Hello and welcome to the French Kiss Life podcast, all about living with more elegance, style,

and joie de vivre in your everyday life. I'm Tanya Lee, your dear friends.

Hello, from L.A.

Yes, I am in the city of angels right now.

And I want to apologize ahead of time because I completely forgot to pack

my podcasting travel equipment. So I am actually recording this with a headset. And I'm keeping my

fingers crossed that the quality will be okay. But you know what, French kissing

life is not about being perfect. It is about progress. It's about showing up in your life.

Even when things aren't perfect, that's actually when life gets exciting. It's like, what are you made

of? So I digress because that is actually not the topic of today's podcast.

I am getting ready to take my group of ladies to Paris.

This is a trip that I do every single year in the fall.

And today's podcast is all about something that I learned from the French and how it's impacted my

life on such a deep, deep level, in a positive way. So today I'm going to talk with you about

a French feminine secret called Stop Chasing Happiness.

Edith Wharton said, if only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.

How often have you heard things like, cheer up, don't worry, be happy, put on a happy face, smile, damn it.

Dush yourself off and put a smile on that face of yours and rah, rah, rah. Just saying those statements honestly exhaust me. And it certainly doesn't create a

sense of joie de vivre, at least not for me. Yet, these are the cultural messages that we grow up with

from a very young age.

And this form of what I call faux happiness is what I chased for many, many years.

Our society actually encourages the pursuit of happiness.

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