Love this blog by Brooke Castillo

http://brookecastillo.typepad.com/

http://brookecastillo.com/

Wanting not Having

I’ve recently been doing some work with a design coach on finding out what my “home style” is and how I want my home to be decorated.

It has been a very revealing journey.

Martha Beck is the first person who really taught me that our homes are really metaphors for our lives.  So, of course, it would make sense that I would be redecorating and redesigning.

As part of my homework, I was to find images on the internet and in magazines that I loved and would want for my own home.

I obsessively pulled photos of white kitchens with silver pull hardware.  I ripped out every photo I could find of homes with tons of light, white furniture, crown molding everywhere, and wide planked hardwood floors.

At one point, I had an offer on a house and I spent the day with the contractor creating this dream space in my mind.  My pulse quickens just thinking about how exciting it was.

I later decided not to buy the house.  I do not have a white kitchen or the wide plank hardwood floors (light pine farmhouse style is my favorite).  But I still want them.  Really really want them.

As I have watched myself go through this process, I have noticed something very interesting.  The wanting FEELS GOOD.

I love looking through my binder of images. I love showing it to my friends.  I love rubbing my hand over subway tile back splash in a store.  It makes me SO HAPPY.

On the other hand, when my kids see something they want at Target and they don’t have it yet (and I won’t buy it for them), they seem to be in physical pain about it.  Their wanting seems to actually hurt them.

So I sit here in my house with cherry wood  cabinets and narrow plank hardwood floors and I wonder. . .

How can I teach my children to love their own wanting?  To have their wanting feel good-even when they don’t have it yet?

How can I teach my clients to notice and love their wanting?  Wanting thinness can feel good and exciting instead of dreadful and burdensome.  Wanting and not having dessert can feel good-not painful.

That is my work as I see it today.

My wanting right now is  to teach my kids and my clients that wanting can feel good.

And wanting that does feel very good to me.