There is a fascinating personality test that can tell you your dominant personality in colors. The four colors are blue, green, orange and gold. While each is fascinating, I was speaking with a very gold friend of mine the other night, so we’ll talk about gold people here.
Gold people are great. They are organized. They get things done… RIGHT. They love details. The people who do the cleaning closet show on television are probably gold. They like bringing ORDER to everything. They have VERY high expectations of everyone in their lives, and they get very upset when their expectations are not met. They have high standards for themselves and everyone else.
My gold friend and I were talking about relationships, and I said, “In relationships, gold people really have to learn three words: trust, mercy, and grace.”
Because many of us have gold tendencies, I’ll explain.
When you have high expectations, it is easy to get frustrated with others (and yourself) because we are not perfect. Further, we don’t all see things the same way, and we don’t always make decisions the same way. So what you wanted to happen, might not. What then? The standard you set or the goal you set might not be met. Then what?
As I put forward to my friend, a gold person must first learn trust because gold people tend to want to have a guarantee before they put a toe in the water. They have been let down so often that it’s easy for them to convince themselves to just stay on the sidelines. “My standards are so high, there’s no way you can measure up.”
Trust is hard to learn especially with other less-than-perfect people. The fact is, we “other people” are going to let you down. It’s just going to happen. Putting your trust in others doesn’t give you the right to expect perfection from them. When (not if), they let you down, the next word you need to learn is mercy.
Mercy is what you get when you don’t deserve it. You get a second chance and a third chance and a sixty-third chance. You get the benefit of the doubt. You get encouragement rather than criticism and frustration. That’s tough, especially for a gold person, to give someone when they let you down.
Finally, what you most need as a gold person with high standards is grace. Grace to cover all that not-so-perfect in your life. You need God’s grace to realize that no one deserves what God holds out to us, but He holds it out anyway.
If you’re someone with high standards, you might want to practice trust, mercy, and grace. Come to think of it, those are three good things to practice even if you’re NOT gold.
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