Longing for a Real Home

Longing for a real home weaves through many hearts and often lingers unfulfilled.

My journey as a Feng Shui and building consultant also began with this eternal longing – with a feeling of disconnection, drifting and not really at home – neither in myself nor in the places I lived in. Yes, feeling at home is ultimately an inner state but the right environment and building can certainly help. A real home resonates with you.

My life’s journey has taken me deeply into and through this longing for home and has culminated in my focus on creating living buildings, spaces that can hold you.

A living building is you. It is personal and in harmony with its surroundings. It works and feels right. It is at ease with itself and fits like a comfortable soft shirt you barely notice.

 

Buildings we have instead

I often feel dismayed at the state of our buildings – with exceptions of course. In my consultations I rarely find people really at home in their spaces.

Instead, I find boxes they try to fit themselves into, assets they want to maximise or beautiful homes that look like out of a magazine. Our buildings tend to be based on someone elses’s concepts and motivations. Many are not personal though with time many do grow on us.

The longing for home is not solved by a designer couch or a magazine look. It goes deeper than that. In the final analysis, your home reflects who you are and to live in a real home does not just happen but requires a journey of discovery. There is no way around it.

You are the creator of your home. The good news is that there are tools to help you along.

Lets unpack some of the element that go into creating a space that can hold you:

Fear or Love?

Creating a living building starts with you!  It is a process.

There is enormous power in the mind. Intention (conscious or unconscious) is ultimately the cause of everything, including a building. The difference between a living or problem building is the motivation behind the decisions you make along the way.

There are many forks on the road. You can embark on creating a living building at whatever stage – during its design, fit-out or when decorating, during a new built or in an existing structure. It’s a cumulative process and lifelong journey. It will make real difference at whichever stage.

 

The question to ask at every fork, is where you are motivated by fear or love!

Examples of fear-based motivations are a focus on resale and capital gain, keeping up with the Joneses, building the 3BR 3 bathroom home that everybody wants. They are based on FOMO (fear of missing out) and lack and can hence never hold you.

Love-based motivations focus on what you truely want. They are personal. They are the heartfelt desires that make your heart sing and feel good. These motivations are you. Only decisions based on them can get you your real home.

 

The first step to a living building is to intend to create spaces you love!  At this stage you may not know what this will look like – be curious. Then move through the process.

Of course, life is messy and there are always practicalities and limitations. I don’t mean to disregard them. They are part of your reality. Natural creation occurs within them. You don’t need to push with your head through a wall. This does not mean that it is not going to be tough. Building can bring out lessons and obstacles to overcome on your personal journey.

When focusing on what you love to create, however, things tend to turn up and happen more effortlessly. Creating this way is in harmony with nature, your nature as a creative being.

 

Steps to Creating Your Home

Instead of starting with a set of boxes or rooms that you then fit yourself into, let’s look at how to create spaces you feel at home in:

 

1. Start with Function

We are all different with different needs and different ways of doing things in life.

For each space, take some time to identify what you’d like to do there. Create a detailed list of your personal activities. Details should include your unique ways of how you’d like to function:

For example, I like to have my computer near me when I cook as this is a time I often feel creative and I like to jot down notes or add a paragraph to an article I’m writing. Hence, it works for me to have a standing desk or ledge for that purpose in the kitchen – that does not get wet or spilled on.

Another example: If you as a family prefer to eat your meals sitting at the edge of kitchen counter rather than at the dining table, you’d want to make sure your design facilitates this.

Another example: Your child may prefer to do their homework in the living area (my son insisted on this right to the end of high school) AND you don’t want to have to nag them or clear the dining table each time you eat. For things to work smoothly here it may work to have a niche with a desk at the edge of the living area.

Take some time to observe what works and what does not work for you in your current situation, what your needs are and how you’d really like to live. We’re not designing here, so don’t yet focus on exact solutions yet. At this point get a concept of the way you and your family function and what you need and love.

 

2. Qualities important to you

Once you worked out how you want to function in your home, work out the ambience in each of the different areas, so that each can hold you in that particular activity. Imagine yourself in each space and get a sense of how you’d like each to feel there – its qualities.

For example, when reading you may want to feel cosy and protected and held by a soft chair… You may want to feel uplifted by glancing out a window into your garden…

You may want a great sense of space and expansion where you bring your family and friend together to eat or entertain…

You may want to have good back support when sitting in your a bed for Sunday morning breakfast in bed … sunlight playing on the covers…

Dream up and feel into each of the spaces. Make a list of the qualities that are important to you. Get details of feel, touch, softness, sounds, light, ambience, support and sense of space, etc. Take time with this to paint a detailed picture.

If you are at this point bombarded by voices of why this cannot be or that such thing does not exist, kindly tell it to be quiet. We are not interested in the opinions of your fear at this point.

 

3. Get the Feng Shui right

So far we focused on your home as a part of you. For deeper harmony and balance, you’d also want it to be in harmony with Nature – the influences of Heaven and Earth.

This is where Feng Shui comes in. One of my teachers noted that every building can be great – if we listened to what it is telling us and how it wants to be used and decorated, meaning, if it was in harmony with its environment.

There are placements and colours schemes that are naturally harmonious in an area while others are in discord with existing energies. Every building has spaces that are better for sleep than for work, others better for work and play, and others best used for storage as they are neither conducive to health nor focus or concentration.

With Feng Shui we have the opportunity to harmonise your building with the influences of nature. If we do that we will have a building that physically and energetically supports you and that will help you optimise performance, health and wellbeing.

Every building is unique. With a Feng Shui analysis we can put activities in the right place where they naturally want to be. We also ensure that your place is filled with radiant life force and that areas are connected harmoniously. It can save you the trial and error of a space not feeling quite right and a constant need to want to change it.

 

4. Putting it all together

You may feel overwhelmed by the many reasons why all this can’t be done. We tend to feel safe in how things are, don’t like uncertainty and hence quickly jump to such conclusion.

One of the most frequent objections to a possible solution I may suggest to a client is that it cannot be done. There are always legitimate reasons for this.

Just know that is part of the journey. I invite you to hang out with the tension of not-knowing how it can come together. It can feel like throwing all the bits of data in the air without knowing where they land. It can be unsettling when you don’t know how it can be that you get what you want.

I have learnt to trust that the right solution that fits the framework we are working with will emerge. There is always a way how it can work. I have learnt to wait for this to present itself and not push ahead before.

 

Likewise, I invite you to hang out with the tension of not-knowing how it can be done! When feeling at a loss, restate your intentions, rekindle in your mind the qualities you love and embellish their details further. Then let it develop. When your mind wants to jump to the conclusion that it cannot be done, ask yourself how could it be done – in terms of qualities and functionality.

Stay curious, focus on qualities and functions, not rigid ways how it should be.  Be playful. It’s a process. Let it take time. This gestation period cannot be rushed. Trust that the best possible solution will emerge. It always does.

If I can assist – with Feng Shui or in holding space with you on your journey towards your real home, please be in touch. Brigitte, 0403 366 100

 

Image Corinne Kutz on unsplash.