The Heart of Happy Eyes

A year ago, I hired an interior designer business coach to help me get to the bottom of Happy Eyes and create the structure for my process based on that foundation.  I had spent years going down the list scratching out what I know it isn’t about and wanted to define exactly what it is. So, I’ve been sitting here like an archeologist with my brush and magnifying glass unearthing this third-party thing that is Happy Eyes for the past year.

The first step in the process was to define my differentiator.  What makes Happy Eyes different than any other interior design studio?  The answer that my coach reflected back to me after conducting her three-hour discovery process was… Meaning.  Then I spent the next several months denying it.  I kept thinking, no, no, no, I can’t say that.  People are going to think I’m going to come into their house and get all deep on them.  Yikes!  Too heavy.

Except that it’s actually not heavy.  The differentiator paragraph goes on to define Happy Eyes in words that are the opposite of heavy.  I’ve never written those words in black and white nor said them out loud to anyone other than my coach and her team.  Then I recently went to coffee with a former colleague and fellow budding interior designer who came out and used all those exact same words to describe the entire point of interior design and I nearly fell out of my chair in disbelief.  She totally got it. One day, I’ll blog about it.

I spent the next ten months trying to get over my shyness of the whole “meaning” thing while I built out the actual process.  How do I help clients define their top values and express that through furniture?  How do I make sure their home is dripping in symbols that bring them back to the core of what matters most in life to them?  How do I make sure that everything comes together to create the emotion that they want to feel in the space?  Which hormone do you want your brain to emit? How do I make sure the final result is a springboard to a life that is meaningful and purposeful? How do I make sure everything is kid-proof and pet-proof (if applicable)?  How do I make sure that the process itself is enjoyable for the client?

Guatemalan embroidery. I love the intricacy.

I have spent many, many hours meeting with my business mentor, hashing out imposter syndrome with the mindset coach, immersing myself in books and podcasts, working with clients, analyzing the data in my own house in an attempt to reverse-engineer my process, shutting myself away from all external stimuli to contemplate and then repeating that process over and over again.  Many months later I’m emerging from the lab with something concrete. 

I used to lament that my artform was so complicated and expensive.  Do I have to keep buying more houses to decorate to keep myself sane?  Now I am beginning to think, what a gift that my artform is something that I could build into something to improve the lives of others.  Do what I really love for a living?  Now that’s just crazy talk… or is it?  The question is: How do I build something that stays true to my very strong opinions about design?  That has been the big work this year.

Friends, it turns out finding meaning and purpose in our lives is a fundamental necessity of being a human being. 

It’s true. I Googled it. 

Our homes are like the original Instagram feed.  What are you looking at every day?  What visual diet are you feeding yourself on repeat?  What stories are you telling yourself?  These things really matter because it’s not just interior design.

It’s *place your hand on your heart* Interior Design.  

I can’t help it.  I don’t know how to do it any other way.  So, there you have it.  Happy Eyes is here to make your house the algorithm of YOU. 

The artist who makes this was self-taught in pre-Colombian hand coiled pottery techniques. He drives out, mines the clay himself, makes the pottery on-site, builds a giant bonfire to fire his creations, grinds paint from native rock and then paints the pottery with a brush that was MADE FROM THE HAIRS PLUCKED FROM HIS OWN NECK. Wow!