• Pursue happiness because it is the most important job you have in life.
• How the experiences you have are inextricably linked to how you feel.
• How you can choose the happy feeling you want to have and then use your choices to intentionally create the happier experiences you want to have.

The choice to pursue happiness affects every aspect of your life.

The way you feel inside matters and it always shows on the outside – when you pursue happiness, it impacts other people too!

Imagine if there were more people in the world who felt solidly good and happy inside. How much more forgiveness there would be. How many more win-win solutions we could find. How much kinder people would naturally be with each other.

Your choice to pursue happiness can start a ripple effect of goodness in the world, so I say – have at it! Sing in your car, wear your favorite clothes (every day!). And for heaven’s sake – don’t wait until you’re moving out of your house to paint the walls a color you like!

Listen in today as I explain how you can actually reverse engineer the experiences you want to have!

As always, my goal is to make it quicker and easier for you to access more ease, joy, and intention in your life…because happy looks really, really good!

Enjoy the show!

BONUS CONTENT:

HOW TO ACCESS A HAPPY STATE OF MIND

Be sure to grab my simple guide which shows you how to pursue happiness by reaching for the next best feeling available to you.

Sometimes it’s hard to go from feeling a bit down to feeling happy. In this guide I walk you through the baby steps you can take to fell a little better, and then a little better, and then a little better – all the way to feeling happy!

CLICK HERE TO GET IT!

In case you’d rather read than listen, here’s the

EPISODE #1

PERMISSION TO BE HAPPY AND PURSUE HAPPINESS

Hey there and welcome to the Style With Intention podcast where we talk about how to use your personal style as a tool to create a life you love.

We believe choice is empowering, complacency is boring, and happy looks really, really, good!

I’m your host, Annie Kip, and you’ve found our very first episode! I’m so glad you’re here! This episode will fill you in on exactly what Style With Intention is and what you can expect from this podcast.

So – what if there was one thing you could do every day that would make everything else you did better? What if that one thing also made other people’s lives better?

That one thing would be pretty important to do everyday, don’t you think?

Well —  I believe that one thing is to pursue happiness.

To pursue happiness is your most important job.

This isn’t something that people always feel comfortable with. In fact, some people might even feel it’s selfish to pursue their own happiness. I know it’s taken me a while to come to terms with even saying this out loud.

But I believe this is true. With all my heart.

So today, I’m going to share with you:

1. how I came to the conclusion that being happy is your most important job
2. the secret that ties it all together
3. why I think doing your most important job well – is a service to others

Of course, being “happy” is very subjective.

It means different things to different people at different times. I’m not suggesting that you should or would be able to make yourself happy by deliberately making other people un-happy.

I’m also certainly not pretending that my life has been smooth sailing. No one’s able to stay happy all of the time – but I try. I do believe it’s worth striving for…and here’s why.

This conclusion came to me over years of working with clients. Some of you may know that I was an interior decorator and a personal stylist. I was your girl if you ever need help picking furniture, matching patterns, or choosing colors.

Whenever someone wanted to make changes in their home or update their wardrobe, I realized they wanted more than just a pretty room or a great looking clothes. They wanted a different experience in their lives. Actually what they wanted was to feel something different.

My clients wanted a better feeling than what they were currently experiencing.

In my previous work, designing and merchandising retail spaces for Nike and Ralph Lauren, I realized we were giving people the same thing.

At Nike, I was on the design team that built the elaborate flagship stores, called Niketown’s. People loved going into these amazing stores. Every detail – the displays, the soundtrack, the lighting – was designed to give the customers an experience of feeling more connected to their athletic heroes. It turns out that people buy Nike shoes and apparel because it makes them feel more like the athletes they want to be.

The same was true of my work at Polo Ralph Lauren. People loved how it felt to shop in the gorgeous Polo Shops we built. Wearing Ralph Lauren clothes actually made them feel good. Our customers wanted to live Ralph’s glamorous polo lifestyle and the clothes let them feel more like the people they aspired to be.

I know this is true for me as well. It isn’t about designer labels for me. My days are better when I’m wearing my favorite clothes. The ones I’ve had for years. Just a few minutes of being in a space that lifts me up, like my screened porch can change my mood entirely.  It’s easier to get through a busy evening of making dinner, driving to activities, and making sure my kids do their homework when I’ve chosen to pursue happiness for myself.

When people pursue happiness and feel good inside, they have better experiences and their lives are just easier.

All of this came together for me  – my past work, my clients now, and even my own personal experiences to show me that how people feel inside really affects the quality of their lives.

This isn’t about spending lots of money or buying things. It’s about doing all of the simple, ordinary things you do everyday, but intentionally making choices that will make you feel good.

When you pursue happiness, it affects every aspect of your life. It is also completely within your reach.

This is the secret that I promised to tell you – you can do this for yourself! In fact, you have all of the tools you need to succeed right now. Your answers will whipser to you, so you it helps to be still and listen.

The key is to get really crystal clear on how you want to feel first, and then make choices which will give you access to that feeling.

Feelings are powerful, but they aren’t facts. They can be managed and created out of nothing.

For example: imagine a time when you were really scared. Maybe it was a haunted house when you were a kid or even a nightmare. You can genuinely feel afraid, even if there’s no actual danger.

By the same token, you can actually be in grave danger and feel completely safe, because you had no idea you were in a dangerous situation.

A few years ago, this happened to me. My kids and I were on a road trip in California (where I grew up!) and were driving through the middle of nowhere from Yosemite to the coast. There no cars, no nothing for miles but the rolling highway. I wasn’t really concerned when I noticed that the gas tank was low, because I figured it couldn’t be that much further. Besides, I had AAA for emergencies.

Well, it was a lot farther than I thought and it wasn’t until we literally coasted back into civilization right at dusk that I realized – there was no cell service out there. I had almost gotten us stuck on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere, in the pitch black night. With no flashlight and no way to get help. It was either lucky or unlucky that we had no idea how dangerous that was.

You don’t have to go too far into the “woo woo” to see that feelings are very powerful. They create your thoughts – which result in your experiences.

We act on what we feel inside.

This is where my passion lies – right at this intersection of personal style and personal development.

The style choices you make everyday are a tool you can use to feel the way you want to feel.

I believe we can reverse engineer the feelings we want.

Starting with the feeling we want and using our personal style choices – at home, in our wardrobe. Even our style of interacting with people – intentionally create the experiences we want to have.

Starting with the emotions is a faster, easier, more authentic way to pursue happiness and get into the happier feeling state that we all want to live in.

In fact, I believe when you’re in a “happy” feeling state and you choose to pursue happiness – you’re actually doing a service for the people around you – and I’ll tell you why.

Think about it, imagine you’re driving to work, listening to your favorite song. You’re kind of moving in your seat and tapping the steering wheel, it feels really good. When you let yourself really belt it out it feels amazing! Your whole body feels good!

When you walk into your job with this feeling and an intention to pursue happiness, everything’s just easier.

You’re friendly to strangers. Frustrations don’t bother you as much. On top of that, people seem more willing to help you. They want to be on your team and they pick you for their team.

You’re doing a service by being happy because – the way you feel inside, shows on the outside. It affects other people. There’s a ripple effect that you can start just by just reaching for your own happier feeling.

When the people around you sense your good feeling – as my kids do after I’ve spent some time on my porch – they’re less stressed. This makes them more open and less likely to get upset over small things. They’re also more apt to be generous and kind with other people.

Nothing’s changed here, but a feeling.

Having my favorite tea in my favorite chair every morning, starts my day off right. I know when I’m feeling good, I’m more inclined to give a compliment or hold a door. Doing nice things makes me feel happier too. The world just works better, when people feel good inside.

So why wouldn’t you want to pursue happiness and create this experience for yourself and others more of the time?

This is your permission to actively pursue happiness everyday.

In future episodes, we’ll be talking about all kinds of ways that you can bring more ease, joy, and intention into your life. We’ll speak to experts and I’ll share my personal challenges and victories with this, so you can learn along with me.

This isn’t about money or prestige or impressing other people. In fact, those things may actually get in the way of making authentic choices.

You can make choices everyday and set up your world to help you do your most important job well.

Just wear your favorite clothes – all the time.

Stop wearing the clothes from the back of your closet, just because you think you should. This isn’t a little league team where everyone gets equal playing time and a trophy!

You don’t have wait until you’re moving to paint your walls a color you love.

Choose to pursue happiness and interact in ways that light you up. Make time to be kind and see how much goodness you can pump out into the world with your own good feelings.

And…the next time you’re buying something, maybe it is worth splurging on the extra comfortable one or the one you really like best. Feel free to pursue happiness like it’s your job.

I’m obsessed with understanding how we can use the hundreds of ordinary, simple choices we make everyday to intentionally create genuine happy feelings.

Because, when I’m singing in my car – the good feeling is real and I want to feel that way more of the time. I bet you do too!

The Style With Intention podcast is the result of my journey to pursue happiness and understand how the style choices we make affect our emotions. 

Doing your most important job well – being happy more and more of the time – simply requires that you become aware – and actually pursue happiness.

Notice the ordinary choices you make everyday and intentionally use them as a powerful tool to shape the life you want to live.

Making small choices that have a big impact – this is the power of having Style With Intention.

Thanks for listening today! I’ll catch you in the next episode where we’ll dive a bit deeper into how to know which choices are right for you.

Bye, bye for now!

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and leave us a friendly review!

…and remember to grab your

BONUS CONTENT:

HOW TO ACCESS A HAPPY STATE OF MIND

This is my simple guide which teaches you how to pursue happiness by reaching for the next best feeling available to you.

Sometimes it’s hard to go from feeling a bit down to feeling happy. In this guide I walk you through how to pursue happiness by taking baby steps to feel a little better, and then a little better, and then a little better – all the way to feeling happy! Grab this guide and pursue happiness yourself.

CLICK HERE TO GET IT!

Header photograph by: Yoori Koo