to be controlling over my family/household, even though my strong White secondary shows that I also have tendencies to be tolerant and balanced. But I believe in change, and I believe that lasting change can come through baby steps. So my challenge to all of us is to pick just one character limitation we struggle with in our primary color and then to try to counteract it by drawing from a strength we have from our secondary color for one week. Then, and this part might be hard for some of us, (Yellows, I’m looking at you 😉 ) try journaling about your experience. Notice and write about the situations in your daily life that you struggle with this particular limitation and then implement and write about how your strength helped you through those situations. And, of course, we at Color Code would love to hear about your experiences, so please drop a comment below! To help you get started, here is a list of some of the strengths and limitations of each personality type. You may not resonate with every one of them, but hopefully some of the information will be helpful. Good luck with your endeavors! We believe in you!
Typical Yellow Strengths:
Typical Yellow Limitations:
Typical Blue Strengths:
Typical Blue Limitations:
Typical White Strengths:
Typical White Limitations:
Typical Red Strengths:
Typical Red Limitations:
____________________________________________
Megan Christensen is a Blue who has been writing her feelings for as long as she can remember. Megan graduated from BYU-Idaho in 2014 with a degree in communication. A lifelong fan of the Color Code, she’s thrilled to be the content editor of the blog and hopes to help as many people as possible become more self-aware. When she’s not writing, Megan can be found reading, doing yoga, and spending as much time as she can outdoors.
