Happy Starts at Home E-Book

Rebecca West

• Herausgeber: CICO Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 181

Beschreibung

Use your home as a tool to make better changes happen in your life. Through aligning your heart, home, and health, experience first-hand how small changes make a big difference. What does it take to be happy at home? It's not about buying or not buying a new sofa. It's about whether your home is working for you in the best way. Your home can directly improve your well-being and contentment with better health, sleep, and relationships, and ultimately decrease your stress levels to increase your all-round happiness. Design expert Rebecca West helps you to learn how to achieve a geographical cure without actually relocating and how to redecorate so you can feel best in your space. Along with beautiful photographs, there are a variety of self-assessment activities to connect your financial, emotional and physical health to your space to ensure it nurtures your vision – and while doing so, investing your time and money more effectively too. With the valuable advice in Happy Starts at Home, you can commit to a philosophy of buying fewer things and doing more to discover what's holding you back, in order to find joy and create a home that makes you smile.

Leseprobe

happy starts AT home

happy starts AT home

CHANGE YOUR SPACE,TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE

REBECCA WEST

Published in 2020 by CICO Books

An imprint of Ryland Peters & Small Ltd

20–21 Jockey’s Fields 341 E 116th St

London WC1R 4BW New York, NY 10029

www.rylandpeters.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text © Rebecca West 2020

Design and photography © CICO Books

and Ryland Peters and Small 2020

The author’s moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress and the British Library.

eISBN: 978-1-78249-913-8ISBN: 978-1-78249-845-2

Printed in China

Designer: Geoff Borin

Photographer: for all photography credits, see page 175

Commissioning editor: Kristine Pidkameny

In-house editor: Anna Galkina

Art director: Sally Powell

Head of production: Patricia Harrington

Publishing manager: Penny Craig

Publisher: Cindy Richards

CONTENTS

introduction

CHAPTER 1

happy starts with you:

define your perfect place

CHAPTER 2

financially fit:

establish an abundant life

CHAPTER 3

healthy and well-rested:

discover the geographical cure

CHAPTER 4

friends:

inviting places for social gatherings

CHAPTER 5

love:

romance, companionship, and starting anew

CHAPTER 6

it takes a village:

family identity and the power of play

CHAPTER 7

work space:

set the scene for success

CHAPTER 8

spirituality:

care for your soul connection

CHAPTER 9

self-worth:

say yes to a happy home

conclusion

selected bibliography

index

photography credits

acknowledgments

Being happy at home isn’t about having a Pinterest-perfect space or expensive furnishings. It’s about having a home that works for you, supports your dreams, and helps you feel secure.

introduction

It’s not about buying or not buying a new sofa.It’s about whether your home is working for you.

Your home can be the key to better health, better sleep, better relationships, and an all-round better life. Your home can also lock you into a damaging relationship, drain your energy, and devour your money. Every choice you make about your home influences your life. With every dollar you spend on your home, you cast a vote for the kind of life you wish to live: what you value, how you will be treated, and whom you will let in. It’s that powerful! If you’re like me, you are highly affected by your environment. In a messy room we feel frustrated, stressed, even out of control.

We crave the beauty and calm depicted in glossy home decorating magazines—not just because the pictures are pretty, but because we imagine that if we could just get our homes close to that ideal, we’d enjoy less stressful, more contented lives. The truth is your home can directly improve your well-being and contentment. It can help decrease your stress level and increase your happiness. But not necessarily by looking like the cover of an interior design magazine. This book is about using your home as a tool to make change happen in your life.

getting started

I became a designer by chance, not by, well, design. Nearly a decade ago I found myself divorced and living in a house that constantly reminded me of my failed marriage. I got tired of living somewhere that reverberated with sadness, loss, and defeat. After about six months of feeling stuck, I repainted the walls and completely refurnished the house (and it didn’t take buckets of money). Here’s what I discovered: Changing what I saw around me transformed how I saw my future. And that change thrilled me. While I hadn’t moved physically, I had moved on psychologically.

I started my design company, Seriously Happy Homes, because I am passionate about helping people experience the transformative power of the home. I feel a special connection to those who are in life transition or who may feel blocked, frustrated, or trapped, like I once did. So, while I did go back to school to earn a degree in interior design, I didn’t start my company out of a love for design per se. I started it to help people use their home as a tool for change. To this day I don’t really care whether you buy a new sofa. I do care that your home is working for you. I want to share with you the tools you need to create your own happy home. It’s not about copying design trends. It’s about figuring out what you need from your home, and then identifying how to make your home work for you.

first, let’s ask why

A lot of books out there tell you how to declutter, decorate, and design your home, but many skip the most important question—why? Why have you decided to change something about your home? Why spend your time, money, and energy decorating or remodeling? What outcome do you seek?

Maybe the answers seem obvious to you, but let me probe a little more deeply: Who are you making changes for? What do you hope will happen by making these changes and spending this money? What outcome must be realized for all of the expense, stress, and time to have been worth it? How will you know you’ve succeeded? If you haven’t really examined—and answered—the important questions before diving into a home remodel or decorating project, you may:

• End up with a beautifully remodeled kitchen that fails to function for your family.

• Start out strong but eventually lose motivation and remain stuck in a cluttered, shabby, dysfunctional home.

• Create a picture-perfect home but realize that nothing has really changed in your life.

When we aren’t driven by a clear and internal motivating factor to implement change, the change (if we achieve it at all) rarely lasts. Like a person who loses weight to please someone else or who loses it too quickly and gains it all right back, your house ends up (or stays) out of shape. The answer to “Why should you invest in your home?” is this: You shouldn’t! Not unless that investment results in a home in which you feel more carefree, confident, and cared for, and not unless you know why you (not your mom or your sister or your friend) will be happier as a result.

When we know how we want to use a space and how it should make us feel, we can make informed and intentional decisions about what to buy to meet those goals.

Here’s a personal example of a positive life outcome. When I married for the second time, my fiancé and I decided that if we were going to spend thousands on a wedding, we might as well get something long lasting from it (I mean, besides a marriage, of course!). We enjoy hosting parties and barbecues, and we also have a passion for ballroom dance and dreamed of hosting dancing parties and lessons at our home. Inside, our modest house could accommodate, at most, about a dozen people, but outside, our giant weedy-sloped backyard was ripe with potential. We decided to host the wedding at our home and invest in revamping the backyard into a terraced entertaining space. In the year after our wedding, we hosted another half-dozen outdoor soirées, including a zombie-apocalypse emergency planning party and an auction for my local Toastmasters club. That was the prize on which we’d kept our eye the whole time we were neck deep in wedding and remodeling chaos. We stuck with it because we knew we’d end up with an outdoor space that suited our lives. Visualizing our goal helped us keep perspective and make good long-term decisions. And because we understood our end goal, our why, we ended up with a space that really did enrich our lives.

So how about you? How can you set an intentional goal for your space and project? How can you make decisions for your remodel and have confidence that you are making the right calls? How can you use your home to achieve more joy, calm, love, and success in your life? How can you get—and stay—happier at home?

what do you really want?

With any home project we have to connect to an intention, a purpose, that will serve our life. If you can identify your desires at a core-values level, then you can assess what you need to change to achieve those goals, and then collect the right “tools” to make those goals a reality. For example, not a “new kitchen” but “more healthy home-cooked meals to help my diabetic partner live longer.” Or not a “prettier living room” but a “space where I can spend more time with my friends and family.” So before you start to redecorate or remodel, you must connect with your core values, see your surroundings with new eyes, and understand how your home supports (or sabotages) the things, people, and activities you most value. Only when you understand the profound impact that your home has in giving you (or keeping you from) the life you crave can you identify how you want to live, come up with a concrete why to guide your successful project, and create a plan to get to your new life.

balance the changes you make to your space

If you are the sole decision-maker in your home, then taking action on the changes you want to make to your space will be straightforward. However, if you are part of a couple, you may find yourself having home remodeling arguments that can seem unsolvable, especially if you are eager to make changes in your home but you’re having a tough time getting your partner on board with the plan. You may be tempted to dismiss your partner’s opinions, or assume that they don’t care about the house. More likely, they just care about it in a different way than you do.

Try to identify how you and your partner see your home. If someone is more of a “nurturer,” then the home is a “nest,” and reflects how well they care for everyone living there. That might be seen in a desire to have attractive décor that creates inviting, cozy spaces. If someone is more of a “provider” then home is a “castle,” offering evidence of their ability to support and protect. That might show up in a home with a solid home value or a trustworthy security system. When you can connect the changes you want to make to the values your partner holds, it will help you have a more fruitful conversation. Remember that while your partner may not express interest in the precise wall color or number of throw pillows, they do care about the house and what happens to it physically and financially. And a kitchen update can be expressed in terms of home value rather than only the social value.

Knowing what you really want helps you filter out well-meant advice that isn’t actually a good fit for your life.

Discover what home means to your partner and then frame the conversation in a way that speaks to those values. You’ll get a lot further in your discussions about what to change, how much to spend, and where you both are willing to compromise. Come up with a shared “why” and goal for your space, and you’ll spend a lot less time arguing about the size of the sofa, the color of the carpet, or the price of the countertops.

how to use this book

This book isn’t an interior design how-to guide. This book is about aligning your heart, your home, and your health. It’s about getting a geographical cure (putting yourself in a new environment) without actually relocating. It is about creating a home that will nurture and support the life you deserve to live. If you plan to redecorate, this book will help you identify and buy what you need to feel your best in your space. If you are about to remodel, the activities in this book will better equip you to communicate your needs to an architect, a designer, or a contractor, and will help ensure that you end up with the home, and life, of your dreams. This is important because I want you to have the home of your dreams, not the home of your designer’s dreams.

This isn’t just a reading book. Treat it as a workbook too. Take a moment to gather these tools (they’ll come in handy as you work through the chapters):

• A special notebook or journal dedicated to your Happy Starts at Home™ journey

• Your favorite pen for journaling

• Graph paper for drawing basic floor plans (plain paper will do too)

• Colored pencils or markers

• Your favorite list-making tool (notepad, iPad, phone, laptop) for to-dos, to-considers, and to-stop-doings

As you discover answers about what you need in your living space, put the book down, get up, and make some of those changes. Then pick the book back up and venture onward. I encourage you to read through Chapter 1 and complete the exercises, which are universally applicable and set the stage for subsequent chapters.

After you’ve completed Chapter 1, turn to any chapter that is calling your name and skip any chapters that don’t apply to your life. There is no order in which you have to read the chapters, and there is no magic to doing every last exercise. Each one asks a different question, helping you evaluate your unique situation and discover what you need from your home. With each activity you complete, you’ll develop more perspective about your home and be able to see it with new, more objective eyes. This, in turn, will guide you in taking goal-oriented action in your home.

Feel free to use this book on your own, or involve your family. If you are making big changes, perhaps include your partner or kids in the process and have them complete the activities, too. When everyone has a seat at the table, everyone feels respected and heard, and creative solutions often arise. If you’re involving your family, first try to do the activities independently and then compare answers. Let it be an opportunity for discovering differences and brainstorming extraordinary solutions. You can even bring in a third party (an architect, a designer, or a counselor) who is experienced in advising couples if the conversation gets heated. Remember, your relationships are always more important than the color of the carpet.

Okay, let’s get started!

Begin to see your home as a tool: use it to get you closer to your goals, and make sure it reflects your values.

Simple choices, like hanging your guitar on the wall, set your home apart and make it personal, so that it can never be mistaken for someone else’s home.

CHAPTER 1

happy starts with you:

define your perfect place

Every home is, and should be, unique. Your habits, dreams, family, and hobbies are personal to you, and ideally your space reflects and supports your unique lifestyle. There are no rules for setting up your home; it just has to work for you. In this chapter you will zoom out and get perspective on the big picture of your life so that you can zero in on what needs to change. And throughout this book I will show you how to make those changes without losing precious time, money, and sleep.

For starters, it helps to be aware of the effects that our homes have on our lives. Often we make changes guided by what’s trending in popular decorating magazines and TV shows. We try to duplicate what is “right” or current, unconsciously trying to keep up with the Joneses without realizing what is motivating our decisions. But the Jones family may like to host parties for forty people every weekend, while you might prefer to spend a lazy Saturday recovering from the workweek. And really, who cares what the Joneses do with their place? Your home is supposed to make you happy and help you reach your goals!

your heart’s desire

Early in my career I worked with a client, Debbie, who was caught in the trap of trying to create the home that other people thought she should have. She showed me pictures of the rooms she admired, then asked my advice about what to buy. Based on her visual targets we identified items that would make over her space to resemble the inspiration rooms, and she proceeded to place the orders. But by my next scheduled visit, Debbie had returned everything and had chosen a different design direction for the room. Now, it can happen that when you actually get what you were asking for it turns out not to be what you want. Knowing this, I wasn’t too worried and we went through the process again. However, when it happened again, I put on the brakes: it was time to find out what was going on.

It turned out that every time Debbie had made a decision, she’d asked friends and family their opinions about her new décor. Naturally, everyone had offered different opinions, and because she didn’t have a strong internal compass guiding her choices, all those opinions left her confused. Debbie lacked the confidence to say what she really liked. So before we began the decorating process for the third time, we had a heart-to-heart chat.

We explored three important questions: Who did the home need to support? What activities did the home need to support? And how would we know if the work had been successful? The answers to these questions aren’t always obvious. At a basic level Debbie’s home was a place to eat, sleep, rest, work, and play. That might be factual, but it also doesn’t tell us much. In this case the home was for her, yes, but specifically it was for the “grown-up, successful” version of her, trying hard to not need the approval of her family. Debbie and I agreed that her home needed to express her personal identity, and she needed to be comfortable enough to embrace that identity without seeking anyone else’s approval. To answer the question “What is my home for?” Debbie expressed that after eight hours or more of caring for other people in her job as a social worker, she longed for a place to recharge so that she could give all that love and energy again the next day. And how would we know her home makeover was a success? If she loved it so much she didn’t need her family and friends to love it. It would be a bonus if her family loved it too, but that would be secondary to Debbie liking it on its own merits. Together we set big goals, but with the right mindset and a little help, Debbie discovered they were achievable goals. And very different from just imitating a page in a decorating magazine.

It’s important that we clearly define what we need from our home so we don’t get distracted by what someone else might want if it were their home.

ACTIVITY 1

the wheel of life:

bridging your wellness and your home

Let’s figure out what defines your perfect place, and begin with an exercise that give us a sense of what is (or is not) working in your life right now so we can identify how your home can help. This Wheel of Life activity helps evaluate which areas of your life are working well, and which could use some support, so you can laser-focus your energy and choose changes that will have the greatest impact.

Make a copy of the image opposite. Consider each section and place a dot on the line marking how satisfied you are with each area of your life. A dot placed near the center indicates dissatisfaction; a dot placed near the edge of the circle indicates ultimate happiness. When you have placed a dot on each of the lines, connect the dots. Peaks represent areas of your life that are satisfying, while dips in the circle indicate depletion or imbalance.

You likely have areas in which you feel satisfied and areas being neglected. Did you find any surprises? Many times we “kind of” know the dissatisfied aspects of our lives, but putting it on paper helps us more honestly assess ourselves and our situations.

Take out your journal and make two lists:

• Areas that are full and rich right now

• Areas that are lacking and need attention

This is the starting point for all the ideas we are about to explore in this book. You can use the lists from the Wheel of Life to figure out where best to invest your time and energy to make your home work better for you. Of course, remember that life is never “done”: it is organic and eternally shifting. That means your answers will change over time (as will your home) so occasionally revisit your circle to keep tabs on what needs attention in your life.

Now that we have that snapshot of your life, let’s discover how you feel about your home.

ACTIVITY 2

quiz: how happy is your home?

This quiz will help you think through your level of contentment at home. Answer each question with a rating of 1 to 5, 1 being least like you and 5 being most like you.

Not at all true, never true, or not at all like me

Not as true as I’d like, rarely true

Sometimes true, half the time true

More often than not true, frequently like me

Absolutely true, always like me, or all the time