Unlocking the Hidden Secrets of Colors: How Your Color Preferences Reveal Profound Insights About Your True Self
I’ve been thinking about the significance of color lately. I’m in the midst of rebranding my business and choosing an updated color palette is an important part of that process. But more so, I’ve always been viscerally attracted to a particular color or set of colors.
For most of my life, it was a singular color: red.
Anyone who knew me, knew I loved the color red. I had a red car (actually multiple red cars). A red couch. Red clothes. A red work bag. There was something about the color red that I felt instinctively drawn to.
And then suddenly, maybe 6 years ago, after decades of red, I started feeling drawn to green and repelled by red. At first it was bright green, like Kelly green or emerald green, and over time, it shifted through a range of greens and settled at sage green.
Most recently, just in the last few months, my color preference shifted to include blue-ish green, even though I’ve always felt resistant to any shade of blue, along with very specifically, the color cantaloupe.
At this point, you may be wondering, did I accidentally click on an interior design blog? Why are we talking about color?
Here’s why.
Color has meaning and significance. Whatever color(s) you feel drawn to reflects something about 1) what you believe to be true about yourself and 2) your current way of being in the world.
In my Red era (IYKYK), my self-identity was centered around being successful in a corporate, often male-dominated context. I perceived myself as bold and aggressive and competent. I enjoyed being the center of attention. I had limited patience and low tolerance for “unproductive” emotions. I was a hustler and threw myself into whatever I was doing. I had staunch beliefs. I was calculating and strategic. In short, my ego was flaring in all its Enneagram type 3 glory.
According to color expert Kate Smith, “Red is the color of heightened emotion, strength, and power. It’s invigorating, intimidating, and it’s never boring…Red is used professionally to capture attention, elicit emotion, and convey confidence.”
Sounds about right.
Unfortunately, though not unsurprisingly, the net result of my red era was a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder with a side dose of panic.
So what catalyzed the shift away from red to green?
In a word: therapy.
I also quit my corporate career and went to work for my church for a season. That single decision fundamentally altered the trajectory of my life and initiated an ongoing journey of self discovery, disentangling my identity from my job, realigning my actions to my values, and deconstructing a lifetime of beliefs that no longer served me.
Green represents renewal and growth, which is exactly what I was experiencing.
As I continued to shed layers of beliefs and ego-based ways of being that no longer fit, I reconnected with parts of myself I had tucked into my shadow for years and years, most notably: gentleness, warmth, empathy, calmness, and intuition.
I realized that I far prefer helping other people be successful than simply being successful myself. And that I have an intrinsic capacity to hold space for others and help them see and embrace their potential. These realizations led me to start my original coaching business, which at the time, was just a little side hustle.
The shift to sage green reflected the embrace of spirit-directed wisdom as the primary guiding force in my life, and was complemented by beige, which represents calm, neutrality, and dependability.
As I have journeyed deeper into finding my truest self, and have walked alongside so many of my coaching clients as they’ve done the same, I’ve experienced an emergent capacity to intentionally enter into flow, release attachment, and embrace ambiguity and paradox.
Like the turtles in Finding Nemo, I’ve discovered there is an unseen but felt current I can consciously choose to enter into, wherein time ceases and creativity flourishes. Where I am both held by and part of something greater than myself.
And that is where I find blue. Not crayon blue, but blue-green, the color of the water at Blue Hole. The color of the ocean when filled with a particular amount of phytoplankton.
Blue Hole, Wimberley TX | Photo by Lone Star Travel Guide
Water has always been where I’ve felt the most at home. The most whole. The most connected to the truest part of me. The most filled with joy and awe and wonder as I consider its magnificence and nearly incomprehensible vastness.
And so I take my resonance with blue as indication that I’m closer to knowing and embodying my truest self than perhaps I’ve ever been before.
Which finally brings us to the color of cantaloupe.
As I embrace and embody an evolved identity, I do so at a pivotal moment in my business and life. I’m stepping into a new season, a new part of my story. One that is full of hope and possibility and creativity and high energy.
I was talking to my mentor the other day, and sharing with her that I didn’t fully resonate with the first draft of the new color palette my branding team had proposed. They had incorporated a highlighter yellow color, which didn’t feel like me and seemed to detract from the resonance of the rest of the palette.
I wanted to replace the yellow with a particular shade of orange that I could see in my head but couldn’t find on google. My mentor said, “A question just popped into my head: what is your favorite fruit?”. Immediately, a picture of a cantaloupe came to mind. I googled “cantaloupe color” and to my great surprise and delight, it was the EXACT color I had been thinking of. 🤯 Shoutout to my mentor for sensing and heeding her intuition.
Photo by Sara Haas
I didn’t know at the time that the color cantaloupe, according to this interior design article, is “the color of vitality and the sun, capable of instilling a sense of energy and vitality but also of stimulating imagination and self-confidence”.
All of which happen to be characteristics of this next season.
So, now that you’ve heard my story, I invite you to consider these three questions:
What color(s) do you feel drawn to in this current season?
What might those colors reflect about what you’re believing to be true about yourself and how you are showing up or desire to show up in the world?
How has your color preference changed over time? What insights can you draw from those shifts?
I would be honored to hear the insights you come to after reflecting on these questions. Drop me a line at jessica@jessicaskupien.com and share what comes up for you.
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Jessica Skupien, PCC is an ICF-credentialed Life & Leadership Coach who helps people identify and overcome self-limiting beliefs so they can become effective, inspired, and inspiring leaders in both their professional and personal lives.
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