Defining yourself, creating your style.

This is a post from my decorating blog that I made when I first found out about Carol Tuttle's Energy/Beauty Profiling and Dressing Your Truth back in the spring of 2010.  It's so fun to revisit the initial excitement and changes that I experienced!  It's when I first started this blog, too, and you'll see the first header I designed. It also describes how knowing my Type 1 Energy/Beauty profile has helped me make my home a place I love to be.  I'm still amazed at how much Carol's work has impacted my life....

Enjoy!

For the last couple weeks I've been on a mission.  This is what I do.  I go on missions.  I get obssessed with my mission.  I drive around making everyone around me bonkers talking about my mission.  Now I'm taking my mission to my blog, so all you loverly folks can join me on my mission and also get annoyed.

 Wanna know what it is?  My mission is to create my style.  Your mission, should you choose to take it, it to create YOUR style. (cue music)

Guess what?  I'm already doing lots of things right.  And I'm much better at knowing what isn't working and more importantly WHY.  But I'm not settled yet.  And that's ok.....here's where it gets good.  The sun begins to come out.

I did a profiling course online.   You know about profiling right?  You're something on the Meyer-Briggs, you're a season of the year, you have a love language, you're an animal....

I usually have a hard time knowing what I am, and have shied away from those things. But this one piqued my curiousity, and it's very new and not well known yet.  And I did it to help me understand my decorating style (more so than my personality).  Come to find out my energy profile is bright and animated, airy, random, CRISP, fresh, and most of all FUN!

That would explain why I like so many styles, change things up a lot, use humor, and never get 'settled'.  And that's why it's ok.  I'm all about IDEAS and bouncing from thing to thing....not so great with follow-thru, though, so I let my secondary energy type help balance that.

This particular process also helps identify your 'look' regarding clothes, accessories, hair and makeup that best brings out your natural energy type.  And get this....many of us (especially women) have moved away from our dominant type because as kids in our natural movement, we were told to, for example,  'settle down', or 'lighten up', or 'be stronger', or 'don't be so bossy'.....and so we did.  We generally began moving into our second dominant type (in a dysfunctional way), trying to 'be' that person we were supposed to 'be' so people would like us. 

But it hasn't worked.  In the fashion world AND the decorating world, the powers that be cater to only one of the 4 energy types for the most part....so we all try to get on the bandwagon and copy the styles and trends.  Raise your hand if you're kinda over that?  (If you happen to be that energy type, then you prolly don't concern yourself much about fashion and decorating, interestingly enough, because it comes naturally to you.  It's a no-brainer, and there's more important fish to fry.)

So what about the other 3?  We're left feeling like WE are the problem.  Can't wear skinny jeans?  It must be MY problem.  Don't stainless steel appliances?  I must be weird.  Too loud or too shy in a crowd?  I must be broken.  Like natural wood trim?  I'm out of style.  See what I mean? 

Don't know about you, but I'm all about finding what works for ME, and could care less if it is 'in style' or 'trendy' or even has a name.  And girls, I've found tons of freedom, had lots of ah-ha moments...and have let myself off the hook.  My house doesn't have to be stylized or dreamy or rugged.....it can be random and fun!  Because that's ME.  My rooms don't need to 'flow' perfectly because I like random (and I want my kids to have room that reflect their unique energy type).

Can I just say what a difference this has made?  Now I can go back thru my ruminating exercises with another piece to the puzzle.  I can better articulate what speaks to me and why.  I can appreciate other styles for what they offer, and can certainly add elements to my rooms (for instance, my bedroom needs to be light and airy and fun, but also have lots of soft, dreamy details, and no hard lines).  And all the members of my clan need to have places in the house that speak to their energy types...what they like.  It's how we balance one another, and how we'll find balance in our decorating pursuits.

So are you curious?

Then you need to pop over the Dressing Your Truth, and start finding out your energy type, and then how it relates to everything and everyone in your world.

I showed you the banner I made for my newest blog yesterday....the one with the random collage of brightly colored clothing and accessories.

I'm going to use that to process my journey into expressing my nature as a Type 1 via relationships, dressing, and decorating.   Of course some of this is going to bleed over to this blog, but specifics for each type will be on the other blog...specifically Type 1's, specifically.  K.

It truly has been one of the best gifts I've ever given to myself....It's helping me embrace myself as I am, stop competing with others or trying to be someone else, and lets me accept others as THEY are without expecting them to be like me.  Novel thought.

There's some things in my home I will need to re-do (because now I understand why they aren't working), and I've got some brilliant new direction for some other decorating quandries I've been wrestling with so you can expect lots of projects and makeovers and redos here all summer.  My greatest hope is that as I begin to reintroduce myself to, uh, myself....that will encourage you all to meet yourselves again too.  Discovering who you truly are, were meant to be.....is there anything so beautiful?  Being comfy in your skin, then in your clothes, and in your home?  Wow!  It's possible....it is really honestly possible to live your truth an all aspects of your world.