Words for Wellness 4 - Living life in full colour and avoiding the beige
Your attitude is like a box of crayons that colours your world
I’ve always loved colour in and of itself and as a metaphor for life. I find it energising and fun to surround myself with colour and light. And yet life isn’t always colour and light, sometimes circumstances and events bring us dismal shades of grey and beige, and sometimes there’s simply black and white.
So what do you do when the colour goes out of your life, when you lose your reason for being and you feel trapped in a life that feels frightening, confining and even just plain dull.
You have to shake it up. You have to grab hold of the paintbrush.
And if you don’t choose to shake it up, then sometimes life will deliver a shake up that you won’t necessarily see coming and which you probably won’t be prepared for. Regardless of whether you’re ready for it or not, it will bring colour back into your life.
Because no one is meant to be living a dull, colourless life.
Image credit: Freepik
Emotion is colour, energy is colour - and we need to feel, we need to move and we need to truly be free to have colour in our lives.
You can either choose to be the creator of your own colourful masterpiece or you can choose to live a beige and colourless life. Either way you’re choosing.
✏️ Journaling Practice
Let’s explore where there’s colour in your life, and more importantly where it’s lacking. Choose one or more of these prompts to explore further in your journal. With each one - think about what you were doing, who were you with, and how did you feel before, during and after the activity.
🌈 Consider the last time you laughed, wholeheartedly and without abandon. What was it about this situation that made you laugh? And if it was that long ago that you can’t remember laughing with free abandon, then what could you do to change it?
🌈 When was the last time you felt overwhelmed by emotion, either through hearing or seeing something - what was it you were listening to or watching? What made this such an emotional activity? Describe the sights and sounds - all of them.
🌈 Think of the last time you needed to find a solution, come up with an idea, learn something new or were forced to think outside the box? Did it challenge you or energise you? What was the result or outcome?
🌈 When did you last move your body? Were you dancing, exercising, travelling, working and how was your body responding to movement? What currently challenges you or slows you down when it comes to moving? Have you considered trying different ways to move?
💎 Wordweaver - Colourless living
This is a short story for children written by Attamash Ozair that I used years ago in my journaling workshops and it kind of ties in with what I’m talking about here. It was written to teach children that freedom is a fundamental part of life and is what gives it its colour.
Once upon a time, there was a colourless tiger. All his shades were greys, blacks and whites. So much so, that he seemed like something out of an old black and white movie.
His lack of colour had made him so famous that the world's greatest painters had come to his zoo to try to put some colour on him. None of them succeeded, as the colours would always just drip down off his skin.
Then along came Van Cough the crazy painter. He was a strange guy who travelled all about, happily painting with his brush. Well, it would be more accurate to say that he moved his brush about, as if to paint; because he never put any paint on his brush, and neither did he use canvas or paper.
He painted the air, and that's why they called him Van Cough. So, when he said he wanted to paint the colourless tiger, everyone had a good laugh.
When entering the tiger's cage he began whispering in the animal's ear, and moving his dry brush up and down the tiger's body. And to everyone's surprise, the tiger's skin started to take on colour, and these were the most vivid colours any tiger had ever had. Van Cough spent a long time whispering to the animal, and making slight adjustments to his painting. The result was truly beautiful.
Everyone wanted to know what the painter's secret was. He explained to them that his brush was only good for painting real life, and that to do that he needed no colours. He had managed to paint the tiger using a phrase he kept whispering in its ear: "In just a few days you will be free again, you shall see."
And seeing how sad the tiger had been in his captivity, and how joyful the tiger now seemed at the prospect of freedom, the zoo authorities transported him to the forest and set him free, where never again would he lose his colour.
What does it mean to live a colourful life? It means life is full of surprises and new experiences. Every day brings something new and we don’t know what to expect.
🍀 What I’m exploring this week…
Book: Main Character Energy (a novel) by Jamie Vardon
Book: The Emotion Code by Dr Bradley Nelson
Google: How to release trapped emotions and trauma
On Substack: Unfiltered by Tim Denning
Website: The Center for Holding Space
🔥 Your Call to Action - expand your colour and creativity
Pick one (or more) to help expand the colour in your life this week.
💖 Harness your inner critic and just doodle on paper - sketch images, take notes, make mind maps, write words in no logical order
🌻 Vary your routine, do your usual things (eat, sleep, work, play) in a different way
🌸 Tune into your body - what does your body have to say - aches and pains, feelings give them all colours and shapes
⏰ Take time for yourself in nature, walk and observe your surroundings with a different perspective, perhaps a birds eye view, or a ground up view, or even a child’s view.
🎶 Dance like nobody is watching and nobody cares, turn the music up and just move your body in any way that feels good and right
🍀 Listen to meditation sounds or guided meditations, listen to birdsong, or the sounds of nature, or chattering children in a playground
🌈 Create an imagination ritual, do something that sparks fresh and new ideas - dance, sing, draw, write, sing, garden
🦋 Stand in the shower and let the water flush all of your insecurities and fears down the drain, write about what’s left
🌏 Take yourself on a regular ‘creative’ outing - use all of your senses - what do you see, do, feel, hear, smell and taste
Whatever you choose - allow yourself enough quiet time and space to let your thoughts and daydreams flow.
Don’t get stuck living a beige life. Choose to live your life in full colour.
Keep Smiling, Fi 🌻
I love these Fiona, looks like so much fun! 🙏💫
This is great! Thank you, Fiona!