Embracing life

Psychology of Color

/ James Browning

psych-paint

It began with a FaceBook post yesterday by a dear friend: Ok…if someone would let me borrow a fluffy pink tutu, a tiara, a pink teddy bear, and then spin me like a ballerina into a pool of PINK and GLITTER, drag me out and force me to watch a chick flick…Id really appreciate it. 🙂 *collapses*

From Various sources on the web I came up how pink might affect people and posted it on FB. That led to info about two other colors yesterday. Then this morning I took a deeper look into a wider spectrum of color effects and share the Cliffs Notes version here.

There are four psychological primary colors: red, blue, yellow and green.

RED is the most emotionally intense color. It stimulates a faster heartbeat and breathing, gets noticed and makes the wearer appear heavier. Pure red is the simplest color, with no subtlety. It is stimulating, friendly and suggests strength, and warmth. At the same time, it can be perceived as demanding, aggressive, defiance, and straining.

BLUE is the color of the mind and is essentially soothing. Strong blues will stimulate clear thought and lighter, soft blues will calm the mind and aid concentration. It is serene and mentally calming and the color of clear communication. However, it can also be perceived as cold, unemotional, unfriendly, cold and aloof.

GREEN strikes the eye in such a way as to require no adjustment whatever and is, therefore, restful. Being in the center of the spectrum, it is the color of balance. We are reassured by green, on a primitive level. It brings harmony, refreshment, rest and restoration. It can also be the color of stagnation, blandness and boredom.

YELLOW is the strongest color, psychologically. The right yellow will lift spirits and self-esteem. It is the color of confidence and optimism. Too much of it, or the wrong tone can cause self-esteem to plummet, giving rise to fear and anxiety. Yellow is perceived as strong and creative, but also irrational, fragile, and depressed.

In combination the four primary colors create seven other secondary psychological colors: purple, orange, pink, grey, black, white and brown.

PURPLE – Positive: Spiritual, wealth, authenticity, truth, feminine, romantic. Negative: Introversion, decadence, inferiority, uneasiness, unrest. Rare in nature, purple can appear artificial.

ORANGE – Positive: Comfort, food, warmth, security, sensuality, passion, abundance, fun. Negative: Deprivation, frustration, frivolity, immaturity.

PINK – Positive: Tranquility, nurture, warmth, femininity, love, sexuality, survival of the species. Negative: Inhibition, emotional claustrophobia, emasculation, physical weakness.

GREY – Positive: Neutrality. Negative: Lack of confidence, dampness, depression, hibernation, lack of energy. Only color that has no direct psychological properties.

BLACK – Positive: Sophistication, glamour, security, emotional safety, efficiency, substance. Negative: Oppression, coldness, menace, heaviness. (PS: It is a myth that black clothes are slimming).

WHITE – Positive: Hygiene, sterility, clarity, purity, cleanness, simplicity, sophistication, efficiency. Negative: Sterility, coldness, barriers, unfriendliness, elitism.

BROWN – Positive: Seriousness, warmth, Nature, earthiness, reliability, support. Negative: Lack of humor, heaviness, lack of sophistication.

For me this info will get filed mentally under “conversation starters”. It was fun and interesting to dig up. I am grateful for the simple comment of a friend that was the catalyst to go find this stuff. (Thanks K.!)

Each day has a color, a smell.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Primary source: http://www.colour-affects.co.uk/psychological-properties-of-colours

Shines Brightest

/ James Browning

8113823_origIt’ a beautiful Sunday morning during the Memorial holiday weekend which I increased to four days away from work by taking Friday off. After a couple of days of getting up without an alarm clock or a list of things I needed to do, I’m at peace and feeling mellow.

The healthy level of lethargy I have achieved through some serious decompression leaves me lazy and borrowing words this morning to post. Jack Karaksuer’s thoughts below remind me to daydream, live large, act boldly and fight ruts and routines. But that will have to wait. It will be time for a nap soon.

…make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt.

So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.

The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure.

The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy.

But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. From “Into the Wild” by Jack Krakauer

Life is good. Slowing down and taking stock of it all from time to time is as important as any of my doing, doing, doing. It is in stillness that gratitude shines brightest.

Turn off your mind,
relax, and float
downstream.
John Lennon

 

In honor of Memorial day, here’s a link to a G.M.G. post from a year ago:
https://goodmorninggratitude.com/2012/05/28/if-you-are-able/

odonnellmd01c

Open Arms and a Grateful Soul

/ James Browning

meander_way_to_light_by_the_arkzWhere you come from is gone,
where you thought you were going to was never there,
and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.
Where is there a place for you to be? No place…
Nothing outside you can give you any place…
In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.
Flannery O’Connor

Having been a searcher for the majority of my days, I relate strongly to O’Connor’s words. I tried various jobs, living in lots of cities, and changing partners frequently in a quest to find myself. I chased happiness while not knowing what it looked or felt like. Knowing what being happy wasn’t covered the near full extend of my knowledge. Running toward and away simultaneously kept me stuck in the same spot no matter how much who and what was around me got changed.

It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth,’ and so it goes away. Puzzling. Robert M. Pirsig

There were moments when happiness was within me and love was in my arms, but I recognized neither for such things were strangers. It was impossible to embrace what I sought when there was no tangible idea in my head of what I was seeking.

What you’re looking for is already inside you. You’ve heard this before, but the holy thing inside you really is that which causes you to seek it. You can’t buy it, lease it, rent it, date it, or apply for it. The best job in the world can’t give it to you. Neither can success, or fame, or financial security – besides which, there ain’t no such thing. Anne Lamott

Once I was able to find some stillness within to be in one place mentally and physically, my chase of happiness, contentment and love appeared to be the impossible quest it was. Such things can’t be found, located or hunted down. The way to attract them I learned was to focus inward, find peace with who and what I was and come to grips with what I truly needed. Then the good stuff I sought started to arrive.

It’s written, ‘seek and ye shall find’. But first, ‘imagine what you seek’. Otherwise, you will end up searching everything everywhere forever. Toba Beta

An unchaotic mind, body and spirit was all I ever needed to come to know that being happy came through acceptance and allowing myself to be contented with what was. Grasping and grabbing was not the correct path, but open arms and a grateful soul were.

The search for happiness
is one of the chief sources
of unhappiness.
Eric Hoffer

The Hungry Ghost

/ James Browning

7698002802_b7995efa67_zA hand clenched leaves no space for anything else. That thought has been taught to me repeatedly until it became accepted fact. When I rebel against life and grab on, wanting it to stay the way it is, nothing is accomplished except the narrowing of my life experience.

Over indulgence in wanting, wishing and hoping moves me either into future tripping or on a tour of the past. Nothing alive is to be found in either. This moment, who I am now and what I have currently is where living is found. Stated many times, I will always continue to express such thinking for it brings me back to the “now”.

When we’re in a state of wanting mind, we’re never satisfied, no matter what we have. If we attain the object of our longing, we simply replace the old desire with a new one. If we achieve revenge, we feel worse than we did before. The problem is that wanting mind is rooted in the incorrect belief that something outside of ourselves is the key to lasting happiness so we look there for the solution. The reality is that no emotion or state of being, however strong, is permanent and that happiness can’t be found outside of ourselves only within. Buddhists call this phenomenon of endless wanting and dissatisfaction the “hungry ghost. Ronald Alexander, Ph.D.

It is a uniquely human condition to desire. It caused the creation of civilization itself, brought a need to express in art and writing and started most any worthwhile endeavor. Want precedes doing. Longing comes before finding. Aspiration foreruns accomplishment. Feeling nourished follows craving. Happiness i soften recognized by a yearning sated. Flourishing is always a product of making peace with struggle and difficulty.

Sometimes we must confront painful options or make difficult choices. On occasion, flourishing is playing the hand we are dealt as well as we can, given imperfect and even undesirable circumstances such as family crises or financial distress, job loss or illness – the new reality for increasing numbers of people. Flourishing is different from happiness and it doesn’t always feel good. Many of our most painful experiences – unrequited love, loss of a beloved relative, professional failure – clarify our values, sharpen our determination and deepen our compassion. Jeffrey B. Rubin

Gone is the belief that being joyful and cheerful should fill me all the time. Can you believe I once thought that was possible?!?! Accepting the trials, challenges, heartaches and uncertainties are always predictable parts of life has been a huge step. And I don’t mean the usual acknowledgement of issues I used to make (as almost every one does). It is in seeing the greatest hurts and difficulties as teachers of cherished wisdom that I began to find contentment.

Being happy and flourishing is a state of contentment, even if what is happening is not what I want or would choose. Throwing off unhappiness and accepting all of life as one package has turned being alive into an exceptionally enjoyable adventure.

Unhappiness is a dangerous thing,
like carbon monoxide.
You don’t smell it,
you don’t taste it,
it’s formless and colourless,
but it poisons slowly.
It seeps into every pore
of your skin until one day
your heart just stops beating.
Bella Pollen

A Day for a Daydream

/ James Browning

2586027821_d30d0ccc79What a day for a daydream
What a day for a daydreamin’ boy
And I’m lost in a daydream
Dreamin ‘bout my bundle of joy.

And even if time ain’t really on my side
It’s one of those days for takin’ a walk outside
I’m blowin’ the day to take a walk in the sun
And fall on my face on somebody’s new mowed lawn.

I’ve been havin’ a sweet dream
I been dreamin’ since I woke up today
It’s starrin’ me and my sweet dream
Cause she’s the one that makes me feel this way.

And even if time has passed me by a lot
I couldn’t care less about the dues you say I got
Tomorrow I’ll pay the dues for droppin’ my load
A pie in the face for bein’ asleep before dawn.

And you can be sure that if you’re feelin’ right
A daydream will last along into the night
Tomorrow at breakfast you may pick up your ears
Or you may be daydreamin for a thousand years.

What a day for a daydream
Custom made for a daydreamin’ boy
And now I’m lost in a daydream
Dreamin ‘bout my bundle of joy.
John Sebastian

While those lyrics are about being in love with someone in particular, I related to this old Lovin’ Spoonful tune more generally to loving life and appreciating a new day. After storms for days, seeing the sun this morning and the green bursting forth after the rain caused this melody to start playing in my head.

I am grateful for the dreams I had last night, this new day, the smells of the morning and sun beams dancing through my office window at this moment. Label me corny or even delusional, but an inability to share in a bit of my feeling this morning is only your loss. Life is more than half attitude. What kind have you chosen this morning? Each is the creator of his or her point of view.

Keep your face always toward the sunshine
and shadows will fall behind you.
Walt Whitman

When the Student Is Ready

/ James Browning

graceIt was a slow realization to arrive, but emphatically I know my thoughts shape my existence more than any other factor. When it was suggested years ago that positive affirmations work, I could not grasp how saying and momentarily thinking particular thoughts could be life changing. It took a long time to consistently try them and then was surprised to find affirmations actually work. But it was a real struggle at first.

By choosing to think and say positive affirmations as true, the subconscious is forced into one of two reactions – avoidance or reappraisal. The bigger the issue the bigger the gap between the positive affirmation and the perceived inner truth and the more likely that one is going to experience resistance. This is where the subconscious finds it easier to stay with its perceived inner truth and avoid the challenge using any means at its disposal to avoid examining the issue. You will recognize this reaction by a strong negative feeling inside as you state the positive affirmations. Equally if your experience a sense of joy and well-being, your mind is instinctively responding to something it believes to be true. When you get this emotion, you know your affirmations are working!

Happiness…
Happiness exists where I choose to look for it.
I accept the good that is flowing into my life.
I smile and my life lightens.
Gratitude expands happiness.

Love…
The warmth of love surrounds me.
I appreciate those who love me.
I unconditionally give my love..
I am ready to be in love.

Forgiveness…
I release myself from my anger and let the past go.
The past is forgiven. I am thankful.
I live in the “now” each moment of each day.
Today, I forgive myself.

Because affirmations actually reprogram your thought patterns, they change the way you think and feel about things, and because you have replaced dysfunctional beliefs with your own new positive beliefs, positive change comes easily and naturally. This will start to reflect in your external life, you will start to experience seismic changes for the better in many aspects of your life. http://www.vitalaffirmations.com/affirmations.htm#.UZolF3co6Uk

A practice I first tried about six years ago was to regularly watch the sunrise and repeat affirmations from a sheet of them I had accumulated. There was no one else around or noise and distractions. As the days passed I began to notice a difference in my mental attitude; slowly but surely it improved consistently. Now I know not to scoff at the good that simple things can do. Something does not have to be complicated in order to make a big different. I am grateful for the personal discovery that affirmations work. I continue the practice to this day. Insight comes when the student is ready to see it.

Belief consists in accepting
the affirmations of the soul;
unbelief, in denying them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Frequently Uncomfortable

/ James Browning

2706077104_70df96a778_zPurely by personal choice soon I will be retiring from professional life in order to pursue a myriad of other interests. It’s an agenda far too long to ever complete, but I am exceeding excited and grateful to have the time to apply myself to it. My ‘new life’ will require some fairly radical habit changes. Lately, on and off, I have been reading thoughts on-line others have shared about breaking routine. Here’s a list of ten things I can start applying even before my time is my own:

  1. Hold a conversation with a new person everyday. Expand your world beyond people similar to you. You’ll learn about ways of life and outlooks on life that are incredibly different from your own.
  2. Avoid wasting time. You have far too little. Don’t watch television. Yeah, I know, you mostly watch the history and science channels. People tell me that all the time. Turn it off and go do something else. Anything else.
  3. Waste time. Relaxation frees the subconscious to connect the blocks of your knowledge and experiences. When you free your mind your subconscious has more power to bring in random thoughts or connect items that are not necessarily related to each other.
  4. Use your lunch, not just for lunch with friends or to run errands. Go to museums, new restaurants, new parks, try new foods. So many people waste this time working at their desks or going to the same restaurant with the same people and eating the same food.
  5. Read books from the Dummies series on subjects you have no use for. Even better, read children’s books; they’re faster. There are millions of subjects you could expose yourself to with a few minutes each day.
  6. Play with Legos and Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs. The building challenges, the creation of something quickly and easily is both a puzzle solving exercise and builds visualization skills. In addition, anything that triggers childhood memories is good.
  7. Create a piece of art and enter it into an art exhibit. My guess, call it an educated guess, is that most of my readers can not even take this suggestion seriously. You have “No talent, time, tools, techniques, yada yada yada.” So how about taking some of that tenacity and courage and give art a try?
  8. Try writing a short story. You don’t have to be Hemingway. Trouble coming up with an idea? Write the story about a character doing what you do, at work, home, having fun, whatever. Two thousand words are all you need.
  9. Expose yourself to a wide variety of music. Thanks to the internet you can now listen to anything you can imagine and more. …if you normally listen to American Pop then it’s time to try some jazz and classical.
  10. Change your schedule… You’ll see your world differently, you’ll sense different emotions in the people you meet and hear different sounds.  http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/resources/ten-ways-to-routinely-break-your-routine-vividly

Achieving a different life lived with fresh experiences and lessons is simple, but difficult. Regardless of the challenges I am marching confidently toward my new way of being with conviction. This change of direction seems so kindred, yet just out of reach.

Change is frequently uncomfortable, but in the friction with old habits lies new ways of seeing, being and understanding.  I am alive with anticipation and gratefulness for the opportunity life is affording me.

The only person who is spiritually smart
is the one who has learned how to learn,
unlearn, and change directions instantly,
and start all over again, if your soul calls for it.
Michelle Casto

Oh, Boy… Oh, Boy

/ James Browning

image006eThe phrase, “You can do anything you put your mind to,” seems to imply all a person has to do is imagine what he or she would like to accomplish, mentally focus on the task for a while and wait for the inevitable success to take shape. To a some degree that is accurate. Focused intention can be a powerful force. However the phrase is deceptive because it fails to reference the difficulty of staying self-directed toward a particular goal. A little here and a little there usually won’t make things happen.

Most of us don’t know what we really want. We think we do, but we really don’t. We only know what we don’t want. We don’t want a boring job. We don’t want to be poor. We don’t want to disappoint the ones we care about.

Knowing specifically what I want is much different from knowing what I don’t want. As long as I only know what I don’t want, my intentions will never be focused.

Much of what I chased over the years has me now wondering “WHY” in capital letters. In a lot of cases what once mattered just doesn’t mean much to me now. For example. business success and prestige associated with it (yes, and the money) was a primary driver for a couple of decades.

Succeeding still matters, but I seek different things that are in sync with this phase of my life. What was important in my past was not a mistake. Each phase was a step forward, eventually to where I am now.

Today I am seventy-six days away from being done with a long-lived professional life as an executive. Excitement for the freedom to march freely into an unknown future is not scary. Maybe it should be, but I don’t feel the least bit fearful past a few butterflies of anticipation. Being convinced I am doing the correct thing for myself helps, in spite of not knowing exactly what will take shape. Until I can be free of what has been for so long I can’t begin to discover what will be.

Therapist and author Dr. Pat Allen wrote, The only way you know you love yourself, or anyone else, is by the commitments you are willing to make and keep.

What once were only distant thoughts, hopes and dreams are not only possible but likely… at least a good many of them if I am dedicated to staying committed to myself. I have the energy and time to stay focused on moving toward and experiencing some of my greatest hopes and dreams. I won’t be one of the sheep walking blindly uphill anymore!

At an emotional and spiritual level I am taking better care of myself than ever before. Good health and contentment are major contributors to what will be. The child within is jumping up and down saying “oh, boy… oh, boy”. For my prospects and possibilities I say with the conviction of a grateful heart, an appreciative mind and a thankful soul, “Truly I am richly blessed”. Bring it on… I am ready!

There are two types of visions.
Those that will happen no matter what,
and those that can be stopped.
Now more than ever, I wish to tell them apart.
Emlyn Chand

The Song Still In Them

/ James Browning

Gratitude11“Make believe and fantasy only find truth
in an imaginative heart and an open mind.”

Often I save scraps of unfinished thoughts for future inspiration. Frequently they end up forgotten taking up space on my hard drive. While looking through a file of remnants this morning I came across the fifteen words above. What seemed incomplete when saved appears now a surprisingly finished and meaningful thought. Maybe time was needed to forget the original context the concept came from so I could forget enough to see the notion’s broader meaning.

A discovery of the last couple of years is how important daydreaming is. The habit to intellectually sneer at thoughts conjured within fantasizing is not gone. Such rational disbelief is taught and engrained in us all. We’re told “be realistic”, “you’re dreaming”, “get in the real world” and such. Today it is my open acceptance that anything beyond who I presently am, what I know and have already accomplished resides in the dominion of wishing and dreaming. Those realms are not found in the “real world” so often we’re reminded to live within.

For “make believe and fantasy” to find any rational meaning and have a chance of coming true they must come to an “imaginative heart and an open mind”. That’s the way many great insights or discoveries came to be. From trying an approach someone was almost completely convinced could not work was a break through made.

There is no doubt the world has millions of ‘dreams’ kept secret or given only lip service. Making aspirations, grand or more humble, come true takes effort and toil that only imagination can make bearable. There lives the blindness to logic that is so often the robber of our “castles in the sky”.

One of my mentors in absence has been Henry David Thoreau who wrote, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” That shall not be me! The longer I live the more prolific my hopes and dreams become and the more committed I am to pursuing them. No longer do I fear failure that much, for it matters very little.

My most meaningful reward is not accomplishment, but within pursuit of my fantasies and daydreams. To know I tried; to know I went for it will have me more apt on my deathbed to say “I had a good life. I lived well” instead of being filled with regret and “shoulda, coulda”. What an amazing piece of wisdom to have resonating with me. From whatever source it came, I am humbly grateful.

If there were ever a time to dare,
To make a difference
To embark on something worth doing
It is now.
Not for any grand cause, necessarily –
But for something that tugs at your heart
Something that is worth your aspiration
Something that is your dream.
You owe it to yourself
To make your days count.
There is only one you
And you will pass this way but once.
From the poem “Dream Big” – Author Unknown

Life is a Course in Life

/ James Browning

forgivenessForgiveness is a powerful and affirmative part of our humanity. It should be differentiated from its close cousin, acceptance, which while important, is essentially, passive. For many, the healing power of forgiveness allows us to truly move on. A life lived without forgiveness is a life of real pain.

We are all wounded. You will be surprised to hear of all the wounds that normal people carry with them. It may be hard to believe, but many of these wounds can determine how people feel about themselves for an entire lifetime. And everyone’s been hurt in one way or another.

Forgiveness, like grieving, has its stages. It is well known that grieving has its stages. You loved someone, or you lost something dear to you. You go through denial, bargaining, anger, depression and finally you come to acceptance. Forgiveness is a lot like grieving. The important things that we need to forgive don’t come easily.

First, you have to acknowledge that you have to forgive. It is important to your psychological health. Carrying old wounds is simply a burden that steals the pleasure from the life that you have now. We are not on this earth forever, and sitting in victimhood can be such a loss.

Acknowledging a wound that needs healing is only a first step. You also have to deal with real feelings of anger and at times, betrayal. I often think that the word – FAIR – is a four letter word that should sit unhappily with its other, less decent, brothers. Too many people can’t get over just how unfair life is. Such pain, for what? Life is unfair, but it is also filled with potential for beauty, love and grace. The anger over things having been unfair is a product of our immature minds needing to have a balance in nature. Yes, there may be a balance, supervised by God or by nature, but it often has little to do with the narrative that we want to write!

Forgiveness is ultimately a gift you give yourself. It allows the wounds to heal. Asking for forgiveness is a noble act. It is an acknowledgement that you hurt someone and it makes it easier for the forgiver to forgive. It takes a burden away, but this is only the first step. If you really want to be forgiven by the person that you hurt, just apologizing is not enough. You have to try to right the wrong. This is not a perfect science, but a little effort can go a long way. While nothing can undo an unfortunate experience, making amends counts.

Life is a course in life. We are taught by our experiences and no textbook can really do it for us. Learn what each chapter has to teach you. Forgiveness is part and parcel of the emotional work of learning these lessons well. From “The Intelligent Divorce” by Mark Banschick, M.D. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-intelligent-divorce/201110/can-you-forgive

So grateful am I for the lessons in recent years about forgiveness. Today I am many times more capable of letting go; of forgiving others and myself. It’s amazing how much better life is!

True forgiveness is when you can say,
“Thank you for that experience.”
Oprah Winfrey