Personal Style Transformation: Dressing For Who You’re Becoming With Kate Breen

A personal style transformation is more than just changing your wardrobe; it’s about revealing the most authentic version of yourself. For stylist and coach Kate Breen, helping clients align their inner story with their outward presence is both an art and a calling. With decades of experience in costume design, fashion, and styling, she brings a unique perspective on how clothing shapes identity, confidence, and communication. From helping executives and keynote speakers look as powerful as they feel to guiding anyone ready to reconnect with their own expression, Kate shows that style isn’t vanity—it’s self-awareness in motion. When your appearance and your essence finally match, you don’t just look confident—you become it.

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Personal Style Transformation: Dressing For Who You’re Becoming With Kate Breen

It's truly my honor to bring my next guest to the show, Kate Breen. Kate is a style coach and DC's top-rated private personal stylist known for her work with executives and keynote speakers who need their visual presence to match their professional impact. With nearly three decades of experience across fashion, styling, retail, and costume design, Kate brings a unique perspective to personal styling. She connects personality and story to clothing, helping leaders craft authentic visual narratives that amplify their message. Through her company, GetDressedGo, Kate has earned over fifty five-star reviews by combining her deep understanding of clothes with a knack for listening, understanding, and delivering wardrobes as individual as each client.

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It is truly a pleasure to welcome you to the show, Kate.

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Unveiling Kate Breen: From Childhood Dreams To Style Coach

I am so glad that we got a chance to meet and get to know more about you. That's why when I invited you to this show, I was so blown away by your story that I wanted to share you with the world. That's what we're going to do.

That's wonderful to hear. Thank you.

What we're going to do is we're going to navigate your story through what we call flashpoint. These are the points in your journey that have ignited your gifts into the world. In a moment, when I turn over to you, you're going to take us through a journey of what the moments were that have ignited you and your gifts into the world. You can share what you're called to share, and along the way, we will stop and see what kinds of themes are showing up. What do you think? Are you ready?

Yeah, that sounds fantastic. I can't wait.

That’s awesome. Take it away.

I'll start going chronologically. Flashpoint number one was a story that my mother loved to tell when I was a little girl. She was sewing a dress for me, and I was barely old enough to walk, the way that she told it. I was standing beside her while she was sewing, bossing her around on what I wanted to have done with the dress that she was making.

It was in me very early on, and I was lucky to be raised by a mom and in a family, in general, that understood and was passionate about clothes. I grew up understanding clothes, fit, garment quality, style, and fashion history as innately as some people learn finance skills or skiing from the time that they're little. It was in my DNA and in the culture of the house that I grew up in. I would say that's flashpoint one.

Flashpoint two, very briefly, is probably learning how to sew on my own back in the day when Home Ec was still something that you could take in a public high school. I had a wonderful Home Ec teacher. I am a very impatient person by nature. Only being able to sew for 45 minutes a day was a perfect way to pace my patients and make me stop before I got furious or frustrated, which I'm prone to do.

Interestingly, another flashpoint was thinking about going into fashion in college and my parents talking me out of that because they felt like it was too much of a trade and that I needed to do something broader. This was very much the way people thought in the ‘90s about liberal arts education. I was an English major, thinking I could apply that to anything, but when it came time to pick a career, I didn't want any of them that, theoretically, an English major could do.

I went directly to graduate school for costume design. I’d been in a pretty theatrical family and was familiar with plays, but theater was not my passion. The idea that clothes can tell a story, that clothes support a character, and that clothes support a personality was so fascinating to me. I could take all of these skills as an English major, text analysis, character analysis, and that kind of thing, and then apply that to clothes. I can tell a story about a person the second they came on stage, before they even said a word, to create an understanding between that person and the audience. It was wonderful.

Clothes can tell a story; they support a character, they support a person.

The Narrative Of Clothes: How Fashion Tells A Story

I want to pause for a moment because what you shared is so brilliant. The clothes tell a story, and telling stories was the part of it that got you excited. The interesting thread that you started to pull is that it started from your childhood, the desire to follow through this process of thinking, “How can this be something that I can do?”

I love that you got into costume design because it is a story to be told. The one thing that I wanted to ask your opinion on before we go any further is that it's not the outside that tells a story. The costume doesn't make the person. It's the inside, and having that resonance between the inside and the outside, which I know is a lot of what your work is about.

It is, and it's the conversation between those two things. I always say that you can put on something that is technically beautiful or technically suits your body, position, or whatever, and not look good in it or not feel great if it doesn't resonate with who you are on the inside. On the flip side, you can wear something that technically doesn't make any sense for someone of your stature or whatever and look amazing in it because you feel amazing, and it connects with who you are.

It sounds pretty woo-woo to a lot of people who are getting dressed as a means to an end. I always talk about people feeling like as long as they're not naked, that means that they are dressed, which is technically true. Plenty of people go through just fine like that, but this next-level understanding of what clothes communicate to you as the things that are on your body all day long, closer to you than your kids, your spouse, your pets, or anything. They're talking to you, and that conversation reflects outward. Understanding that and taking control of that narrative is next level. It's also a low-hanging fruit once you get an a-ha moment about how powerful it is.

Parisian Adventures & Theatrical Transformations: Early Career Flashpoints

There's so much more to the story. We're going to get into that. There's one particular story you shared with me, as we've had some great conversations, that I'm anxious to hear. That's dressing some of the models that you have worked with. I don't want to take away the thunder, but some of the amazing moments you've had on this journey that you've gotten into in costume design.

That's a good segue to the next flashpoint, which is that I took a break during graduate school to move to Paris with my best friend. I had been, up to that point, this very Type A, linear sort of person. I was a year away from having a Master's degree, and I felt like I was a master of nothing. I had no experiences and no adventures. She and I decided to do that. Her family was in Paris, so we had a little bit of a base there, which was great.

Almost immediately, I started working in fashion. I had 2 main jobs, 1 in a boutique where they made the clothes that were sold there. I was making the clothes and selling the clothes in this cute little boutique. I was also working for a fashion show production company that did primarily lingerie and shoe fashion shows. These are things that cannot go down the runway by themselves. They need supporting accessories and outfits. We were putting those together and then dressing the models for the shows.

I can't remember which story I told you about models, because there are two main ones that I tell. One of them is that I am quite petite. I'm 5’3”, and all these models were Amazons. I've worked with a lot of very tall people since then. What I've noticed is that almost anyone who I'm doing a zipper on who's tall will kneel down in front of me as though my arms don't extend above my head and can't reach a zipper. It drives me a little crazy. All the short people reading this will understand. Are you talking about the episode on the train?

The one when you got illuminated.

That was an actress. I'm back from Paris, finishing up graduate school, and working at a theater in Baltimore. This makes more sense. This is a wonderful story. This was my first professional production that I had been involved in doing the costumes. The budgets for these shows were so much more significant than anything that I had done in graduate school or that I had seen in France. I was a very small part of a large team. The costume designer for that show was Paul Tazewell, who won an Oscar for Wicked. He has won many Tony awards. He's the seminal living costume designer. It was amazing to even be in the room with people doing those designs.

An actress came in in her street clothes. The play was set in the 19th century. She got into her period undergarments, corset, bloomers, and all of that kind of stuff, and then came into the middle of the room to have her gown put on her for the fitting. The gown was so large that the person putting the gown on her had to get on a ladder to be able to drop it over her head. It was a yellow silk confection. For those of you who have seen Gone with the Wind out there, it was a dress of that size.

The actress was standing with her arms over her head, and the dresser dropped the dress over her. The silk ballooned, cascaded, and poofed down over her body. I get goosebumps every time I tell this story. When the actress picked her head up and looked at it as it was being zipped on her back, I saw the magic happening.

I saw that woman transform from this twenty-year-old who had walked in off the street in Baltimore to have a normal rehearsal and then become this other person and this character. For all that work that she had been doing as an actor on dialect, movement, and all of that, that costume was landing her as that other person. I was hooked from that moment.

Beyond The Fabric: The Deep Connection Between Inner Self And Outer Style

When you share that story, that's the kind of feeling I have, too, when I hear that. This is the power of the work you do. It is the feeling of making people feel, “I'm alive and transformed.”

They’re inhabiting themselves. There's this very powerful moment that I love in a dressing room with people when they get it. I have a process in the dressing room where I get people dressed head to toe. We're always looking at complete outfits, never individual pieces. I try to keep them away from the mirror as I'm assembling the clothes so that I can rough-mark the alterations that are going to happen and make sure that everything is accessorized the way that my vision is, and then I turn them around to the mirror. It's fun for clients because it's a little bit like getting to be on a makeover show. There's a surprise moment. It helps people keep an open mind as the outfit is building.

We've all been dressing ourselves for a long time. We have these preconceived notions about how things are going to go or what we're going to look like, but when it is right, the body language across all different types of people, all genders, all ages, and all jobs is the same. It is this thing that people do when they feel it. That is the most rewarding part of my job, honestly, because once that feeling has happened, then it's much easier to identify what is going on for them at that moment. What is it about this outfit? What are the aspects of it that we can then replicate in lots of different outfits?

The 30% Rule: Achieving Sustainable Style Evolution

I love that you're bringing this to light because there's something about this that resonates with a little work that I've been doing over the years and what I see other people doing. Sometimes, we go through the motions. We're living day in and day out almost on autopilot. The world becomes gray and drab, and then all of a sudden, you have one moment, a flashpoint, if you will, that turns the world into technicolor. Things become alive and illuminated.

What you are tapping into is this idea that it's not like anyone did anything. It's not like you became a new person. You are the same person, but what happened was someone turned the light on. That light comes from getting to know, “Who is that person inside? How can I help them feel more alive in their body?”

I love explaining it as a flashpoint. Thank you for saying that, because the process that I described is like a makeover show. You're being turned around and being shown yourself in the mirror. It is unlike a makeover show in that I am never completely rewriting who someone is or how they present themselves. I call it a 30% rule, where I'm looking to elevate and up-level a person by about 30% because that feels very significant. It is also sustainable in a way that makeover shows or winning the lottery are not.

It is a huge part of my process to make sure I fully understand who each client is and what they want, not just in terms of what kind of clothes they think they want to wear, but what their direction is, their vision for their lives, and the way that they want to feel. I want to understand those things, and I want to understand where they're coming from with their relationship with clothes.

I have an extensive intake questionnaire that asks a lot of questions and digs around about what the messages were in your family of origin, clothes, and vanity. It's very important for me to know that. If there were any religious messages about clothes or vanity, I need to know all of that coming up. It's therapy adjacent to work with me, but that is what makes it this flashpoint experience or this life-changing experience versus a patch, which is often what happens.

This is no dig on stylists who work in stores, but they are there to sell a product. They do it well. They match a product to a body and take care of you. That's all okay, but if you're looking for a next-level change in your relationship with clothes, shopping, what the experience is of getting dressed every day, and presenting yourself in the world for people who are feeling a disconnect between who they are and how people are receiving them, this deeper work works. It makes a difference for people. I feel so grateful to be invited to do this for so many people.

From Law Firms To Fashion: The Unexpected Path To Entrepreneurship

We have to take a little bit of a step back because we need to talk about the journey that got you to doing this work. Here you are, doing costume design and doing some amazing work, but then, you probably had some struggles getting to like, “How do I do this full-time?”

I came back and finished my degree. I went to New York in 2001. I was there for September 11th and quickly came home. During that time, I had been working in Broadway costume shops, which was great because it provided more exposure to top-level design and construction of garments. When I came back home, I was doing costume design. I was working a little bit in fashion. It took me a while to be able to be a costume designer 100% of the time. I did that for 5 or 6 years.

Another flashpoint was by the time I got divorced in my mid-30s, when I had a little kid, I was already disillusioned with theater and burned out by it. I needed a steady paycheck and steady hours for my kid, so I left theater entirely and started working at a white shoe law firm in DC, doing administrative stuff. Later, I worked at a hedge fund doing compliance. It was different brain parts and a complete lifestyle change, which at the time felt like a relief to have more of a job, not so much of a career, and not to be so passionate about things. Eventually, that weighed on me a lot.

As I'm sure, no one's road is linear. We all think that it's going to go one direction, but it never goes the way we think it's going to go. In hindsight, I can see those ten years that I was working these white collar jobs as an excellent training ground for what I'm doing right now. I saw firsthand the way that the C-Suite executives that I'm styling were living their lives and what their problems were around presenting themselves, shopping, and all of that kind of stuff. It helped me formulate the business that I have. That was a flashpoint. Working in jobs that did not resonate with my soul was, in fact, very informative and important for me.

I love that you share this because like nothing is lost, even those things that we're like, “Why am I doing this?” You feel like you're losing your soul in some of these roles that you do. At the same time, you're learning, observing, and taking those lessons. You're going to turn it around and create a path to using that as a foundation for something else.

It is quite a difference. You must have felt like, “I'm leaving something that has been a passion of mine for so long. Why would I go into this world that I don't understand?” That's what people do and realize. They have to continue to survive, and you have to put food on the table.

Often, the things that people are passionate about are not the things that are financially rewarded in America. That was entirely what the driver was for me. It was pretty demoralizing to find that I could make four times as much money doing something that meant nothing to me as I did doing something that I truly felt called towards. That frustration is what drove me to the next flash point, if I may.

The things people are most passionate about are often not the things that are financially rewarded in America.

During COVID, when I was working from home along with everyone else, after the first year, I felt like I had to use this time for something meaningful. I'd reached the end of Netflix. There was not one other thing to watch. I was looking for a connection. I thought, “I've had this in the back of my head the whole time to do a personal styling business.” I had a business coach, and I got up the nerve to pick a name and make a website.

I was doing this as a project to keep me busy, but then I got up the nerve to tell people that I was doing it. That was magical. That was a combustion. That was not just a flashpoint because this was happening at exactly the moment that everybody had all their own FOMO going on. Everybody was feeling like, “If I get out of this, I am not going back to the way I used to be. I'm going to live my life to the fullest and the way that I want to live it.” nIt was also around the time that people had either lost a bunch of weight or gained a lot of weight and nothing fit in their closets. People were very keen. The word of mouth went crazy.

A year later, when I was laid off from my compliance job, I was able to make the choice because I had the proof of concept that there was plenty of demand for what I was doing. I had been able to take that time to put together what my process was. I gave myself my severance of six months to figure out if I would be able to make a living doing this. As soon as I made that decision, the lid blew off. This is when I became as woo-woo as I am right now. When I said yes, the universe sent it to me. That fall was bananas, and it has been that way ever since. I'm proud and grateful that it has gone this way.

I love that you shared this. I also think there's a sense of commitment that you've made to yourself about, “I want to make sure that my passion for this is pursued to its fullest.” You committed to doing this in a way that honors the person and the client in a way that's not like, “I'll address them. What do they know any better? I'll give them whatever they can get.” You do get to know what it is that's going to make them feel in congruence with their inner self or whatever that is.

I appreciate you saying that because I probably undersell it a little bit to give the universe all the credit, although it was amazing to take such a big leap and feel like, “This is working.” The ten years of doing soul-sucking work made me feel determined to give it one last effort to do something meaningful to me. The other thing that has been so amazing about this is exactly what you said. It is doing it my way. It is figuring out that this is what I understand about clothes and their meaning. This is how I am deciding to coach people about that and make a profound difference in people's lives.

I did write that script for what my business was going to be. It's so neat that my clients are people who want to have that experience. The language on my website is pretty clear that this is a different styling experience. I do think it's neat that, in terms of energy, interest, commitment, and intellectual approach, these are the clients that I get. It’s great.

Authenticity Over Algorithms: Building A Business Through Word-of-Mouth

I have a challenging question. I'll start with this. Most people would be out there, shouting this from the rooftops and going on Instagram and TikTok like an influencer. You often see people dressing and saying, “Look at how I dress and all that.” They are using that as the way to get as many people through the door as possible.

One of the things that's interesting about your approach is that you have a very subdued approach. It’s like, “The people who are going to resonate with me are going to find me. They're going to connect with me. The people with whom I do good work will also be raving fans. They'll bring more people to the party.” You have a very subdued, whether that's the right word or not, way of getting your business out into the world.

It is so great to talk to you. I appreciate that you have noticed that and are bringing it up. In the beginning, I wasn't even on Instagram. Everybody was saying, “You can't get a business off the ground if you're not posting regularly,” and so I did a lot of posting. I never got any work from that. It was all only word of mouth or, at the time, whoever happened to stumble across my website.

It's so much work. The former theater person in me is a hyper-perfectionist when it comes to whatever is going out there, so it was taking a ton of time. Ultimately, I've only got so much time, and then eventually, I got so many clients that it didn't feel like it was necessary. It certainly wasn't something that I found joy in, for the most part.

The other thing is that I have a personal style. I love clothes. I love dressing myself. I am very actressy in loving to morph myself. Depending on my mood, I am figuring out how to express that through my clothes. I do that, but that's me. The clients are not about me. There’s none of that. When stylists are posting themselves, what they're wearing, and what they're doing, I feel like that is going to resonate with the kind of client who likes to buy something right off a mannequin because they know that it looks good or they know that it's cool.

I make some efforts at coming across as stylistically agnostic or quiet on my own aesthetic side in the beginning, because I want people to understand that I can do anything. I can realize any vision. I love that part of this. I'm not affiliated with any brand, so I can go everywhere. I can go to a thrift store. I can go to whatever boutique I want in Manhattan. I can travel the world. I can do whatever to get exactly the right pieces together for a person and create unique, authentic looks for everyone. I feel like if it were just about me and my clothes, it would read more like it's about me, and it's not. It's about you.

We don't want to be carbon copies. We want to become our authentic selves. That is about taking the inside out, not in a quotesque way, but a very authentic way.

Why not? Life is short.

The Power Of Perception: How Style Transforms Lives And Careers

There are so many different directions we could take this, but I want to tap into why this is important for the people who are tuning in. You've gotten into so many great things about the reason why you got into this work, but tell me some examples of how this has transformed people. I know you work a lot with speakers and people who are on stages, but take us to the next level of why this work has been so impactful for the people you work with.

I'll try to structure this in two directions for the civilian crowd and the speaker C-Suite crowd. I primarily work with women. I work with a lot of people who, for whatever reason, have abandoned their physical selves for decades. They're coming out of the other side of some kind of major transition, whether it be career, divorce, or widowhood. Something major has happened. Most of my clients come at decade turns. It's been so interesting. Almost exclusively, people are coming when they're 30, 40, 50, 60, or 70. There's something that's causing people to look inward and also look outward about where they want to go next in this next phase of their lives.

For people who haven't paid attention to their physicality, it's flummoxing to try to go to a store and get caught up or figure out what looks good. To even figure out what you look like is very hard because we're looking at it every day. We've seen ourselves at every point of our lives. Getting an objective point of view on what is possible is often helpful.

The discord between feeling like one thing on the inside of you and being received as something else on the outside is a painful thing for a lot of people. I always think about the first time I met my mother-in-law, who was 50 years older than me. Long story there, but she was 83 when I met her. There was a picture in the house of a gorgeous mid-century black and white movie star portrait of a woman.

I said, “This woman is so beautiful.” She said, “Can you believe it? That's me. Every morning when I wake up, I expect to see that person in the mirror, but I see this 83-year-old lady. Can you believe that?” That was an a-ha moment for me. That was the first time that I thought you could feel one way on the inside and look different on the outside.

Helping people get past that discomfort and into a place of joy and power is so gratifying for me. For them, it's so important. Since getting dressed is something that we have to do every single day, if you feel like you are not doing that well or you are not serving yourself, or you are looking terrible in every picture that you have taken, it's so demoralizing.

You can't get away with not getting dressed. What I have found is that often, people are stuck in some sort of cycle around shopping or around the process of getting dressed in the morning that is highly teachable. It is coachable to get out of those kinds of ruts. That's practically speaking before the style part even comes into it.

People are often stuck in a cycle around shopping or getting dressed in the morning. That is highly teachable.

To your question, part of what makes it so important is that this is a necessity that we can't get past. If we're not doing it well and it's affecting us, it seeps into every aspect of our lives and our self-esteem. My caveat there is that not everyone cares. It does not resonate with people. Some people don't care, and that is fine for them. I am here for the people who care and the people who have noticed and said, “Something is off.” That's that.

As far as the speakers and the C-Suite people go, it's interesting. I can work anywhere, but I'm based in DC. There are so many of my clients who have finished law school and gotten their lawyer wardrobe. It's 15 or 20 years later, and they’re a partner, and they’re still wearing that same thing that they got when they graduated because they have not stopped working that entire time. It's the same thing. They haven't paid attention to it for twenty years.

What's happening in those scenarios is that they feel like they missed the memo because they're in rooms where people have elevated, and they haven't. I don't feel like it's as much self-esteem-biting in those circumstances, but it feels like a ding. They’re like, “All these other things are so successful. How come I'm not being successful with this?” At that point, they're outsourcing lots of stuff, so this is something that they're happy to outsource.

The speaker category is something that I've been focusing my business on more and more over the last couple of years. Keynote speaking, in particular, is the perfect confluence of my two top skills, which are costume design and public performance on a stage, and being a normal person who's smart and an expert at something who needs clothes.

When I see speakers who are wearing the same things that they would be wearing in a boardroom, or their favorite dress that they wore to their sister's baby shower, I get where that's coming from, but there's such a powerful elevator for their message, their career, and their audiences that's being missed. That is how to align what they're saying or what their message is with what they're wearing. This is like a secret. It's the secret sauce of great keynote speakers. You get the energy that you're about to be hit with as soon as the person is announced and walks across the stage.

I love how you say that. There's something about that. We all have a message. Not just speakers, but everyone's got a message to share. You want that message to come across. It's best to almost wear your message.

I'm all for a graphic T-shirt that says something you actually mean. It does not have to be complicated. We all have a message. It's important to note that perception is not in our control. How other people perceive us comes from them, their baggage, their background, their life, and all of that. It's not that there's some way of dressing that is going to make everybody think about you exactly what you want them to think, but you do have some control over how you're being perceived. Understanding what you're even trying to say and what things are likely to convey that is very helpful, as much as you can control how people perceive you.

Self-Discovery Through Style: Lessons Learned On The Entrepreneurial Journey

We've covered a lot of ground. There are so many things I want to get into and we could get into, but I have two more questions for you. Number one, what have you learned about yourself in this journey to getting to this place where you are? It’s not just being someone who helps transform lives through the work you do, which you do, but also running your own business and all these things that you've had to tap into. What have you learned about yourself through this process?

There's a lot that I have learned. One of them is that I have a voice. I have something to say, and I have something very valuable to give. My time in theater and the kinds of white collar jobs that I had had me questioning that, but I knew deep down inside that there was some way to be appreciated for what I am most adept at and skilled in that I spent my whole life getting towards.

That has been wonderful. It has happened later than it has happened for a lot of people. Any former theater person will tell you that you feel like you wasted the first 10 or 15 years of your career. I hope I'm not offending anybody out there, but it's true for a lot of us. I know a lot of reformed theater people. I didn't. My passions were true, and then I figured out how to turn them into a business, which is great.

The other thing I have learned is that empathy, love, compassion, human understanding, joy, and beauty, everyone wants these things. Everyone has these things. Everyone suffers when there is a lack of these things. Life makes it very hard to keep this ball going. The commonality of human experience has been a big thing that I have learned.

Empathy, love, compassion, human understanding, joy, beauty — everyone wants them, everyone has them, and everyone suffers when they’re missing.

There are types of people that I was afraid to work with before, or that I felt like, “Why would this person hire me? What am I going to do for her?” or that kind of thing. I'm blown away by how the process and the experience are almost the same almost all the time because everybody wants the same thing. Everybody needs the same thing. Everyone is looking for the same thing. Everyone loves the same things. Does that make sense?

It makes absolute sense. It's interesting you share this. Through this process of working with so many amazing people in the world and spending time with them, you get to learn a lot about people. It's almost like people who talk about hairdressers. They get to know a lot about what's happening in people's world because you're sitting with them.

Through this process, you get to realize we're all wanting the same thing. We want to be seen, heard, and appreciated. We want all these amazing things in the world, but sometimes, it's hard to be seen that way. When you give people that opportunity to be heard through this process and for their body to be seen in a way that's very different because their voice is being seen differently, too, it is powerful. That's why I'm connected to the work you're doing. I'm so grateful that you were able to share that.

Thank you for asking these insightful questions and exploring the whole thing with me. I appreciate it.

Recommended Reads: Books That Shaped Kate Breen's Perspective

I can't let you off the hook without the last question I ask all my guests. What are 1 or 2 books that have had an impact on you, and why?

I've started a spate of reading a bunch of self-help books. The two that have stuck out the most to me are The Book of Forgiving by Desmond Tutu. I've mentioned that I am very Type A and perfectionistic. A big part of the book is working on self-forgiveness, which is a completely foreign concept to me. The book touched me. I like how explicit and linear it is about the steps to forgiveness. It's a wonderful book and a good audiobook, too.

The other one is funny. I was having a very hard time with a person who's not my favorite over the summer. It was nothing but struggle. One day, as I was walking with my partner back home from breakfast, there was a box of books on the sidewalk in our neighborhood. People put stuff out like this all the time. I was like, “Let me see what books are in here.”

Right on top was The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. I was like, “This is a sign. It is the universe reaching out to me that this is probably what I need.” It was great. I sat down that day and read the whole thing. It's different from what you think it's going to be. It's not like, “Don't care about anything.” It's basically, “Choose what you care about. You cannot care about what somebody else is doing, not doing, or going to do because you've got no control over it.” It was a very good reminder. It was like God dropped the book down in front of me, like, “Come on. Read this,” so I did.

Choose what you care about; you cannot care about what someone else is doing or not doing, or is going to do, because you've got no control over it.

I love that you mentioned that. Mark Manson's book is such a great book. It’s not surface-level. He goes deep into Buddhism and interesting Eastern traditions. It's wonderful that he got into that. It's easy and approachable.

It's a great book.

I love what you shared. Those are such great breadcrumbs, if you will, for books for people to pick up. Desmond Tutu's book is one that I read. You're so right. We have a hard time forgiving ourselves, first and foremost.

Thank you.

I’m so thrilled that you came, joined, and shared your story and all your insights. Before I let you off the hook, I want to make sure that people know where to find you. What's the best place to learn more about your work?

The best place to go is my website, www.GetDressedGo.com. I'm also on LinkedIn as Kate Breen and Instagram as @Get_Dressed_Go. My presence there is very light, so the best way to get in touch with me is through the website.

Thank you again for coming and joining us. Thank you to the readers for coming on this journey with us. I know that you're probably thinking very differently about how you're dressing every day now that you've been spending time with Kate.

Thank you.

Important Links

• GetDressedGo
• @Get_Dressed_Go on Instagram
• Kate Breen on LinkedIn
• The Book of Forgiving
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

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