You are your home

Can you re-shape your homelife to grow into who you've always wanted to become? Going from anxious to courageous because you got better sleep?

This week is about the link between your home and your growth as a person:

• See the ways your homelife both inspires & limits you

• Envision the person you aspire to become

• Design homelife to support your growth

The link between homelife and personal growth is hidden in plain sight. Like the water you swim in—and you, like most, might drift wherever the current takes you.

But no more drifting for you!

Once you see how your homelife shapes who you're becoming, you'll never be able to unsee it. Awareness of the connection between homelife and personal growth will further set you up for the more meaningful and happier solo time and relationships.

That's what I'm going for in the next 4 minutes of reading. So let's get to it!

Your home is you

A couple common pitfalls first, don't let these get in the way of exploring the powerful link between your home and your identity.

Mistake 1: Optimization culture

"Rise & grind." "Do it or die trying." "Forget the 9-5. Work your 5-9."

Hustle culture isn't all bad. Accomplishing important things takes hard work & grit. But some things remain better left un-optimized.

For homelife to be "optimized"—which is entirely the wrong word—it happens in reverse.

It happens by being intentional about things like:

• rest

• slowness

• savoring meals

• appreciating beauty

• meandering conversations

• protecting unscheduled time

Instead of "optimizing" homelife, think of it as "being intentional" about your homelife.

Mistake 2: Cynicism culture

"A cynic is a passionate person afraid of being hurt again."

An old mentor told me this, and it challenged my know-it-all, hipster nonsense like nothing else. Behind every cynic (like I often am) is a wound.

If you want to see the connection between your homelife and your personal growth, it might require an important step of healing your cynicism.

• ways you're cynical about "personal growth"

• ways your homelife was harmful before (or currently)

Shift from being cynical to embracing possibility—maybe even first in your home.

Mistake 3: Exclusionary thinking

It's crucial to avoid this key pitfall in personal growth & development: thinking your growth's all about 1 thing.

• professional development

• spiritual enlightenment

• relational harmony

• fitness gains

• pick yours

There are as many dimensions to development as there are personalities—over 7B at last count. Rather than ultra-focusing on one, be holistic about it.

For most people, you might swing back and forth between optimization and cynicism. Both "I can do more and make more happen" and "What a dumb idea—been there, done that."

As a result, there's no sustainable way forward. Over-optimizing leads to burnout, and hyper-cynicism stops you in your tracks. In both cases: no movement. You know how much that feeling sucks the life out of you.

Add to that exclusionary thinking, and you're like a ship without a sail.

Before you get further stuck, come along and see how a change in perspective about homelife is key to growth by trying these things:

1. See the ways your homelife both inspires & limits you

What if your home could be an inspiring and supportive place for you to grow?

Your living room could be a sanctuary of connection. Your kitchen could be a lab for experimentation & creativity. Your bedroom could be a place of deep rest or wild intimacy.

Like a plant in a pot. The soil the plant grows in today is the plant's new leaf next month. Your environment shapes what you experience—and who you will become.

Examine the space you spend all your sleeping hours and about 50% of your waking hours: home. Specifically, examine the way you are at home.

As a simple tool to notice how inspiring or limiting your homelife is for you, take a look at this chart.

How much of your time do you find in each of these quadrants?

• 50% in top-right, 50% in bottom-left?

Everyone will have a mix—and appropriately so. Some important parts of homelife just are not inspiring (ahem, taking out the trash). But they must happen nonetheless in order to create a great home.

After using that simple tool see how inspiring or limiting your homelife can be, it's time to move on to step 2.

2. Envision the person you aspire to become

If you want your home to help you grow, you'll need a vision for who you want to become.

Who doesn't love a good joy ride? Meandering and wandering around. Sometimes you find yourself in interesting places. It can be an important way to cultivate a spirit of adventure and curiosity.

Something that seemed destination-less had a more abstract goal.

This is the same with designing your homelife to support who you want to become.

Here's what it looks like to envision who you want to become using the be-do-have framework to reflect:

Be:• What do you want your character to look like? (Courageous, kind, insightful?)• What values do you want to embody? (Love, respect, compassion, tenacity?)

Do:• What do you want to do professionally, in your free time, or with people?• What kind of attitude do you want to have as you do what you do?

Have:• What do you hope to have in your life? (Relationships, property, opportunities, etc.)

By answering these questions, you'll have a good starting point for envisioning who you want to become.

3. Design homelife to support your growth

Now you've noticed yourself at home, envisioned who you want to become, and now it's time to adjust your homelife to help you grow toward that goal!

Let's apply a classic design framework, the Double Diamond:

Source: Michael Gearon on Medium

Let's say you've noticed that you know you want to become a more courageous person, but you notice that you're uninspired & limited to do so at home.

Go through each step of the double diamond, being as specific as possible.

Discover

You already noticed a gap between you now and the courageous person you want to become, including (let's say) how your lack of physical care for yourself at home drains your courage.

Define

You decide to focus on the specific connection between the quality of your sleep and your courage, and you see how much more anxious you are when you're underslept.

Develop

So you imagine a number of possibilities for ways to increase your sleep quality for the sake of becoming more courageous:

1. Sleeping with your phone outside of your room.

2. Using earplugs to turn off the nightly city sounds.

3. Passing on extra liquids before bed, especially alcohol.

4. Cutting out your afternoon cup of coffee.

5. Moving the baby to the room down the hall.

Deliver

After settling on just one, you try out earplugs for a month and test to see if you notice any shifts in your courage. If it works after some consistency, great. If not, you can try any number of the other ideas as well.

Does this seem over-complicated? Maybe so, because we all solve problems like this already. Mostly without thinking it through step-by-step like this.

But I hope that you can more firmly see the link between how you are at home and who you want to become by spelling it out.

We covered:

1. Avoiding the pitfalls of over-optimizing and cynicism

2. Seeing yourself at home in terms of inspiration & limitation

3. Envisioning who you want to become using Be-Do-Have

4. Using double diamonds to design a homelife to support your growth

That’s it!

As always, thanks for reading. Hit reply to let me know what you found most helpful this week—I’d love to hear from you!

See you in your inbox next Tuesday. Until then, design your home for your growth!

Matt Barrios

PS: Share this newsletter to help others design a homelife they love.