Relationships and Color Boxes

Do you want to avoid conflicts in all relationships?  Do you want to build long-lasting relationships? If yes, then the knowledge that I have shared in this blog is just for you!

The cause of estranged relationships is fights, the cause of fights is misunderstandings, and the cause of misunderstandings is what I call ‘variation in color boxes’.

Let us consider a relative and your relationship with that person. Both of you have a personalized color box.  Suppose your color box has four colors – white, red, green, and brown. Your relative’s color box has three colors – black, yellow, and purple. Your relative paints your picture. Now, because they have only three colors in their color box, the picture they will paint will have combinations of only these three colors. So if you are wearing a red shirt, because the relative does not have the red color, the picture will not have the red color.

Assume that the relative has three colors – one is arrogance, the other is anger, and the third is trickery required to keep a relation alive without telling the truth about various situations. And one of the colors that you have is politeness. Since your relative does not have the color of politeness in their box, they will not be able to understand your acts of politeness the way they are!

The learning is not to paint any picture hastily. We are often tempted to use our knowledge, in this case, our color boxes, to analyze the situation. It is best to avoid that temptation and communicate with the other person. You can even ask directly about the person’s intentions. If you ask questions and try to understand the other person’s views, you will definitely be surprised, avoid misunderstanding and build stronger relationships.