Choose Your Day's Colors

Color Wheel

Inner Light

Unquenchable

Glows and variegates

Into beautiful

Free patterns

Painted upon

The screen of life

In vivid, powerful

Colors

Between what's real

And known.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

We all are surely aware of the effects of our homes' interior rooms' wall colors on our mood, our state of mind, our perspective - even on our appetite and ability to fall asleep easily! Certainly advertisers are keenly aware anduse color creatively to condition our minds to accept or want their wares!

For instance, the 'cool colors' - blue, green, lavender and even cool white or pearl gray - are restful and beneficial for bedrooms and sitting rooms. The warm colors, especially reds, are 'eat-y' - they stimulate our taste buds to prepare for pleasant eating and drinking, so they work well in dining and recreation rooms. How many restaurants have you noticed that incorporate this mind-effect? I venture to say you know of some which do! I vividly recall some of New Orleans' French Quarter posh eateries which do!

"Earth tones", - the browns, taupes, beiges, ivory - are excellent for no-nonsense rooms such as home offices and computer rooms. Activity rooms, such as kitchens, exercise rooms, play rooms, may call for bright yellow or orange, as they stimulate muscular responses - and so on and so on. We accept these bits of knowledge as usable, valid facts which can be adjusted to our individual tastes and preferences and incorporated into our home decorating schemes.

Are you with me so far?

Let's consider a more ubiquitous color-power we exert over our own daily lives.

You see, what may be less understood is: that room color is only an external part of the role color plays in our lives and on our psyches! What is special about these other areas of applicability is how subtle or even insidious they can be and yet how ever-present and 'on the job' they are, wherever we are, wherever we go and whenever we are awake and cognizant, - perhaps even when we are not fully cognizant, in fact! Even the light and darkness of at the same colors produce different effects on our perceptions, looking out from our inner selves. We project the colors of our mood on what is out there, so that we literally 'see' it so, regardless of its actual color, mood or neutrality!

The advantage is that it requires no paint, brushes, ladders or any other paraphernalia to change our colors of perception when we choose to do so!

Either way, we literally color our own thoughts, emotions and responses with mood-altering hues, tints and shades we unconsciously paint across our perceptions, setting ourselves up to see "out" of our own pre-consciousness the perceived world around us in whatever very effective mind-directing colors we've chosen to set in place! It needn't be at an upper conscious level, which renders its effects all the more insidiously effective and convincing!

But it can as well be a willful choice, though in making it, we surely don't fully realize that we're literally choosing its effects and how we're setting up our ability to respond (response-ability!) to external events.

In essence, when we become aware of our potent power over our perspectives, we can get to decide and choose how we will be perceiving our experiences! We needn't be tossed about upon them. We are constantly drawing to ourselves what we are expecting; perhaps not all the actual things and events themselves, though there is a domino effect from attitude over even those. But the vital effects upon our responses, we are always determining: namely how the external events will impact our awareness and how they'll stimulate and affect our responses, which in turn, produce tangible results which reverberate throughout our experiences and affect our health and happiness for better or for worse. It's an awesome response-ability! And it's ours to claim!

In retrospect, we often realize that we could have chosen to react differently to the same stimulus to which we acted detrimentally. Why didn't we, we wonder? Were we powerless?

No, we were simply unaware (or skeptical) of where and how we have choices determining the impact and effects on us and our well-being which ensue. These are ours, mainly requiring only our choice. They do not rest upon the external vicissitudes, which are inevitable because this is LIFE and life consists of 'ups and downs'. It's a fact. The responses are ours and under our own jurisdiction.

Though we may have stockpiled damaging negative mood-changing expectations and pre-determinants which rise to block more reasonable successful responses, realizing that those factors originated within our own attitudes, are changeable and products of our own choice is the opening opportunity to change the pattern. This doesn't happen by itself in the past or in the present. The good news is that we can learn to begin choosing how we are internally preparing to see the inevitable 'good' and 'bad" things when they occur in our journey along life's paths, as they surely will; - and therefore how we'll be able to respond under pressure. It's among our finer aptitudes as human being and if we believe in a higher power, it's the very least we can contribute to our own welfare! ;-)

So, yes . . . it is part of our personal response-ability!

I remembered the little family incident I'm about to share which illustrates it in quite simple terms. You be the judge. We've nothing to lose by considering how we might take charge of our own driver's seat rather than being helplessly tossed about by our emotions which may be purely arbitrary and not in the least 'ordained' or inevitable! It's a nice feeling to choose, even if our choice might be to let the wild emotions rule and reign over us at various times! It is our choice, either way, whether or not we realize it. Knowing that is liberating!

When visiting my daughter and the three little daughters she then had in 1988, my husband and I took our RV and parked it in her front driveway. Space was limited in the house, so we slept in the RV duriing the visit. My daughter needed to leave for work before her 1st-grader’s school bus came to pick her up, so Kasey came out and stayed in the RV with us to wait for it after Dyane left for work.

Out came Kasey scowling, quite upset that her mother hadn’t let her wear what she wanted to school. She was clouded with pouts and much too angry to eat anything offered her. There were crayons in the RV, with which she launched a violent 'painting' in angry black shapes furiously filling the paper. It was emotion in fierce, gloomy, dismal color. It might be proposed that it released her anger; possibly, but at a cost to her innards, the mood of her entire day and patterns for her disposition and its effects on others. Besides, it's unnecessary. Every time we choose that route, we damage ourselves somewhat. To a 6-year old, the immediate physical damage may be negligible, but the pattern set can last a lifetime when the damages and their effects intensify.

I ventured a suggestion that she gets to pick her colors for her day, as well as their shapes. She paused enough to allow it to be heard, gradually beginning to process the new idea, because even at 6, she was bright enough to hear a calm, sensible message with which she had no facts to quarrel. So she, herself, decided to file the dark painting and start a new one, trying some brighter, more upbeat colors to draw more organized images with happier expressions. She began to smile and feel better. Her anger issue was virtually forgotten, though she wasn't wearing the dress she'd preferred to wear.

She wore a pretty countenance.

She began to draw with enthusiasm and even asked for some toast. She boarded her school bus skipping and in a cheery frame of mind, the reverse of her earlier mood.

What makes this story resonant is that Kasey was no 'easy' child who bought into whatever she was told. She could be a 'handful', but she also gave ideas due consideration. It's gratifying that she's grown into a determined, independent woman who meets her challenges with courage and self-application. Quite an amazing gal!

Nothing had changed that day but her own perspective reset by her own choices.

Now she’s a mother, has earned a college degree and is working on an advanced degree while expecting another baby. She has learned and applied valuable lessons in life. We smile about “Choose your colors” and she fully realizes the value of uplifting her sites from dark and negative to focus on bright and positive around her all along.

"I Choose My Day's Colors" is an excellent mindset for any of us, any time, any age, knowing that one's mental perspective will determine one's images of what is “out there” and will enable one to see their colors accordingly.

Expecting negatives stimulates negative impressions in the mind by steering its focus to the ubiquitous shadows which are the underside of the light. Expecting positives stirs attention to notice positive impressions as it highlights the brightness which is always present and lingering, just awaiting notice.

The 'colors' we see are our own perceptions which are directed by our expectations. Then as we accept what they are, we build upon them accordingly.

Some of the prettiest days

Are painted in grays.

They soothe and soften

Harshness

And never fade away.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

Incisive

Yellow

Sun

Cuts away

A choking smog

And penetrates

Dense curtains

Of my mind,

Gives certainty

In direction.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay

I am a rainbow.

If red blinds you,

Look for blue.

The wave-lengths

Go beyond

The naked eye.

______© Nellieanna H. Hay