We recently connected with Kristin Sremba and have shared our conversation below.

Kristin , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Sure! In May, 2021, I put in my notice to leave a 10 year career to pursue starting a business. I did not know what I would be selling, I had no business experience, and I had very little savings. The risk trifecta…

I have the same story as a lot of people; I was unhappy at my job while convincing myself that I should be grateful for my paycheck, for the home my paycheck paid for, and for the benefits my job provided. When 2020 hit, I had about one month before I was called back to my old life to figure out how I’d do the old things in a new way. During that month I was home, I got to see a version of myself I hadn’t seen in a very long time. It was not bliss by any means, but I got to see how my creativity was healing and how it was opening a door for entrepreneurship.

After the pandemic, I tried to combine this newfound creativity with work and it did NOT work. Fast forward through the challenges of trying to put this new version of myself back in a box I’d spent years building, fast forward through plans to save money to make a “smart exit,” fast forward through gut wrenching moments of questioning and confusion and we land on a mundane moment on a Friday. Everything was going as well as one could hope for, yet it still felt like there was a mountain sitting on my chest. As I sat under that mountain I knew so well, I felt this moment of dread. If I could feel this bad when everything was going as well as it could, I knew I needed something different. My “why” was getting bigger and it had become impossible to ignore.

The next 6 months, exiting my old world would be some of the most challenging of my life. When I’d finally gotten to putting my focus on the business, the rent was superseded at my apartment complex and I could no longer afford to live in my home. Long story short, I ended up living in a van with my cats, knitting and sewing handmade goods, selling them by the beach, and handing out “Happy Thoughts” for free.

When I started selling I was terrified, so I brought handwritten “Happy Thoughts” with me to engage with the people. What are these “Happy Thoughts” you might wonder? I’ll tell ya, they’re uplifting and empowering thoughts from various different people who have helped inspire me to just be who I am. They started on my mirrors many years ago during hard times and they’ve been on my mirrors during major and minor transitions in my life.

“When you have a big enough why, the how’s work themselves out -Simon Sinek,” was written on my mirror when I quit and was among some of the first “Happy Thoughts” I brought with me to sell. “Happy Thoughts” have reignited at different challenging times and have changed my life in different ways through each season. They keep growing in the wildest ways and none of this would have happened without that tiny moment under that mountain in May, 2021.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Of course! I started a business called Kristitchin, in August, 2021 to find more freedom and to support myself my own way; selling hand knit and sewn goods was how that support showed up and I started running with it. I made a surf poncho from upcycled towels for fun one day; I used my own surf poncho as a guide and thought it would be fun to try and it worked! I became a poncho maker fast; while I was selling my handsewn surf ponchos (with pockets and hoods!), I handed out “Happy Thoughts” to help me through asking strangers how much they thought I was worth on a daily basis.

I’ve handed out over 80,000 free “Happy Thoughts” to strangers in the past two years; there is nothing that has taught me more about people than that experience. I learned we are really all the same and we are all unique little butterflies. It was amazing to have meaningful conversations with so many random people and see that we’re really all looking for the same thing; we want to matter, we want to connect and we want to be loved.

I released the first version of “365 Days of Happy Thoughts” in August, 2022. “365 Days of Happy Thoughts” is a compilation of uplifting thoughts for a year! There are no dates, so you can start when you want or miss a day and just keep on keepin’ on. After the first year, I sold 1000+ of them and created/received my first mass shipment of a more efficient and marketable product. The goal is to get as many as possible available to the hurting since that’s where they were created from. My dream is for them to be accessible to hospital patients, hospital gift shops, rehabilitation centers, mental health resources, and anyplace else that would like to help spread some more love in this world.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I started listening to Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations podcast while I was contemplating leaving my career. I listened to the episode about “Fulfillment,” where she compiled pieces of interviews with a vast array of amazing humans about living a fulfilling life. Up until this interview, I had not listened to it again and so many people I’ve quoted in the “Happy Thoughts” are interviewed in that podcast!

I’m pretty sure Paolo Coelho is the interview that changed my thinking; he was talking about our dreams and the thing we each have inside ourselves that we wanna do. He said that thing is inside you for a reason; it’s not only possible for you, but it’s MEANT for you. The world needs that thing that is inside you. I oddly heard that as permission that I needed to go create; that was a moment I felt a green light to go be who I am. I’m pretty sure I quit a few months after listening to that.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to unlearn that there is a “right” way to do this life. One of the “Happy Thoughts” is by Wayne Dyer, he says “Remind yourself that you cannot fail at being yourself,” and I love it! I’ve definitely gone down paths that are not my favorite, but every time I did the wrong thing, I learned more about what the “right” thing is; I just think there is nothing more valuable than knowing YOU more. The better we know us and the more we can love all the versions of us, the more opportunities we have to share that with the world. We deserve it and the world will benefit from it!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kristitchin.com
• Instagram: @happythoughtsbykristin
• Facebook: Kristitichin
• Spotify: Happy Thoughts Podcast

Image Credits
Jonas Carrera, @fathom_images