Listen to your heart to hear what your deepest knowing has to say – the info is there in the form of whispers –  you already have everything you need to choose what will make you happy!

Here are the biggest takeaways from this episode:

• What it means to listen to your heart and what the heck “whispers” are (hint: solid gold info).
• Learn how your whispers are telling you what will make you happy—so listen up!
• Discover how to listen to your heart and tease out the “whispers” in your own life.
• I share my own ups and downs with listening to whispers and ignoring these nuggets of info.
• You’ll discover how to create better experiences and feelings using the info your whispers have for you.

Hey there!

I’m so glad you stopped by!  

Today, we’re talking about something that’s crucial to your happiness. The ability to listen to your heart’s quiet messages about what will make you happy is called listening to your “whispers”!

There is so much noise and distraction in the world – not to mention whatever fears and baggage and anxieties get in our way.

It can be super hard to settle down enough to hear what your deepest knowing has to say.

But the info is there for you –  in the form of whispers from your heart. You have everything you need to know about what will make you happy!

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!

__________

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

EPISODE #2

LISTENING TO THE WHISPERS

Welcome to the Style With Intention podcast where we talk about how to use your personal style to create a life you love.

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

I’m your host, Annie Kip, and in today’s episode we are talking all about how you can listen to your heart to figure out which choices are going to lift you up and make you feel amazing.

Last week, we talked about what it means to make intentional personal style choices. You can use them as a tool to design a life you love. We talked about how important it is to get really clear on how you want to feel first and then make choices which will get you closer to that feeling. Your feelings and the hundreds of ordinary choices you make everyday will create the experiences you want to have in your life.

Today, we’re going to go a bit deeper into the how.  

We’re going to talk about how to listen to your heart.

This is a strategy you can use to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t work for you in your personal style choices.

When it comes to making personal style choices – we’re all different. Some people have very strong feelings and other say they don’t know what they like. I’ve seen that one person might like something that another person can’t stand. There’s no right or wrong or ultimate authority of style and taste. It all comes down to your unique preferences.

These preferences come from a feeling within us. We can’t always say why – we just know.

If you think about it, whenever we are choosing what we want to wear or buy for our homes, it’s always based on a feeling. We just “like” something better than something else.

Little bits of feedback are there for you all the time, if you listen to your heart.

They’re subtle indicators you get in reaction to what you see and do all day. It’s real-time feedback that’s available to everyone.

The info you get is sometimes very loud and pushy, but the really good, juicy info sometimes feels more like a whisper.  It’s sometimes so quiet, you can barely hear it. Other times, you miss it completely because it came and went so fast.

Something might catch your eye or you notice a color or a style or a shape. It just strikes you differently than anything else. Or, you might have a moment of knowing or a nice, content feeling. Or a even a feeling state that is so delicious and wonderful that you want to stay in it as long as possible – but it can slip away just as quietly as it came.

I call these moments “whispers” – because they can be like smoke or a slippery thing that’s hard to hold onto. You don’t always know where the feeling comes from or where it goes. Sometimes, you just have a memory of the good feeling.

These “whispers” are your clues to the personal style choices you can make which will delight you. They are the way we will start using your style to help you create the experiences and feelings that will make up the life you want to live.

No matter who you are or how much you think you don’t have good taste, or know how to match patterns, or pick colors –  you know when something lights you up.

When something delights you – you can feel it. It’s one of those things that you know it when you see it.

The whispers tell you what makes your heart sing – and you can get more and more information from these whispers.

The more you pay attention and listen to your heart, the more information you will get.

Start by taking the time to try to notice if you’re have a reaction at all.

Linger on the feeling as long as you can.

Put a name on it, if possible.

It’s a process to listen to your heart and a practice that you can get better at.

When we’re young, we tend to be good at this. We have such visceral reactions – we like and don’t like things strongly. I think we’re more in touch with how we feel because we haven’t had as many experiences. We haven’t yet learned to compromise and please other people – which tends to make you lose track of your own preferences.

I know this was true for me and I’ve heard other moms say how they don’t even know what they like anymore.

We’ve put our needs last for too long.

Over the years, there’ve been plenty of times when I didn’t take the advice to “listen to your heart” – to my own whispers.

Sadly, I didn’t even realize that there were whispers I could use to help myself make better choices. I followed my mom’s taste and picked things because they were fashionable – you know, like cabbage rose chintz in the 80’s and bold, dark wall colors in the 90’s! Living with the not so good feeling that these choices gave me for a long time, I finally came to realize that they didn’t make me feel good. In fact, they made me sort of sad. I didn’t know how big an impact my environment had on me, until I let myself really pay attention to what delighted me.  

Listen to your heart and get clear faster.

I wish I hadn’t wasted so many years feeling not so good.  I was young and in my first house, trying to be grown up and doing what I saw in magazines.

These days, I’m much better at recognizing the whispers and taking the time to pay attention to what they’re telling me. I’m able to notice them and hold onto them long enough for them to take shape and become real feelings. I can identify what delights me and what just makes me feel tired and sad. Now I have a small home that’s simply decorated, but it’s filled with only things I love.

Everywhere I turn, I see things that lift my spirits and make me feel good.

Most recently, I had to stand up for my whispers on a building project at my house. We were converting a 3-season porch to a real room and I had the chance to make some choices about my living space. I live in New England, but I grew up in California and one of the things I missed most about the west is the outdoor living spaces.

My best memories are of spending lots of time on my backyard patio and sitting on the porch with my friends.

I love how free it feels to be outside at night. Hearing the crickets and feeling the evening cooling. It makes me feel relaxed and safe. Outside living space makes me feel abundant and full of possibility – and content.

Being outside at dusk on a warm night is particularly special. And as might be the case where you live, dusk is when the mosquitoes come out around here. I haven’t been able to be outside at dusk as much as I would like.

The thing I wanted most of all from my building project was a screen porch.

The Beau jokes that I did the whole project, just to get my screen porch. This desire has been whispering to me for years, but it felt like a real extravagance to add it to the job. I knew adding on the expense of this screen porch was a bit of a stretch, but I trusted my whispers. It was clear to me that it would positively affect the quality of my life..

It’s a pretty simple porch, but now, every time I sit on that screen porch I’m filled with gratitude. There’s a deep, happy, satisfied appreciation for that space. I go out there any chance I get – and enjoy my breakfast, or the end of the work day. It’s a place to listen to a rain storm, or just doze on a lazy day. I am sooooo glad I listened to the whispers.

When you’re in a space that delights you, you can feel it in your bones.

You might notice it in certain rooms of your house. Or at a friends home.in a office, building lobby, or even a store. It feels comfortable, right, and calm. You feel energized and focused and clear. When you are surrounded by colors and textures and shapes and sizes and objects that delight you, you just feel more alive.

Whispers are the key to figuring out what will make you feel this way.

Just listen to your heart.

What makes one person feel good in a space may not work for another person. This is the tricky thing about creating a family home. We have to pay attention to what each person really needs and try our hardest to honor it. There are many ways to accomplish what we want to accomplish for each person – and it doesn’t always require a lot of money. Making sure everyone has what they need can be as simple as letting your kids pick the color of their rooms or keeping a vase of wild flowers or pretty leaves or even a special chair. The important thing is to start listening to the whispers and grab onto the feedback they’re giving you.

Really try to listen to your heart and notice  – because this whisper is telling you what will make you happy.

I love helping people hear their own whispers. Working with my clients and friends to tease out what it is they want to feel. We figure out what they want from their homes and offices together. Recently a friend took some big chances at her home and painted some walls bold colors. She tells me that everytime she walks into her home and sees her colorful walls, she feels like “herself.” These colors are so different from what most of the homes in our area have, but she says she feels like she’s really “home” in a way that she’s never felt before. I love seeing how certain details can lift people up and make them feel like their best selves.

I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that she reports her business has never been better. She feels more relaxed and at ease when she gets home from work and spends time with her family. There’s a “calmer-ness” about her and she’s more comfortable in her own skin.  The simple choice of fun wall-color made her feel so good inside that it’s showing up in her life and coming through in everything she does.

These small, ordinary style choices we make have far-reaching impact on our lives. This is the power of listening to your “whispers.”

See if you can hear them this week.

Listen to you heart closely.

The whispers are there, ready to help you, in every little decision you make throughout the day. Try to notice how different spaces make you feel, different offices, or homes.

Next time, we’ll talk about reclaiming your personal style. This is a great episode for anyone who’s been a parent for many years and sort of put their own needs and preferences on hold. Feel free to click on the social share buttons and let your friends know about this one – it’s going to be good!

Until then, keep makin’ things look the way you want to feel, because happy looks really, really good!

Thanks for listening. Bye, bye for now!

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE

* BONUS CONTENT*

Grab your FREE one-page guide to listening to your own whispers!

Header image: Ahmed Saffu