Transcripts
1. Introduction: When we are feeling
stressed and overwhelmed, it's hard to believe that our environment can have
something to do with it. But if we really think about it, the type of space that we
are in and the quality of its design often influences how we feel and how we behave. Think about how you feel in a Gothic church versus how
you feel in the supermarket, or how careful and
on guard you walk in a dimly lit empty alley versus a well-lit
shopping street. And so it comes as no surprise
that our homes too can have an influence on our overall
feelings and behavior. We can design them to help
us feel calm and relaxed, or we can inadvertently
design our homes to add more stress and overwhelm
to our daily lives. Hi. My name is Ana Marcu, and I'm a licensed architect. In this class, I want to teach you a couple of ideas
that can help you understand how your environment can impact your
well-being and give you a few design tips
that will help you create a calming and
relaxing environment. Each of the lessons
in this class is divided in roughly two parts. In one part, I talk about
a piece of research that demonstrates how humans react to a specific aspect
of our environment. In the second part, I talk about various home design
tips that can help you implement the
idea in your home. Now, why do I choose
to talk about science and not about the
latest design trends? Because trends fade and the purpose of this
class is for you to learn some evergreen concepts that you can apply today, a decade from now, or 50 years from now. No matter what trends
will be in style, you'll always be
able to select with confidence the right items
that will make you feel calm. That way, you will not
base your home design on external inputs like
marketing campaigns and glossy magazines, but on internal inputs like
how you want to feel at home. If you like this class and want to expand your
knowledge on the topic, there are two more classes
that I think you would love. One is called:" A Hygge Home", where I speak about the
Danish design principles for coziness and comfort. The other is "Home Interior
Design for Better Habits", where I explain more
ways in which you can design your environment
to support good habits. I hope you are really
excited to take this class. Are you ready? Let's
start the class.
2. Order: In this lesson, I would like to talk about how the order of your environment can
have an impact on how overwhelmed you feel and
your ability to relax. I also want to give you
a few tips about how to achieve that with
your home design. I'm going to start
with a personal story. I don't know about
you, but I'm one of those people who when dealing
with a difficult problem, I will start rearranging or
cleaning the room I'm in. This happens of course when
I'm at home and not in other people's houses,
that would be weird. But if I'm at home and I
have a difficult problem, I will often start
with cleaning or rearranging my environment
in an orderly fashion. I've always wondered why this happened and
why I felt that doing this somehow helps me
even though the two problems, the one I'm dealing with and the level of orderliness of my room are kind of unrelated.
Or are they related? It turns out that
there are a number of research articles
on the topic, but particularly one from
Princeton University, demonstrates that
clutter can make it difficult to focus on
any particular task. That when you are looking at a multitude of objects who are not related to each other
or to any particular task, it becomes harder to focus and complete
projects efficiently. What I was not realizing, was that by ordering
my environment, I was reducing the overwhelm, giving myself a better chance to focus on the problem at hand. How can you create more order
in your environment to give yourself the best chance to feel calm and relaxed at home. There are many ways to do that, and I've spoken about
some of them in my class, minimalist versus
maximalist interior design. Like decluttering, how
to work with color, density, variety, with shape, and so many other things. But there I refer mostly
to decor elements, which to me is like the
frosting of the cake. Today I want to go
a layer deeper in this cake and speak about
"Spatial fragmentation". What do I mean by that? I mean that the more
items you bring into a space and the more misaligned
they are with each other, the more likely it is that the space will start
looking cluttered faster. Our homes and our surfaces are still going to get filled
with everyday items, but picking and arranging the furniture a certain
way can make it easier or harder for a space to become cluttered
and overwhelming. Let me give you some examples
and show you what I mean. Let's look at these two photos. In the photo on the left, you have two open shelf
units of different sizes. One is taller and
one is shorter. They do not cover the
entire surface of the wall, and so it's easy to
identify them as two items separated from the
wall and from each other. The two shelf units also provide a lot of surface which is
filled with many items. All the different objects make this space feel very noisy. How do we reduce this noisiness? If we look at the
photo on the right, the wardrobes are from wall
to wall and floor to ceiling, which tricks our mind into thinking that these
are not two objects, a wall and a wardrobe,
but one object. Also the objects in
the wardrobe are behind closed doors
not on display, which makes the
space look cleaner, simpler, easier to tidy up. Now, if you bring in new
everyday items in these spaces, the space on the left is going
to look cluttered quicker, but the one on the right
will still look orderly, because the number of items in this space is low to begin with. You'll have to bring in
the entire content of your garage before the space will start looking cluttered. But what if we don't have doors? Can we still make the
space look orderly? The answer is yes. A trick architects
and designers use is to cover the entire wall from floor to ceiling and side-to-side with the
shelves of a library. That way the library looks
almost like a wallpaper. It makes the wall
look like one item. Yes, the shelves can
be filled with items, but because they are in between these dominant framework
of the shelves, it still creates
the impression of a single element and
that is very soothing. What we also see in the photo on the right is the merger of
two pieces of furniture, a library and a bed. Now, they could have
stayed separate and continue to fragment the
room in many surfaces, but by unifying them, a lot more empty surface
is left in the room. When one or more pieces of furniture merge with the walls, the space in the middle
is a lot less fragmented. Having a lot of empty surface is crucial for making a
space feel uncluttered, which is why the more pieces of furniture you can join together, the simpler and cleaner
it will start looking. For example, on the
left side you see the kitchen island is connected
to the kitchen bench, creating a compact element in
the middle of the kitchen. On the right side
you see a table, a couch, a small library, all merged together into a window element that is
as long as the window. When pieces of
furniture are merged together in a compact element, it creates a strong
order in the room, and it frees the rest
of the space up. Even if there were a lot of personal items left everywhere, it will still be very hard
to call the place untidy, because of this dominant element parallel with the window. Finally, a bedroom example where the headboard is merged
with side tables. In the case of the
right example, it is also merged
with the floor. The flower pot and
the lighting elements are also merged into
the side tables. A headboard, a bed, and two side tables
fragment the space in five, but if you unify them, there is a simplification
of the space. There's order. Now, imagine leaving around personal
items like a bathrobe, slippers maybe a dress, it still looks very
uncluttered because of the simplicity and
the orderliness of the space to begin with. What you also see these
bedrooms is the use of symmetry and a
strong horizontality, which are also two elements that generally make a
space feel calm. Because most of the
animals are symmetrical, humans have evolved
to be very attuned to symmetry and to find it soothing when it's
found in space. Symmetrical spaces give
a sense of balance, which is very important when
you are trying to feel calm. Creating wardrobes and libraries over the entire wall surface, merging multiple pieces
of furniture together, as well as symmetry are some ways in which you
can fundamentally shape spaces to make them look simpler and give you an
overall sense of calm.
3. Nature: You've probably heard me say
this a million times by now. But inviting nature in our homes has a massive impact
on our overall well-being with countless
pieces of research demonstrating this coming from
all corners of the world. One interesting piece of research is that
from David Strayer, professor of Cognitive
Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology
at the University of Utah, showing how time spent in nature allows the brain to
rest and restore. particularly three
days in nature, spent without digital devices, acts like the cleaning of
the mental windshield, as he calls it. It helps improve cognitive function and
mental performance. I'm going to leave some
links in the description for you if you want to
know more on the topic. If however, you can't go out in parks as often
as you would like, inviting nature in your home is the next best thing you
can do for yourself. I'd like to offer you two tips on how to invite
nature in your home, but make sure to check
my other classes like "Decorating with Plants" and
"A Hygge Home" for more tips. First, I want to
talk about natural light. Natural light helps us regulate our internal clock and our
mood, not to mention, it helps us generate vitamin
D. Having an abundance of natural light in your home is highly important
for your well-being. What might you do to
maximize natural light? One example for you are the Nordic countries like
Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. These countries have 2-3
hours of daylight per day during the winter months and in the far northern
parts of Norway, there are periods of time where the Sun doesn't rise at all. What tricks do they apply
to capture natural light? What you will see in Danish and Norwegian homes is that the predominant
color is white, white walls, many pieces
of white furniture, and even white floors. That's not to say that
everything is colored in white, but the elements in the home that have the biggest surface should be light-colored to allow for the light
to bounce around. More reflective than the
color white are mirrors, which when placed strategically, can spread more
light in the room. Natural light is also more
able to spread in the room if there aren't that many items in the room, to begin with. Different items may have different colors which
absorbed natural light, making the spaces
that are further away from the
window look darker. This is why minimalism
is so attractive, especially to Nordic countries, because it gives natural light the opportunity to
spread in the room, even on days with just
a few hours of light. Another way to
bring nature in is, of course, to have houseplants. Houseplants look
like they might be doing nothing but
really they're very, very busy cleaning the air
and removing air pollutants. While potted plants aren't a substitute for
getting outside, studies have shown that
adding even just to one plant can help reduce
physical markers of stress. They also give our homes
an overall cozy vibe, which makes them absolutely
wonderful to have around. Plants can also replace art by covering entire surfaces of a wall or the area of a frame with moss becoming
a very popular decor element. Terrariums and
aquariums are also particularly beautiful and relaxing
home decor elements. To recap, maximize
the natural light, and bring in natural plants for an overall sense
of well-being. I hope this lesson was useful. Let me know in the comments
what your favorite tip was and see you in
the next lesson.
4. Round Shapes: In this lesson, I would like to talk about why humans
are attracted to round shapes and give you a few tips about how
to implement them in your home to make it look like a welcoming and
calm environment. Here I would like to
start with a question. Have you ever wondered why
balls are so magnetic, especially to children
and often become toys no matter what their original intended purpose
might have been? It turns out that round
shapes show up as play things for 1,000s of
years in our history. The Mesoamerican
cultures used to play a game with a rubber
ball called Ulama, 1,600 years before Christ making it one of the oldest
sports in the world. Egyptian children were
playing Hula Hoop game with circles made from vines
1,000 years before Christ. Balls aren't just interesting
to human children but other animals
understand balls as play. You show a ball to a dog, a cat, a chimpanzee, a dolphin, a sea lion, and they will naturally
start playing with it. Why don't they
react like that to a cube or a pyramid shaped toy? The answer may lie in
a study made in 2007 which revealed
that when subjects were looking at an
angular object, like a sharp corner
chair for example, the amygdala, the side of the brain that
processes fear, lit up. But when they looked at
the curved version of the same chair, it stayed quiet. This made the scientists speculate that because
sharp objects in our environment represented
potential sources of danger to our ancestors, like thorns, teeth,
branches, and rocks, we have evolved to answer to sharp contours with a
heightened level of caution. But balls have no
edges because of that, round circles and spheres are some of the most
approachable objects. How might you introduce more
round shapes into your home? Some low cost
interventions could be wallpaper displaying soft
organic and round shapes. One could also choose to paint different geometric
and organic shapes like circles and
semi-circles on the walls. You can also replace
your home decor with home decor that is
more organic shaped. A square vase may be
replaced by a round one, a rectangular mirror might be
replaced by a round mirror. You might introduce art in round frames or a couple of
flower pots in the room. You might add a few
playful ottomans instead of armchairs. Particularly pieces
of furniture that are located in the
middle of the room, like coffee tables
and armchairs, are particularly prone
to hurting us if they have sharp edges because
we pass by them a lot. Picking furniture that
is designed with softer, rounder edges has
the power to make us feel more relaxed
and at ease at home. some pieces of furniture
might just need replacing. Look around your apartment: Is there a piece
of furniture you bump your toes into a lot? Or if the idea of bumping
your toe or your shin into a piece of furniture feels like it's
going to hurt a lot, maybe that is one piece of furniture that you
should replace. Of course, homes like
those of Pierre Cardin are the absolute extreme
of softening edges. Not just the internal
walls of the home, but the exterior walls too and windows appear to
have organic shapes. These types of projects
are all around the world, many of which are
highly sustainable, made from local
materials like wood, rammed earth, straw
bale, and clay, positioned halfway or
entirely underground, displaying organic shaped rooms with round windows and arches, organic shaped living
rooms and staircases. These homes have almost
no sharp edges in sight. No doubt such homes offer a womb like atmosphere of
calm and protection. And while, such spaces might not be available for all of us, bringing more organic
shaped decor elements can contribute to an
overall softer look, helping you to turn your home into a truly relaxing
environment. Before we finish, let's recap three ideas
from this class. Soften the sharp edges of furniture with
pillows and textiles, bring organic shaped home decor like round mirrors or ottomans, replace pieces of furniture
that have sharp edges, especially those
placed centrally with furniture with
round corners. We have made it to the
end of the lesson, let me know in the comments what your favorite idea
from this lesson was. See you in the next lesson.
5. Soft and Heated: In this lesson I
would like to talk about how soft and
heated surfaces contribute to our
overall sense of calm and how you might
implement them in your home. I'm going to start
off by talking about this super interesting
piece of research published in the Journal of Consumer Research suggesting
that when we feel sad, anxious or generally find ourselves in a negative
frame of mind, our brains naturally prioritize tactile stimuli
over visual ones. What does this mean? It means that just like small
children look for mommy and her soft and warm embrace
when they hurt themselves, adults continue to look for a soft and warm
tactile stimulation when they are in a
negative frame of mind. Interestingly enough the experiment
participants who were in a positive state of mind were not interested in the
tactile stimulation, but in the visual
type of stimulation. It's fair to say
that happy feelings broaden our mindset
which allow us to expand our relationships and
competencies while negative emotions
narrow our focus and help us deal with
immediate threats. Now that we know this
piece of research about the human mind
under distress, how might we make our
homes nicer to touch? Pay attention to the
textures of your home. Which ones feel
particularly nice to touch and which ones don't? This may not require an
entire room makeover, but a few items
here and there can really help us soothe when
we feel a little distressed. Bring soft textures in
those spaces where you are more likely to be when you
look for a bit of calm. Soft textiles like throws and pillows make the acoustics
of a space warm and gentle by absorbing vibrations and they increase the
overall coziness of a space. Instead of a rug with small
hairs you might pick a shaggy one for your feet to touch first thing
in the morning. You might place a sheepskin for extra softness on a chair. You might increase
the thread count of certain sheets to have an occasional
luxurious experience. Besides the soft touch
the other aspect of the maternal touch
we crave when we are distressed is heat. Covers and pillows make us feel warm but warm objects give us the same tactile
pleasure too. This is why fireplaces
aren't going out of style despite the fact that
we have mastered central heating for a while now. Saunas and hot baths are well known to help people decompress. The intense tactile
stimulation all over our bodies remind us
of a mother's womb, we feel safe and protected. Turning the bath into
a beautiful place and a pleasant ritual always
helps us to relax. Additionally, heated
furniture has also become more and
more sought after. From heated floors and
walls to heated car seat, heated office chairs, living room massage chairs, heated benches for the outdoors, heated love sheets to heated
blankets and pillows. More and more products
incorporating the element of heat
are appearing on the market because
hot surfaces soothe us and they help us
relax and feel calm. To recap incorporate
soft textures and heated objects in
your home in order to help you achieve
a feeling of calm. I hope you enjoy these tips. See you in the next lesson.
6. A habit of calm: In this lesson, I would like to talk about how the
power of habits can connect the room
from our home to a specific emotion
and how to apply this idea in the
context of creating a space that feels calm for you. I'd like to start this
lesson with a story. During the energy
crisis of the 1970s, Dutch researchers started paying close attention to the
energy usage of the country. They found that some
houses would use up to 30 percent less energy than other nearly identical
houses in the area. That seemed highly unusual, and when they looked into what ultimately differentiated
the homes, they discovered that
the reason behind it was the location of
the electrical meter. The houses that use 30 percent less electricity had electrical meters
on the ground floor in the main hallway of their
home and in plain sight while the other houses had electrical meters
in the basement. When their energy
use was easy to see and track, behavior changed. The idea that I
wish to impart with you in this story
is that we often rely on visual cues to
signalise a certain behavior. You probably haven't
thought about it very much, but really think how
different your behavior is on a dark alley versus a well-lit
street full of people. How you behave in church
versus the supermarket. As humans, we have evolved to be tightly interdependent with our environment and rely
on it for all sorts of cues like impending
danger or food sources. These cues are
behavior triggering in us and the more
obvious the cue is, the more likely it is to trigger the behaviour,
which is why we are more likely to do something if the cue is easy to see. If you want to play
guitar more often place the guitar stand in an
easy-to-spot place in your room. If you wanted to
eat more apples, place an apple bowl
on the kitchen table. James Clear writes in
his book, Atomic Habits, "You establish a
particular relationship with the objects on your desk, the items in your
kitchen counter, the things in your bedroom. Our behavior is not defined by the objects
in the environment, but by our relationship to them. Stop thinking about your
environment as filled with objects and start thinking about it as filled
with relationships." It seems, however, that
over time we don't connect the habit
just with one cue, one guitar stand,
one bowl of fruits, but with the location which
the behavior takes place. We associate work
with the office, sports with the gym, eating with the kitchen, watching TV with
the living room. Locations are
behavioral triggering. If we want for any behavior
to become a habit, we need a second agent besides location and that is emotion. We can repeat the
behavior all we want, but if our experience is not generating a positive emotion, it is very unlikely
that it will stick. Many of us have bought some training piece of
equipment which failed to give positive emotions and became the most wonderful coat rack in the middle of
the living room. Emotion is very important. Conversely, any
behavior that has a strong positive
emotion linked to it, will stick with
almost no repetition. If you take these ideas, the power of a place
to trigger a behavior, and the ability of a behavior
to trigger an emotion, you start to understand that we can design spaces that will trigger a specific behavior and will generate a
specific feeling. Also, I will strongly
advise you to link one area to one behavior. When we overlap behaviors
with one location, emotions can be confusing and the design of the room
can be distracting. It's hard to study in
the living room if all your video game
gadges are also there. it's hard to stop working
from home if the couch is the same place where you
relax and send emails. Ideally, we design an area of our home for that
specific habits so that our behavior and emotions would be triggered
with no confusion. Start figuring out what behavior helps you calm down
when you are at home and which room or area of your home could be designed
for this specific purpose. If taking a bath particularly calms you down and
helps you relax, how might you turn your bathroom into a bath-taking haven? Might you heat the
towels or add music or make homemade facial
scrubs for yourself? If you enjoy reading, you might place a big
soft armchair next to your library as
your place to read. In my class 'A Hygge Home", I spoke about a space that is a must in many Danish
homes called" the nook". It might be a small niche in a wall or a wide window sill. It might be just an
extra-large armchair where you can cozy up
with a big blanket, hot cocoa, and a good book
in the colder months. A nook is an area designated to the simple feeling of
being cozy and calm. You might use a big pillow
or an Ottoman chair and a few scented candles to mark the area where
you meditate. Or you might set up a corner
for your yoga practice. Or it might be a
corner where you play music or exercise a hobby. It's important to decorate that space to suit
that specific habit. If it's a music room, you might hand you a few records or the guitar on the wall. If it's a craft room, you might put a pegboard
for your tools on the wall. Whatever habit you pick as being the most relaxing for you, make sure you create an area in your home where
many cues are on display to trigger
that specific habit that is most likely
to help you relax.
7. Better with Time: In this lesson, I
want to talk about the idea that the
items in our home, their perceived value, their
fragility or quality of materials can set us on edge
and make us feel inhibited. I would like to start
with a personal story. I grew up in the 90s in Romania. Back then Romania
was coming out of a very restrictive
communist regime. Homes were decorated simply with handmade doilies and
embroidery art and a lot, and I mean a lot of
porcelain figurines. These porcelain
figurines were like the collectibles of
the 80s and 90s. Housewives were in some sort of silent competition with each other on who can get the most of them in
their living room. While on family visits
with my parents, I would often get bored
by adult conversations. I would start to look
around for things to play with and I would inevitably feel drawn to these figurines. They were the closest thing
to dolls in the room. I'd reach for them if they were located on higher shelves, and I'd want to touch them, maybe play with them. This was often met with a lot of anxiousness and
distress by our host, because they were after
all made of porcelain, which is very fragile and were somewhat hard to
find at the time. I was often told that those
were not play things. I was not allowed to touch them, and in fact, moving in the
room was also not allowed. I remember even back then
in my kid mind thinking, what a terrible room this is. A room in which you cannot play, is a pretty sad room. You can't touch anything and
even moving is forbidden. Why would anymore want to
even be in such a room? The idea that I want to
illustrate with the story, is that the objects we
surround ourselves with can make us feel more
anxious or more relaxed. Our host could
certainly not relax seeing me interested in
her precious home decor. When you are
surrounded by fragile, easy to damage things or things you consider
to be of value, they have to be on guard and neither you nor your
guests can truly relax. In the desire to make our
spaces more beautiful, we might sacrifice our ability
to feel calm by choosing highly fragile objects which would limit our bursts of joy, or opportunity to do a happy
dance around the table. It will also make us more anxious around guests
and their kids. Instead of child
proofing our home, why not strategically
buy items that are hard to break
and look better, not worse with time. For example, a scratch in the wooden table makes it look like it has more character. A scratch on the glass table and you can throw
the whole thing. Brass and weathered copper
also look better over time, but chrome not so much. Linens and cottons are easy to clean and can take
any accidents. Silks and satins require a
lot more attention and care. Velvet develops a soft
worn-in look over time, which makes it a
lot more welcoming. A great example for choosing materials that look
better with time, are Viennese Cafes. The coffee houses in
Vienna are some of the most longstanding in Europe. There are at least nine
coffee houses who pride themselves to be
over 100 years old. Now, when you stand in
a place for that long, it means you have a
lot of customers. You need to think
strategically about the materials you
are going to use. Because renovating often is costly and you want
to have an interior that continues to look good in 10,20,40 years. What
can you do then? You choose very
robust materials. Materials that can take a lot of friction and smoke and dirt. You pick materials that
look better with time and make the place look
cosier rather than dingy. The prime materials
you will find in these cafes are velvet in the imperial color red or
brown covering seating areas. Dark wood for tables
and chairs which used to absorb the
cigarette smoke back in the day when
you could smoke, but can also take
a scratch or two. Brass or copper for lamps
and bar accessories. Everything is easy to maintain and looking
better with time. Now, in 100 years, I believe they have
renovated a few times, but the choice in
materials has not changed because they
are so durable. In conclusion, what I
want to say is that having to be on guard
around your furniture, is a recipe for
stress, not calm. If your furniture feels
fragile and precious, you will feel much
more anxious around it and will hold
yourself and the other is back from
expressing yourself in anyway that might risk
damaging those items. It makes you tense and thinking back of my visiting
experiences as a child, it makes you guests tense. But if you start looking
for inspiration in Viennese cafes and pick
materials that look better, not worse with time, you'll feel more relaxed, more inclined to bring friends over and indulge in
activities that will bring you more joy without the worry of keeping
your furniture intact. Let me know in the comments, what was your favorite takeaway and see you in the next lesson.
8. Fix, Tighten and Repair: In this lesson, I would
like to talk about the power of unfinished
business in our homes, its ability to weigh us down
and rob us from our calm, and give you a few tips
on how to change that. This lesson is a bit of a
spin-off from the lessons "Order" and "A Room for Calm". In the lesson "A Room for Calm", I mentioned how
external cues can stimulate us to
exercise a behavior. Leaving a bowl of apples on
the kitchen table is going to make us more likely to
eat apples in general. However, if the action is not followed by a positive
feeling or we perceive doing
something as being tedious and taxing
on our energy, we might just end up
with a room full of cues and no action on our part. If you left on display an unfinished project
like a piece of art or perhaps different items in your home need fixing but
have remained unfinished, they can make you feel anxious and rob you of your inner calm. A study published in the Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin found that women who described
their living spaces as cluttered or full of unfinished projects were more
likely to be fatigued and depressed than
women who described their homes as restful
and restorative. We often leave things out in the open to remind us to
take care of them. But when we don't get around to take care of them
for a long time, all these things become a silent to-do list
weighing down on us. So look around and
start taking care of all those little or big things that need fixing in your home. You will feel so much better. If the chair is
squeaky and wobbly or the content of your pantry spills out whenever you open it, this is likely to make you anxious and feel
internally agitated. You may realize that your agitation comes from
the items around you. But you might also misattribute the agitation that
you feel in your body to other problems
in your life which might then spiral into
a cycle of rumination. So pick up a set of tools, look around your house and start fixing the broken
and wobbly things. Look for loose doorknobs
and uneven cabinet doors, squeaky chairs, and
rickety cabinet posts. Our home is our foundation, the place where we go to recover and decompress from
a chaotic day. It's the place where we
take care of our wounds and recover from
rejections and setbacks. If this foundation is squeaky
and wobbly, it can really create a feeling of uncertainty and
instability in our life. So fixing things
up is about taking control and making
yourself feel more secure. Besides the shaky
and wobbly things, look for the broken, unattended things as well. Look for unused corners of the room or corners
left in disarray. Unattended corners
of the garden, the broken lights, and worn out cabinets who
need a new layer of paint, or two. Look for the unfinished DIY project you left out and never
got around to finish. The act of fixing your home with your hands can become
an act of creativity. A broken item can be upcycled
and receive a new life. A broken teapot can become a beautiful flower
pot or a lamp. If we look at the
Japanese art of Kintsugi it can become an
even more beautiful teapot. To conclude, a ho,e filled with broken unfinished
projects can turn into a long to-do list
weighing us down. Turning those to-dos into fun creative projects
could help you feel more supported by the items around you and give you an
overall feeling of calm.
9. Class Project: For the class project, I like you to use the
attached workbook and make an exercise of reflection on what
makes you feel calm and how might you bring
those elements in your home? What might you do or practice
in order to feel calm and what corner of your home might you be able
to dedicate to it? As mentioned in the
lesson, The Roof or Calm, you need to train
your mind to connect a certain location
of your home with a certain behavior in
a certain feeling. If the couch is the place
where you watch TV, where you eat, where you send e-mails to your
colleagues at work, then there are too many
behaviors and different feelings overlapping in one area and this is not a good
spot for calm. You have to find
an exclusive spot for your routine for calm. Ideally, it's a room, but it can also be
a corner of a room. If you live in a
very small place, it can be a pillow and a few candles for your
meditation practice. It can be a big armchair
next to the library. It doesn't have to be
big and elaborate, but it should serve
the sole purpose of helping you get to a calm place. Think of how you might
decorate that area, what cues might you place
around to encourage you to turn your calm
practice into a habit. Then practice as often as you can to train your
mind to feel calm. Share your photos and your
process in the class project. Let me know what
you learned about yourself and about your
home in the process.
10. Final Thoughts: [APPLAUSE]
Congratulations, you have made it to the end of the class. I hope you learned
some new things and already feel
inspired to apply them. If you wish to expand
your knowledge even further on this topic, I encourage you to go to my
SkillShare teacher profile, there you will find
more classes on complimentary topics which I
have no doubt you will love. If you're craving even more, I highly recommend that you explore the wealth of
resources available on my website and we think the attached bonus
resources PDF. There you discover more classes, books suggestions and free
complimentary worksheets. Particularly the
worksheets will help you deepen your understanding
of the topics discussed in the class and identify
the changes that will have the biggest impact
on your personal well-being. If you're interested in more
freebies or live classes, I encourage you to sign
up to my newsletter. Each Sunday I send out home
design ideas straight to your inbox all tailored to promote a home that will
help you become happier, healthier, and more creative. You'll be kept in the loop about my monthly Zoom calls
and special events. Plus I have big free resources, book recommendations,
and I'll let you know about upcoming classes. If you liked this class, I would appreciate the review. It tells SkillShare that
you like my class and it encourages other people
to discover my work. Please use the discussion
section to let me know your thoughts and
questions about the class. I'll be happy to help you clarify any concept
you do not understand. Additionally, if you
leave a class project, I will be able to help you with more personalized and
in-depth support to encourage you to share your
home design progress with me. We are at the end. See you in the next class.
Ana Marcu, Home Wellbeing, Licensed architect
