{"id":367,"date":"2011-05-17T07:00:22","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/myhappyplace\/?p=367"},"modified":"2011-05-16T21:59:43","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T01:59:43","slug":"love-easy-side-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/myhappyplace\/2011\/05\/love-easy-side-up.html","title":{"rendered":"Love: Easy-Side Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have a friend who is the life of the party and everyone laughs at her stories&#8230;yet she is always worried about what people think of her.<\/p>\n<p>I have a daughter who is not scared of a thing but chooses to not play with children other than her siblings.<\/p>\n<p>I have a brilliant sister who worries and frets over a college class assignment&#8211;sure she doesn&#8217;t understand or won&#8217;t do well&#8211;yet makes straight A&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>Then there is my smart, strong, successful husband who hates to make a hair appointment or call the dentist receptionist.<\/p>\n<p>(My apologies for the tattle telling!)<\/p>\n<p>How often I say, &#8220;I just don&#8217;t understand!&#8221;&#8211;and, it&#8217;s true&#8211;I don&#8217;t. But do I really need to understand?<\/p>\n<p>When my husband and I had been married for about five years we accepted a job where we worked as a team for an organization. This organization required the staff to attend\u00a0 a one-day workshop about personalities called &#8220;Colors&#8221;.\u00a0\u00a0 I hate to simplify a full day&#8217;s workshop in to a sentence, but the Golds are the organized people, the Blues are the people-people, the Oranges are the laid-back ones, and the Greens are the thinkers. We each figured out which &#8220;color&#8221; we were and went to a corner of the room with like-colored people. We made lists of things we collectively liked and disliked. It was interesting to me how the Blues (that&#8217;s me) and the Golds could have exchanged lists: what the Golds liked, we disliked and vice versa.<\/p>\n<p>What really blew this Blue away, though, was when I searched the room for my husband and found him all alone in a corner: the only Green. My husband is a thinker. He has big ideas. He can see what is wrong in a situation when no one else can. Fifty percent of the population is made up of Golds. Only three percent of the population is Green (What&#8217;s that song Kermit the Frog sings? &#8220;It&#8217;s Tough to be Green&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p>And, in that moment, a light bulb went off over my head. No wonder he doesn&#8217;t make a lick of sense to me! \ud83d\ude42 I don&#8217;t understand&#8230;I&#8217;ll never understand&#8230;and, what a comforting realization, I don&#8217;t <em>have<\/em> to understand.\u00a0\u00a0 The people in my life: their thoughts are different than mine. Their perceptions are different than mine. Their choices are different than mine. All I have to do is accept the difference, and, in that acceptance, I am free to love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have a friend who is the life of the party and everyone laughs at her stories&#8230;yet she is always worried about what people think of her. I have a daughter who is not scared of a thing but chooses to not play with children other than her siblings. I have a brilliant sister who&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":386,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,87,124,36,128],"tags":[129,130,291],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-inspiration","category-love","category-marriage","category-personality-typing","tag-acceptance-2","tag-diversityl","tag-personality-typing"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Love: Easy-Side Up - My Happy Place<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/myhappyplace\/2011\/05\/love-easy-side-up.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Love: Easy-Side Up - My Happy Place\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have a friend who is the life of the party and everyone laughs at her stories&#8230;yet she is always worried about what people think of her. 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