Whatever makes you feel good is what you should reach for, when it comes to your personal style choices. Even a difficult time can be made better if you find a way to raise your emotional state with your style choices.
Hey there!
Thank you for stopping by today!
In the past few episodes of this season, we’ve been circling around the concept of how our emotions are inextricably linked with the experiences we have in life – but sometimes the world can throw us curve balls – I know I’ve dodged my fair share! In the toughest of times, deciding how I want to feel about the changes in my life has been very empowering.
What if I told you that you could use your personal style to help you manage your feelings and sustain you during difficult times? Well, I’m here to tell you that you can – and this goes way beyond the old adage, “when you look good, you feel good.”
This episode is really about the strength you get from truly knowing yourself – I hope you enjoy it!
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!
If’ you’re looking for a way to take back a little control in your life, you might want to check out our bonus content, Own Your Day (and Your Whole Life!) With These 5 Simple Phrases
These simple phrases can help you set limits firmly and politely, speak up for what you want without being demanding, and even take yourself out of the impossible job of trying to figure out what will make other people happy.
These are all skills which can help make difficult times a little easier!
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In case you’d rather read than listen, here’s the
FULL TRANSCRIPT EPISODE #7
Welcome to Style With Intention – I’m Annie Kip and today we are talking about Getting Through Difficult Times and how intentionally making choices that feel good can help with that!
I’ve come to really appreciate how important style choices have been in my life and how knowing what lifts me up has helped me get through tough times.
I’ve been through plenty of changes in my own life – marriages, moving, national disasters. Each time, deciding how I want to feel and then defining my personal style around that feeling has helped me get through it.
I’ve always had a core to my style, but each time my life has changed, I’ve had to go back and think about how I want to feel and how I want to live in this next phase of my life.
When I think about how I want to feel, I take into consideration where I am in my life, figure out where I can and cannot change things, and then decide what choices I can make. Even in tough times, deciding how I want to feel about the changes has been very empowering.
One of the big changes in my life happened in September 2001. We were living in downtown NYC and on 9/11 our life changed dramatically – my family and I were evacuated that day and we ended up living in a rental house in Gloucester, MA for 3 months, while we decided what to do next. It was incredibly scary and disorienting -but we were lucky, we didn’t lose anyone. We left NYC that day without anything but the clothes on our backs, a few extra diapers, and some boxes of raisins for the kids.
We didn’t have any of our familiar things for the whole time we were in Gloucester – so that was a time in my life when I decided to make my personal style – minimalism. I decided to embrace it and just live a simple life for as long as we were there. I had three little kids under 4 years old and we spent our days making things and building odd sculptures out of the debris we found washed up on the beach. Lobster traps, pieces of rope, driftwood, cans and bottles – we stacked them and propped them up decorated them with seaweed.
One day, we realized that other people were adding what they found to the sculptures we were making and it was fun thing to go down to the beach each day and see what people had done and added. We never met any of the people who had added to our sculptures, but it felt sort of nice to be connected to people in this way. We were sort of isolated up in Gloucester, away from our home and friends in NYC.
When you know yourself, you can pivot and adapt. You can make sure you have the basics you need to feel good and then let go of what doesn’t really matter.
I know I like simple things, solid colors, and fabrics that feel good on my skin.
We had nice cotton sheets in this rental house, they were patterned, but that was okay because felt great to get into bed each night.
There’s definitely no right or wrong here and you’re always free to pivot and change your mind! – We lived a simple life there in Gloucester, but I remember deciding I needed a really good haircut at one point and I got that for myself, because it was what I needed to feel good. My hair promptly went back into a ponytail, but I did feel better getting it cut!
Whatever makes you feel good is what you should reach for, when it comes to your personal style choices. Even a difficult time can be made better if you find a way to raise your emotional state with your style choices – from despair to anything you can feel good about. Focusing on the good parts, amplifying the happy moments, and appreciating anything you can find to be grateful for.
As awful as 9/11 was, we made this a special time for our family. It felt good to be together there. It was unexpected and hard in many ways, but making choices to feel good where we could made it easier.
Style With Intention is a constant process of assessing how we feel, deciding how we want to feel, and making adjustments to get to a higher emotional state. The good feeling can come from the way things look, or the environment we spend time in, or the quality of our relationships.
You know what matters the most to you at any given time in your life and the style choices you make to elevate your emotional state, will be different depending on your situation. Just keeping your focus on making choices that will make you feel good inside everyday will make even the most difficult times feel a little easier.
Thanks for listening to my story and I’ll speak with you again soon!
If’ you’re looking for a way to take back a little control in your life, you might want to check out our bonus content, Own Your Day (and Your Whole Life!) With These 5 Simple Phrases
These simple phrases can help you set limits firmly and politely, speak up for what you want without being demanding, and even take yourself out of the impossible job of trying to figure out what will make other people happy.
These are all skills which can help make difficult times a little easier!
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Header image by: Gary DeMaria