Welcome to September's Slim Down
Colour Shapes the Day
As summer’s fresh green leaves morph into golden tones we’re thinking how we can use colour to shape our ‘do something different’ approach to life.
There are millions of shades of colour (computers can give us 16 million and the eye can differentiate even more) yet there are only 11 basic colour words in the English language – red, blue, yellow, green, purple, orange, pink, grey, black, white and brown. Each has unique psychological properties and associations(if you’re curious about how different colours move us, have a look at www.colour-affects.co.uk).
Imagine a day where you let colour guide and shape your choices, mood and decisions.
You wake early and notice the morning light flooding your room. You eat a rainbow breakfast of purple blueberries scattered over chopped green apples, beige toasted flakes and the creamiest yoghurt. Later you’ll eat the fiery reds of peppers, tomatoes and chillies at a ‘colour picnic’ with colleagues or friends where everyone brings a different colour. Even the journey to the picnic is chosen for which route has the most uplifting, inspiring or different range of colours to see along the way.
Later in the day perhaps you immerse yourself in intellectual blue in an outdoor pool, gazing skywards. And the evening might find you redesigning your bedroom as a place for passion with berry hues or toning down the frenzy of your lounge with an injection of calming green. As the sun descends you capture it in words as poetry or you smudge it as pastels on paper, real or abstract. And you will remember when you revisit it because this was the day you were guided by colour.
A Rainbow of Choices
Go one step further and use colour to guide all your ‘Do Something Different’ activities this month. Here’s a sample rainbow of activities:
- RED: Paint something pillar box red (your bike, your wellies, your kitchen)
- ORANGE: Dye your hair crazy orange!
- YELLOW: Read Half of a Yellow Sun – a gripping tale by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- GREEN: Plant some rocket seeds now
- BLUE: Listen to Lady Sings the Blues
- INDIGO: They sell air tickets to India - see life in all its vibrant hues
- VIOLET: Watch The Purple Rose of Cairo
How about designing your own palette of different activities to enjoy in the month ahead - and break out of your monochrome zone.
Seeing Red
Colour was also the subject of a psychological experiment showing how automatically our brain reacts to words. When people were asked to name the colour of the ink that words were written in, they were slowed down when the word was a different colour name.
This is called the Stroop effect. It relates to The No Diet Diet principles by reminding us that lots of what we do in life is simply an automatic reaction. But the key to becoming a flexible person, one who goes beyond the boundaries of instinctive behaviour, is to Do Something Different. Breaking out of our comfort zones, ditching habits and responding to life in a conscious, non-automatic way brings us more choices and more opportunities.
Life is full of colour and it’s amazing what it can do for us. So, whether it’s just for a day or a whole month, let it be a tool for doing things differently. Keep talking to one another on the forum and enjoying life in all its technicolour glory.
The No Diet Diet Way Team
Try to name the colour of the ink the words are printed in. The colour names interfere because you cannot stop yourself reading them.