Karen had a Personal Colour Analysis recently. (*name changed, of course*).
I had to do it twice because she didn’t feel these colours could be hers. (True Summer). She saw only grays and old lady colours, instead of the fabulous roses and blues.
She felt the personality was nothing like her. She sees herself as a firecracker, but that’s only a small part of her being. She can soothe everyone around her into loving one another, even if they don’t like each other. She is highly capable, steady, diplomatic, and sensible. Courtesy and decency are central to her nature. She also has beautifully shaped hands. She is a True True Summer, and not even the darker version.
She said “they don’t make clothes in my colours”. I’ll grant that professional clothes are hard to find, but I know for sure that there are True Summer clothes out there. In fact, it’s the Winters who need full colour saturation who have trouble finding interesting colours, except in workout wear. There’s loads of black and some generic teal and plum thing, but not much really beautiful stuff. (There’s more True Summer and saturation talk in Elisa Is A True Summer, at 12B).
This was before we shopped for makeup. We tried eyeliners. The energy was wrong. It felt sticky. Her eyelashes looked too thin. We went for coffee to think about it. We finally settled on some lovely colours.
She called me recently. The makeup was dull and made her look old. Even the foundation that was perfect 6 months ago, was off. People told her she looked better in the crimson and black she used to wear. She wanted makeup that would make her look more alive, or even a bit alive.
Make no mistake, I enjoy these challenges A LOT. I like to encounter the resistance. I lived it too. I also feel sorry for her frustration. It most certainly takes time to teach your eye how to find your colours, and to resist the observations of your Book Club and the lady at the post office. You have to exercise big patience while you go about getting the elements of the picture working together. But Karen’s is more than usual.
The thought that came into my head was “You are MAKING this be hard.”
Yes, we all have things we’re better at, but this was like going looking for obstacles. So, why?
Next thought : Do I do it too? What am I making be hard?
Revealing answer : “This is how Karen felt watching me trying to register a business name and deal with Revenue Canada!” I was all in a fluff and she was thinking “Why are you MAKING this be hard?”
Next example : Christmas gifts. People tell us that they want nothing, but we still go sweat it out on our own on Dec. 23, worried that they won’t like it. Why did we make that be hard?
We make things hard if we NEED them to be hard. Is it about not being able to release the control over the situation? Is it that we need to feel just a little under-appreciated?
Watching men think is fascinating. Generally, they are great simplifiers. They do the obvious and don’t worry. They ignore whatever doesn’t agree with their first assessment. Very seldom does a man choose the harder path intentionally.
Men are also able to proceed without all the information. So, not only will they choose the easiest path every time, but they will also make a move to get on that path without knowing what lies ahead. Sometimes, all they know is that they want the end result, that they will follow the most obvious path in getting there, and they will fill in the rest of the blanks as they go along. You know, it makes a lot of sense. Women, on the other hand, we clutter up our lives with over-emotion and over-analysis.
I am delivering the intention to look for the most effortless and uncomplicated solution. The difference between 80% and 100 is not important. 99% of people won’t even notice. Whenever I start feeling freaked out, my first words to myself are “Christine, LET this be easy”. I am exploring the possibility that most things really are as easy as they seem, before I muckled on to them and made them hard.
Chances are nobody else watching is finding your particular difficulty very hard except for you. For some reason, we chose for it to be hard. Time to stop that.
Try it for one whole day. Decide to let everything be easy. Don’t make it be hard till you are given a reason to.
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