Why You Should Take the Assessment as Your Childhood Self

Okay. I’ve got to talk about this. Because I have discovered something fascinating as I wrote this article.

I was sharing the Color Code with my best friend Emily and her family the other day. Emily has been a Color Code fan with me for years and we love trying to figure out everyone’s color together.

But as her family was taking it, she stated that even though the assessment says to take it as you were as a child, she disagrees with that and will always disagree with that. (Classic Red.)

I’m not going to tell her she’s wrong, but I wanted to take a minute to write about why this is important, even if it seems counterintuitive.

First, you have to have a baseline! If you take the full assessment measuring only how you are in your adult life, it’s harder to recognize where and how much you’ve grown. Give yourself credit for how far you’ve come since childhood! And recognize that that immature, silly, inexperienced little child was your personality’s “start line.” There is plenty of time to measure character development later. I get it, we were all different as kids vs now. That’s the point!

This leads to the second reason, which is the official Color Code’s statement, that you were your most natural, authentic self as a child. That was when the effects of outside filters had yet to have affected you dramatically. Before the Yellow learned “time and place” for jokes (but never stopped loving making people smile), or the White learned how to become more assertive (even though they still very much prefer to not rock the boat). You’ve had your Driving Core Motive since birth, and I truly believe that while we grow and learn and change everyday, one can’t fully begin to understand themselves, measure their growth, or live in tune with who they truly are if they haven’t first recognized which traits affected them most from the get-go.

Third, it’s a great idea to take it a second time as you are now (or have been in the last 5-10 years). I highly encourage it! First is the Color Code, then the Character Code, in which you recognize ALL the strengths and limitations you carry in each color. That pie chart is going to come out differently than the one as you were as a child. Below are both my pie charts.

Important: Where the Color Code has you pick the strongest color trait in each question, the Character Code has you pick all traits you see in yourself having in EACH color.

This is what is so fascinating. As you can see, these pie charts look somewhat different. It seems like I’ve gotten less Yellow, right? WRONG. I have fully embraced my Yellow and have honestly never been more in tune with my true self. I’m still dominantly Yellow, and if you look at it, even though the portions are different, the order of my colors hasn’t changed at all. I’m still Yellow, Blue, White, and then Red. But now I have grown so much in my other colors, especially Red, and I have become a more balanced individual.

But then I tried something different! What if I showed my Color Code test with my Character Code test? Look at how this shows my Colors:

Much more accurate.

And while they’ve all grown, look at the Red! I had to work HARD for those Red traits. They did not come naturally and still aren’t natural. This is why, if you’re going to use the Color Code to improve your life, you have to start by honestly taking it as you were as a child. Then go and immediately take the Character Code to see what your personality looks like now, and be stoked over how much you’ve developed!

The Color Code is so cool, and such a powerful tool. When we use it right we can recognize and overcome our weaknesses, and become the person we’ve always wanted to me.

At the end of the day, I’m not going to fight you on it. If you want to only take it as you are now, there is still great insight to be gained from that. And as you can see from both my pie charts, it’s likely to have the same colors in the same order. (Man, that’s so cool to me.) I just think it’s somewhat of a short sighted approach to what could be a deeper analysis on your Driving Core Motive and personality.

Emily, I probably didn’t change your mind. I actually can’t wait to talk about this with you again! But I had so much fun writing this and I hope now readers can understand why the Color Code places strong emphasis on taking the assessment as you were as a child.