Hello and welcome and today's word or phrase is all about being home.
What does home mean to you?
Is it a physical place,
A feeling or a person?
Being home really isn't just about where you live.
It's about feeling at peace within yourself wherever you go.
It's about reaching a space both internally and externally that nurtures,
Restores and reflects who you truly are.
If you listen to my talk on colour,
I mention how I really bring colour into my home and different rooms have different feelings and I've made a very deliberate and conscious effort to create those spaces for myself.
I'm also a big traveller and when I travel one of the first things I do is pack a book that will come out onto the table of whatever room I'm in and wherever I am I buy a bunch of flowers because wherever I go that's what I love to be surrounded by and I feel at home there.
But most of all I do a lot of work on self-reflection and meditation to feel at home within myself and I've done that ever since a long journey around the world that I did where I went in search of healing modalities and adventure and I realised that wherever I went one thing was in common and that was me and it really helped bring home to me that if I am at home within my heart I really can feel at home everywhere and if I'm not at home in my heart I can travel the world for the rest of time and I will never feel home.
So ask yourself today perhaps do you feel at home in your own life and what could you do to create more peace,
More comfort,
More belonging,
More a sense of you in your life choices.
The Dalai Lama was forced into exile many many years ago and he lost his homeland but found peace within himself and his teachings emphasise that true home is not a place it is inner harmony.
Fred Rogers for those of you who remember through his show Mr Rogers Neighbourhood he helped children feel safe and valued and at home wherever they were and psychologists say that people with a strong sense of home really do experience lower anxiety and higher happiness and it makes sense doesn't it because wherever you move you will be at home if you're one of those people.
Now in your physical home decluttering and redesigning your spaces intentionally can really boost mental clarity and relaxation and in fact the concept of home is one that we should also perhaps reflect on because in many indigenous cultures it's tied simply to nature not to a building.
So the home as a building is quite a new concept.
So three actions that I'm going to invite you to consider doing today and the first one is to declutter and really personalise your space.
Surround yourself with things that really bring you peace and joy and if you don't have a room in your home that you may share with a family or with a partner if you don't have a room that's truly yours perhaps you could agree with your partner and your family that you have a wall that becomes your wall where you don't have to ask permission to put things on there we don't have to get agreement with everyone that they like what you're putting there but you have your wall of inspiration and perhaps everyone in your house could have a wall or even half a wall that's their area of inspiration.
Number two,
Cultivate inner peace.
Imagine your mind is a garden.
Sometimes it needs pruning,
Sometimes it needs colour,
Sometimes it needs rest.
Meditate,
Journal or create rituals that make you feel at home within yourself.
Look at your mindset,
What you're saying to yourself.
Is that the home that you want to live in?
What emotions would you like to be there?
This is your time of empowerment.
And number three is to strengthen some of the relationships around you because sometimes home really is very connected to a person and nurturing the right connections is a very very valuable thing to do.
Comes again back very nicely to gratitude and really appreciating who we have in our life but also making the right choices for ourselves.
Today I'm going to leave you with a quotation by Cecilia Ahan.
Home is not a place,
It is a feeling.
