Make Your Day Brighter

By bringing bright colors to your home and wardrobe--a pop of orange, yellow, or green--you can add real joy to your day

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Gratitude Diaries, a production of My Heart Radio. Hi.
I'm Janice Kaplan. Thanks for joining me for more practical
advice on how to be happier. Today's tip add some
color to your life. An actual pop of orange or

(00:23):
yellow or blue can add real joy to your day.
I was visiting recently with a three year old who
wanted to make a painting. He took a piece of
yellow construction paper and then dabbed it with every bright
color that was in his child's painting set. When it
was finished, he handed it to me, and looking at

(00:43):
it made me very happy. In grown up life, we
don't usually spend a lot of time seeing primary colors.
We tend to wear neutrals. There's lots of beiji and
navy and black in most wardrobes, and we decorated neutrals.
If you're buying a new sofa, research shows that the
most popular color is gray. The biggest debate on some

(01:06):
decorating websites is whether that should be light gray or
dark gray. So I was really happy to come across
a lovely book called Joyful by the designer Ingrid fatel Lee.
She has a website called the Esthetics of Joy, where
she points out that there is a strong relationship between

(01:28):
our environment and our emotions, and some of that does
have to do with color. No matter where you are
in the world, people feel joy when they see a
brilliant rainbow arching across the sky or brightly colored fireworks.
Research suggests that color can actually activate the pleasure centers

(01:48):
of our brain. Ingrid fatel Lee says color may also
have practical effects. City schools that are painted bright colors
have less graffiti, better attendance, and students and teachers say
they feel safer. Other research shows that people who work
in colorful spaces feel friendlier and more alert. Many years ago,

(02:12):
I was a columnist at Vogue magazine. I wrote about
health and fitness, not fashion, so every time I went
to the office, I was stunned to find everyone wearing black.
It was the standard then for the most fashionable people
to wear no color at all, just black. That has
changed at Vogue and elsewhere, but we still consider neutral

(02:34):
hues to be more sophisticated and grown up. You'll get
one kind of comment if you're wearing a dark blue suit,
and a very different comment if it's bright pink. The
way we talk about color suggests how we feel about it.
If you're depressed, you might say you're in a black mood.
When things are dreary, it's a gray day. If someone

(02:57):
is happy and cheerful, they have a sunny disposition, and
we show sunshine in bright yellow At the end of
this podcast, I often say that I'm here with ideas
to make your life a little brighter. Color is a
sign of life and energy, and often happiness. It's not
a surprise that as the days get darker, our traditions

(03:19):
find a way to bring in more color and light.
Thanksgiving decorations are typically orange, and Christmas is filled with
red and green. The colors are a sign of holiday cheer,
and we need the bright colors, those oranges, reds, and
greens to feel some joy in the darker days. So
if it's such a source of joy, why do we

(03:40):
often avoid color? In her book, Lee offers the word chromophobia,
or fear of color. Two architects she met said that
we get afraid of making a color choice and having
to live with it. The irony is that however much
we fear color, we also of it. The architects who

(04:01):
talked about chromophobia also designed the Suarrow Hotel in Palm Springs,
which has electric color everywhere and was a great favorite
on Instagram. And Lee quotes the legendary interior designer David
Hicks as saying that colors don't clash, they vibrate. You
don't have to convert your entire wardrobe and home to

(04:25):
get some joy from bright colors. Lee suggests using color
and unexpected places. Paint the inside of a drawer or
the back of a closet. It will give you a
happy surprise each time you open it. I've always worn
colorful glasses, usually in red. Recently I found an online
site that makes great eyeglasses very inexpensively, so I now

(04:48):
have a wardrobe of glasses that includes pears and orange
and pink. I was wearing the orange glasses the other
day when I'm wearing a mask. The glasses are about
all you can see on my face and them and
I didn't know. Stop me in the grocery store and said,
excuse me, those are very happy glasses. I like having

(05:08):
happy glasses. When you're feeling joyful or spreading a little joy,
you also feel grateful for the world and what's around you.
So today think about buying yourself a yellow sweater it
will make you feel sunnier, Or get a bright orange
pillow for that gray sofa. Maybe it will give you
a burst of joy and gratitude. Thanks for joining me,

(05:32):
I will be back with more practical ideas on how
to add gratitude to your life and make every day
a little brighter and more colorful. Thanks and have a
great day. The Gratitude Diaries is a production of I
heart Radio. The more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

(05:53):
get your favorite shows.