Generally it is best to go with earth tones in kitchen. These colors such as tans and browns can create a sense of grounding and closeness. The feeling of ease and belongingness will make kitchen a wonderful room for you to feel safe to create in. Those colors will also hide food stains well, as they match color of foods.

In an already hot room, red is best avoided. It is an extreme color, and should be left to living room. It will evoke a sense of heat, and can cause irritations to eyes.

By using colors in a planned manner you can control undercurrents in a room. These tips are a guideline, it is up to one who uses kitchen to find right balance.

Case Study 1 - Work-Life Balance

One client of mine recently posed problem that there was no chance of her ever enjoying her job, and refused to consider looking for a new one. I was quite shocked by this statement - as she was basically refusing to do anything about her problem, but I couldn’t resist challenge. So I set her task of removing two ‘bad’ things from other areas of her life (not her work), and replacing them with two ‘good things’ every week and introducing a weekly reward into her life for all ‘bad’ things she still had to do. Initially she started by replacing an unhealthy breakfast with a healthy one, and secondly she replaced vegging out mindlessly in front of telly every evening with going out for dinner regularly. As her treat in first week she went and had a massage and facial on Saturday. Each week she repeated this process, with things like gettting a new chair for her home office so she could sit correctly while surfing internet, and going and doing exercise she really enjoyed (squash) rather than going to gym. One day, she told me that she was actually enjoying getting up every morning as she had something to look forward to every evening after work. She no longer slept late at weekend and did nothing of note for two whole days, but got out and did things that she’d been missing, like going to galleries and theatre. She was in a highly paid job so all she was doing before was watching her bank balance rise and rise, work harder and harder and never see any benefit from working herself into ground. Most importantly, she started rediscovering her love for her work as she now had energy to tackle her highly demanding job.

Case study 2 - Control Issues

Another client of mine was constantly rushing from one drama to another and loved her job in theory, but hated it in practice, and realised that her lack of time was affecting her life outside her work as well as her health. We implemented a prioritising plan and she committed herself to learning a relaxation technique, but also we tackled cause of her stress: her belief that each and every task had to be done immediately and by her alone. By learning how to delegate and prioritise - as well as understanding where her need for control came from - she was able to alleviate and ultimately remove cause of her stress - and ultimately become happier and more fulfilled, and, most importantly more productive: she’s just closed a deal which she truly thought she would have no chance on thanks to sheer volume of work that needed doing in preparation. Her assistant now handles most of that, and appreciates extra responsibility along with pay raise!

NB It is all too important that when dealing with stress you attack it on both sides - symptoms and cause. If you only treat symptoms you will keep having to treat them. By removing cause, you remove need to constantly treat symptoms as well.

Stay or Go - fix your problems first either way

If you are truly not enjoying your job, it is important to find out why. If it is due to something that is relatively simple to fix, there is no need to go through hassle of upheaving your whole life. However, there are many cases where career you’re in is just not suited to you. Do you really want to be spending a third of your life (or more) doing what you’re doing? If you don’t, you’re not alone. Recent reports show that average number of careers a person has in their working lifetime is 3 - and that figure is increasing. If you are truly bored by your job, gather up your resources and change! Remember though, that you may be taking same problems with you, so it might be worth working them out now and getting them fixed before you make move.