Ep. 1: What is Messy Designed Life?

This is not your grandma's design podcast!
Welcome to the premiere of "Messy Designed Life". I'm Mandy Straight, your host, and in our debut episode, we're diving deep into the art of intentional living. Join me as we explore the intersection of design, self-discovery, and authenticity. We'll discuss the power of intentional design in shaping our lives and surroundings, explore personal anecdotes, and uncover practical tips for embracing life's messiness with purpose. From redefining traditional notions of interior design to exploring the deeper meanings behind our surroundings, this episode promises to inspire and empower. Tune in for a refreshing take on design and life on "Messy Designed Life"!

https://mandystraight.com/

Transcript

Hello, you lovely soul you.
I'm Mandy Straight and this is Messy Designed Life, a new podcast that explores the power and
magic of intentionally designing your life, your home, and yourself.
Hello and welcome to Messy Designed Life, the show that combines design, life, and reality.
I am your host Mandy Straight. In today's episode, which is our very first,
I might add, we are going to talk about the intention and direction for this podcast,
what you're going to get out of it, and why it's not maybe what you're expecting.
I'll share my background, how that shaped my perspective on design, and how the podcast got its name.
We'll also discuss how design affects your life in ways you may not have even noticed.
I'm recording this first episode. It's a snowy day. I live in Colorado. We have a lot of snow,
and I'm really glad I don't have to leave the house. I have to say I'm a little,
I'm a little intimidated at starting a podcast. You know, I think we all
start any creation that we work on with the intention that it's going to have value.
And I really hope it brings value to you. And I'm also aware at the same time that value can
look like a lot of different things. So first off, I just want to say that if you are joining this
podcast to find the nuts and bolts of interior design and talking about a room makeover every
single episode, wanting to know how to style your bookcase and what the very best paint color for
everybody to paint their living room would be, you are definitely in the wrong place.
We are going to talk about design on a much deeper level. We're getting to the soul of design and
what it stands for in our lives. You could say this is not your grandmother's design podcast,
although your grandma probably didn't have a podcast to listen to. So maybe that's not what you
would say. This podcast is about the drivers behind why we like what we like and what we can learn
about ourselves from design and how we can use that in a way to get more of the things that we like.
So while this podcast is about design, it's about all types of design. And while it's about interior
design, it's about all types of interiors. Yes, you're home, but also yourself and your life as a whole.
I'd like to tell you a little bit about where I'm coming from. My life experience that's led me
to this place to be sharing with all of you. And that begins in a little town in Northern Colorado
that did not fit who I was. It was an interior of a city that was not reflective of me and what I
wanted for my life and what excited me and turned me on and inspired me. And so I spent my childhood
looking around not seeing examples of what I wanted my life to be like, which made me driven
in to find other ways of doing it. I have had a few different twists and turns in my journey.
Growing up in that little town, I started doing theater in middle school and junior high and then
competitively in high school. Yes, that means competing five times a Saturday for most of the
Saturdays of a school year in theater, which was thoroughly enjoyable at the time. And then I went
into college fully intending to do theater for the rest of my life. And shortly after beginning
that major in college, I realized that I was spending all of my life trying to understand who
other people were, trying to be someone else, trying to understand their perspective on the
world when I was fully aware that I had not really explored who I was in my perspective on the world.
And that in doing so much theater, I was confusing myself for the discovery of my own life perspective
and my own self. It's so easy to get into the rhythm of life and then just live in autopilot mode,
to live in our habits and our defaults and let them make decisions for us. And I, from a very early age,
can't help but want to see the inner workings, the secrets that make us people and the magic that
describes how life works the way it does. And this quest, this curiosity has been insatiable and has
led my whole life. I really wanted to find the root of things, what life was all about. And I wanted
to find this root of life and just bathe in it. So I quit theater and started studying French and
math. French was a way to understand the world with different labels, to understand the world
through different expression, but it was still me expressing it. And I was understanding a different
mode of expression. Different cultures, different languages help us be different people. Speaking
French, I feel like I can tap into parts of myself that I don't tap into in English. English
just doesn't know how to touch those parts. And vice versa, if I were only speaking French,
there would certainly be parts of myself that were not able to be expressed in that language
that English can. And with math, I mean, math is a connection to the universe in a language that is
more true and real than any language that we speak. Because math is this pure, beautiful
representation of relationships that are happening in the universe, in the world around us. And it
was fascinating to me to get to the end of an equation and realize what I just solved for,
whatever that was. This is the space under a curve. This is the heat that comes out of a
chemical interaction. And being able to do that, it's this thing that's unseen and unknown until
the math shows you what is happening that you couldn't see if you weren't looking at the numbers.
The numbers are describing it in a much more true, pure way than any language ever could. And I
find so much beauty in that it's math is one of the languages of my soul, for sure, which sounds
crazy. But I know some of you out there, I know some of you relate to that. It's something beautiful
when you get to see beyond words. That said, I do think words are very important. And this is a
slight tangent in that you're going to get a lot of words from me. And you're going to get a lot
of etymology. I really think it's important that we understand the words that we're using. Language
is something that is a representation of something that is deeper and more real. A representation
that's all we have that's the best we can do sometimes. But it's extremely valuable to use it
knowing the power that it has. So I studied French and math in college and then went to
live in in Paris, which was beautiful to get to experience that culture. And then I came back
home and thought, man, what am I going to do with myself? I don't want to teach either of those
things. That doesn't feel innate to me. So what do I want to do? And I started thinking about design
and understanding that design is an expression and design of any kind creates and molds our
experiences of life. And I thought about fashion because fashion has been important to me in my
life as a method of self expression, as a way to say to myself and to others, this is who I am,
times when I was seeking to understand myself better, my clothes, my wardrobe, my fashion helped me to
do that better because I could experiment. I could put it on and say, this doesn't feel like me
and change into something else. And then I could convey that to others in a way that maybe I couldn't
with words. I felt like that would limit where I had to live and it would limit a lot of things
for me. So I started thinking of other kinds of design and circled around to interior design.
I started noticing how much effect design had on my life, the home that I grew up in,
my grandparents house. I started noticing the fact that I used to shove around the furniture in my
bedroom, maybe monthly, so that it could have a different feel because I wanted something different.
I wanted variety and my room to feel like something new in a transition. Now I have started to understand
over the last 20 years of doing interior design. And I'm sure I'm just scratching the surface
that interior design is very much an expression of who we are. It's this relationship between our
homes and our spaces that's telling us who we are. And we're then telling it as we create it who we
want to be. It creates, it molds our experiences of life, my home being the way that it is, being
the way that I've set it up, being in the city that it's in, creates a life experience for me
that has been intentionally set up for myself. And yes, it needs work constantly. It's always
shifting. But that is an experience that I have created. And if I haven't created it consciously,
it is still there. That effect on me, the impact of me on my surroundings happens whether I made it
or not. I find it a privilege to be able to work with clients and create their life every day.
What that framework looks like for them with them so that it really reflects who they are and what
they want. That's how design, unlike so many other things that I've enjoyed learning, design
intentionally shapes the life experience. Math observes and French talks about it. But if I design
today, I'm shaping what I will experience in my life tomorrow and a month from now. So I've been
doing design for, oh man, it's almost 20 years. I've been doing design and it feels like a lifelong
learning, like anything that's worthwhile, I would say. And in the last two years, I've started a new,
I want to say passion, but it's actually not a new passion. It's just a new outlet for the same
passion, which is NLP. And if you haven't heard of NLP, it stands for neuro-linguistic programming.
And what that is, is neuro means brain, linguistic, of course, language, and programming in a way is
just design. So neuro-linguistic programming helps us understand the language that our brain has
created in order to understand the world. And through using NLP, we can design for that language to
be something that serves us and helps us to live life and experience life the way that we want to.
So when something's not working, we have a belief or a story or a habit that keeps happening, that
say there's something I'm doing that I don't want to be doing anymore, like drinking coffee,
had to stop drinking coffee, and using NLP, I could understand what it was serving me,
and switch that thing that it was giving me to something else. Coffee was a comfort for me.
The smell of it reminded me of my dad in the mornings when I was a kid, and it was very comforting.
And switching away from coffee, I had to understand that I still want to feel comfortable, but I can
give that a different anchor. That comfort can be anchored in something else, which at the moment is
ground cacao beans that taste a lot like coffee, but has also been tea at other times. And so
understanding that root of what the thing is giving you, you can then understand how to give that thing
to yourself in a way that's more productive, just a little peek into NLP, which is actually,
it's such a deep, wide, wonderful discipline. The thing that helps me understand and shift how I
experience life, and now that I work with clients doing NLP as well, then I value that I get to help
them understand and shift their own lives in a way that's led by them. They have their own
intelligence. NLP really believes that we all have our own answers and works to tap into that
for each individual person. So this podcast is really this beautiful conglomeration of all of
these pieces with the intention of understanding the depths of life and the wonder and beauty and
indescribability of this core of the thing that is life. And in addition to that, it's not just about
understanding life, but about understanding how we are creating our experience of life at every turn
with the choices we make, with the homes we live in, with the way that we believe with what we believe
about ourselves, what we tell ourselves, with our habits, all of those are a part of messy,
designed life. So just to break down the name of the podcast, because words are so important to me,
the title of the podcast is messy for a reason. I, as you have probably already noticed in this
episode, am not a type A human. I offer thoughts that will not be linear if they are hooray and
it is probably temporary. My brain works in a way of making random connections. I look at the
etymologies, lots of metaphors, half remembered quotes and life stories. I often say somebody said
this and I think I'm getting it wrong. And I am challenging myself in this podcast to allow that
to be okay. I want this podcast not to be a solution for you, but to be the question and to help you
shape your own questions so that you're asking them in a more intentional way, knowing that even
with intention, life is messy. And if it's not messy, then we're not doing it right. Because not
messy, not imperfect means robotic and mechanical. And like a computer, that is not the way to live
any life. So this podcast is embracing the mess. And it's also embracing the mess that happens when
we work to more effectively design lives that make us happy lives with more depth that fulfill us
and help us remember what's important so that we can have more of it. So it's messy designed life,
the design part, the root of design. Here's your first etymology of the podcast. The root of the word
design comes from to make to shape or to choose. It also has this indication of that choosing
happening for a purpose with a scheme or a plan in mind. I think that design can feel sort of
floofy. It can be like, Oh, interior design and decorating. And we're just going to pick some pillows.
And it can sound somewhat woo woo in its connotation. And I think interior design specifically is
seen as something that's a luxury or an afterthought or a girly sort of surface thing. And I use
girly in a traditional sense, not that that has to dictate anything. When we compare design to a
word like engineer, which carries a much more essential impression, the root of the word
engineer is similar to design to a range can drive guide or manage where design is to make shape or
choose. And to be fair, you wouldn't have a house standing in the first place if you don't have
an engineer. But let's be real just because a house is standing does not mean you want to live there.
And it doesn't mean that it inspires you to go to work every day or log into zoom in the morning.
And it doesn't mean that you feel safe or cozy or seen when you spend time at your home. So this is
no minimization of engineering, but design is just as essential so that we have things that
we're creating out of intention in our lives by shaping and choosing with design. That means we
can use our shapes to engineer to design, you could say, the rhythm of our day to day life.
And this being able to mold that rhythm of day to day life changes how we feel when we get out of
bed in the morning. It changes how we feel working from home or getting quality time with our family.
If your home does not make literal space for those things to happen and metaphorical space
mentally emotionally for you to show up in your daily life as your full self, then there's something
missing and design can help solve that. So this is where the life comes in of messy designed life.
We all have our own unique vision of what we want life to look like structurally. It's easy to list
off the nouns of what we want. That could look like two children, a dog, a house in the city,
house by the ocean. All of those nouns are fine, but the verbs of life are really what create our
experience of it. I could be aware that I'd like this car or that achievement award, but what I'm
really looking for is not the car and it's not the award. It's the verb of how I feel about myself
when I have those things, those nouns. It's about the verbs of how I feel about myself,
how I experience my life when I have those nouns. So it's really all about the verbs.
And that when we talk about life is what this podcast is addressing. At the same time,
life is not designable. Remember that part about it being messy and life loops back on itself.
Life is about walking the journey. It's not about the destination and that walking is the verb
where we think we're headed is just a direction. So while we're designing to have a literal
destination to come home to if we're doing interior design and decorating, if we do this in a healthy
way, we're also setting up our homes so that as this mess of life inevitably happens, we're equipped
to navigate it and possibly even enjoy it. And ideally, enjoy it more because we're setting it up in a
way that fosters and encourages and inspires the type of enjoyment that we want to have.
So this is the beauty and magic of the messy designed life. It's a philosophy that helps us
experience our everyday in a better way that helps us have an intention more than just a
destination so that we know how we're walking instead of just where we're walking to.
I am so excited to share this messy journey with you. And I look forward to more episodes and I look
forward to all we can learn together as we dive into what is this messy designed life.