The way your home looks can have an intimate impact on the overall quality of your life. This is a concept which may not seem obvious at first, and yet when you come to realize what a home really means on a psychological, a functional, and even a spiritual level, the influence which this space has on your life can suddenly become very clear.
One of the major aspects of “the home” is that it is a place where you feel safe to let your guard down. When your mind is in such a state of relaxation, it tends to become more open to the acquisition of ideas, concepts, and to influence from outside elements. This means that the visual and emotional aspects of your home are going to have a rather profound effect on your overall psyche.
Even more than just affecting your mind psychologically, your home is actually a part of how you think of yourself as a person. Everyone has a concept of self, and the way you define that concept in your head is made up of a number of different factors including your job, your family, and even something as innocuous as the way you dress. One of the major factors in this determination is the state of your home. Being the physical center of your personal world, the look and more importantly, the feel of your personal habitat is a major philosophical element in any determination of character.
Since your home has such a deep impact on your personality, you should strive to make it an environment which fosters the kind of person you want to be. If you tend to be anxious and stressed out, getting violently angry at every little setback, you may want to develop a space which is a tranquil paradise of peace and relaxation. However, if you are lethargic and unmotivated, finding it difficult to get up the energy to do almost anything in life, then you may want to try and create a home full of interesting and inspiring elements, bold colors, and invigorating decorative pieces.
While these subtle personality effects are powerful, the function of your home has an even more obvious impact on your day to day life. Anyone who has ever lost their keys in a cluttered den knows that the wrong environment at home can have a negative impact on your ability to get things done in life.
In its simplest form, the home is where you keep all of your possessions. Some of the things you own are worthless, others are priceless, and everything else falls somewhere in between. The problem is that many people don’t have a strategy for incorporating all of these different elements into a space. The result is often chaos, with useless decorative mementos making it impossible to find anything you need, or important functional items being placed in prominent unattractive places so that they will not be lost. This is a problem which could be easily cured by simply getting a little more organized.
Your home also affects your function because it is a location you can use for a variety of purposes. You can conduct business meetings there, have an intimate date at home, or throw parties or family reunions where you reconnect with the people you care about. However, your ability to pull off events such as these will be determined largely by the appearance and state of your home. If you are trying to conduct business you will need a space that has a formal air, while throwing a party makes having a home with lots of space and good flow vital.
The function of relationships with other people is actually the most important way your habitat can affect your life. While it is possible to live in isolation, the part of life which has the deepest meaning is when you connect with other people. If the spaces in your home are inviting and make others feel comfortable, it will automatically make your social life easier. Even if you prefer to party at someone else’s place, you will still want to have people over on occasion, even if it is just to meet. When they get there, their concept of who you are will be affected by the way you live, almost as much as your own is.
The home is an environment that exerts an enormous amount of influence over how you live your life. Luckily, you can control this environment, making decorative and functional changes as your goals change from day to day. In this way you can exert a subtle influence over the world around you, and yourself, through the simple application of a little interior decorating.
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Article provided courtesy of PebbleZ’s stone drink coasters.