How home unites us across borders

Today’s the day!

After posting the first 4 interviews on the Homelife for Extraordinary Impact podcast, now it’s time to analyze the findings from this initial research of people’s homes from Tehran, Iran to Phoenix, Arizona.

The goal is to bring you insights that are:
1. unique & interesting
2. actionable for creating a great home

You can read the written version below, which extra emphasizes how to easily transform your homelife based upon these 3 big insights:

1. Feeling at home happens when your inner self (personality, values, moods, etc.) matches your living environment.

2. Prized possessions carry stories with sentimental & symbolic value.

3. Global, cross-cultural perspectives provide special insight into home.

Lots more to say about each of these below and to help them be actionable for your home. Plus, if you want to watch or listen to our conversation about these insights, you can take a look!

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1. Feeling at home

Belonging and a sense of “feeling at home” happen when those inner-self things (personality, self-conception, mental health) are in harmony with the environment around you.

Simple enough, but here’s where this gets extra interesting & actionable.

If you want to feel at home, then you can adjust your home to match your inner-self. And this takes 4 steps.

1. Know yourself: Do a personality inventory test, and find one that rings true to you. Take note of what this reveals about you.

2. Define your values: Take a look at 3-5 key stories from your life—the ones that play on repeat in your mind. What do they say about your values and what matters to you? If you chose 3 core values, what are they?

3. Who you’re becoming: Thinking of yourself in the future a few years from now, who do you hope you’re becoming? What are the character qualities, attitudes, or skills important to you?

4. Adjust your home: Play with everything from location to interior design to morning routines to help you feel at home—making your environment help you express who you are & who you’re becoming.

To sum it up, reflect on who you are and who you’re becoming, and then experiment with different ways your home can amplify your self-expression.

I’m excited to fill in how to experiment with adjusting your home in future insight reports!

2. Sentimental valuables

Prized possessions have a story behind them—like Rob’s signed album cover or Brian’s special lamp passed down as a family heirloom.

I have 2 ideas for how to get the most out of your prized possessions:

1. Turn them into reminders. Why does the story behind your prized possession matter to you? What does it symbolize or represent for you? Let these possession be a symbolic reminder of your values.

2. Make them a conversation piece. If you prize it, it shouldn’t be hidden away in a shoebox in the closet. Hang it in the hall or entry and tell the stories behind your prized possessions to family, roommates, and guests.

3. The global home

Interviewing folks around the world led to 2 divergent but complimentary pieces of information.

First, home is home—anywhere.

It was striking while talking to Melika about her home in Tehran: her home feels like any home. There’s something universal about home, no matter how intriguing or exotic the location.

Second, cross-cultural & immigrant perspectives provide special insight on the national or ethnic differences of home.

As much as home is home anywhere on one level, it’s also dressed in different styles everywhere.

Immigrants carry a particular awareness of the differences, such as Brian’s helpful parsing out of Danish hygge vs. American coziness as distinct approaches to homelife.

In light of this awareness, I see 1 big actionable piece for your home:

Engage with people from different cultures or backgrounds, look for points of human similarity in your homes as common ground, and learn about their differences to see if it might open up new, exciting possibilities for you.

To make it more tactical… What person in your life from a different nationality or ethnic background would you want to have over for dinner next week? Table topic: home.

That’s all! This kind of insight report will only be available for premium subscribers in the future. So subscribe to get the full report each month.

As always, just hit reply if you want to tell me what you think! Until next time,

– Matt Barrios

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