Excerpt: 'The Not So Big Life'

May 1, 2007 — -- Who better to help structure your life than an architect?

Susan Susanka is an architect and designer who was named a "top newsmaker" by Newsweek magazine. Her latest book, "The Not So Big Life," uses the home as a metaphor to discuss more peaceful, centered ways to live life.

Read an Excerpt From 'The Not So Big Life' Below:

Blueprint for a New Way of Living

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. -- RUMI

What Are We Missing?

We are facing an enormous problem in our lives today. It's so big we can hardly see it, and it's right in our face all day, every day. We're all living too big lives, crammed from top to toe with activities, urgencies, and obligations that seem absolute. There's no time to take a breath, no time to look for the source of the problem. We are almost desperate for a solution. If we stop and consider what our lives would be like if things got much faster, we might feel overwhelmed by hopelessness and futility. We just don't have any more to give. We're at the end of our rope. We need to remodel the way we are living, but not in a way that gives us more of the same kinds of space we already have; that would simply create an even bigger life. What we need is a remodeling that allows us to experience what's already here but to experience it differently, so that it delights us rather than drives us crazy.

Your life is a lot like the house you live in. It has some things that you like and some that you find irritating. It has rooms that are used constantly and others that you visit only once in a blue moon. It has features that need frequent maintenance and others that will last for decades without your attention. Almost all of us would engage in some remodeling of our house if we had the time and the money. In an ideal world all the shortcomings of our home would be remodeled to fit the way we'd like to live, with plenty of room for the things we hold most dear.

The real issue is that we want to feel at home both in our houses and in our lives, and we try to do this by tweaking the things we are aware of, the things we assume must be the problem, such as not enough space and not enough time. But some problems are less visible; they're about qualities rather than quantities, so they are more difficult to identify, articulate, and resolve. We can't create more of a sense of home if we don't understand where that feeling comes from. In your house, for example, if you feel upset every time you return home from work because you have to enter through the laundry room, pushing your way past baskets of clothes waiting to be washed, unfolded mounds of sheets and towels, and a miscellaneous trail of kids' coats and boots, you may require an architect to point out to you that yours is not a well-designed entry sequence. It's not the laundry itself that's the problem; it's that you have to pass through it to enter the house.

Our lives are just the same. We think the problem is our job or our boss or our child care arrangement or our spouse, and we keep trying to fix those things, only to find new frustrations popping up once we get free of the offending situation, making it impossible for us to feel at home in our lives. The problem isn't what we think it is. Like the process of identifying that it's the entry sequence that takes you through the laundry and not the laundry itself that's the problem, fixing the problems in our lives involves understanding what underlies these events. What's needed is a dramatic shift in perspective, and architecture and design provide remarkably useful metaphors for helping us to see what that shift might look like.

When you remodel a house, you don't need to change a lot of things in order to shift the character of the house, but you do need to evaluate what isn't working and determine what you would like to have room for but don't. Then you need to compose a good design solution that uses what already exists but modifies it here and there to accommodate the new functions. After that you must develop a thorough set of blueprints that record all the decisions made. And finally, to live the changes, you must build. This last step may seem obvious, but it's actually the easiest to miss. No amount of planning will bring about change. It's the actual implementation that allows things to shift.

In remodeling your life it's the same. You can read all manner of books and dream all manner of dreams, but only when you decide that you're really going to do something differently, and follow through with the implementation of those plans, will things begin to change. You have to start living what you've learned, and not just on Saturday afternoons when you have some spare time. The lessons have to be woven into your everyday life and lived just as reflexively as the acts of washing your hands and brushing your teeth. Solving the problem has two parts: first, we need knowledge in order to see things in a new way; then, we need to integrate what we've learned by being in our lives differently and doing things in a new way.

To accomplish a life remodeling, we need a blueprint, along with instructions for putting the plan into place in our lives. That's what this book offers you, the remodeler. When we're done, the contents of your days will still be quite recognizable to you, but there will be room to do what you've always wanted to do and the freedom to experience more of the potential you know is waiting within you to be revealed and realized. If you engage the steps prescribed, integrating them as suggested, there will be change, and you will experience things differently, and with new vitality.

So how do we get there? Let's take a look at the key ingredients that go into the making of a Not So Big Life. These will serve as a thumbnail sketch for each of the plans we'll develop more fully in the chapters that follow.

one • Developing a Blueprint for a New Way of Living Because we tend to compartmentalize our lives—to see our working world as one thing, our home life as another, and our desire for connection with our inner nature as yet another -- we don't really live in the way we know should be possible.

This compartmentalizing is similar to the way we separate room from room with walls. A house that's full of separate rooms that are connected to one another only by narrow doorways can feel claustrophobic no matter how large the overall square footage. What gives a sense of space is the extent of the connecting views between rooms. The more you can see of an adjacent room, by opening up a wall with an archway or an interior window, the more spacious you'll feel the house to be. In our lives we need to make the same kinds of connections between realms, removing the barriers to flow so that we can feel as alive and whole at work as we do when we are engaged in doing the things we love. What is needed is an integration of what we long for and what we work for. We don't have to sacrifice one for the other. Both can coexist in deeply satisfying harmony if we learn to understand ourselves better from the inside out.

two • Noticing What Inspires You When I first begin working with architectural clients, I ask them to show me pictures from magazines or from other houses they know that delight them, as well as their favorite places in their own house. These are the features that will make them look forward to returning home each day, so they are really important to a sense of well-being and a sense of home. For example, I remember one woman, a mother of three active boys, showing me a picture of a small alcove off a family room, with a comfortable wingback chair positioned to look out across the vista of prairie beyond. When I asked her what in particular she was responding to in the photograph, she told me that it was the promise of a time when she could do nothing more than sit and look, without any obligations, and without her to-do list nagging at her. The picture captured a quality of being that she was missing in her life. Such a place, when designed into her remodeled home, would inspire her to find this kind of time for herself.Another client, a man in his late fifties who was the CEO of a midsize manufacturing company, showed me a dog-eared photograph of his grandmother's summer cabin—a place where he'd spent many happy sun-drenched months as a child. For him, the character of the structure, a simple clapboard house with no frills or embellishments, spoke to him of the calmness and ease he had felt during those summers. He wanted to replicate the form in his new home to remind him of that simplicity, even when the events in his life seemed anything but simple.

We can use this same approach in our lives by identifying the activities and engagements that have made us feel most alive. Almost anything can provide raw material for inspiration and for an expansion of who we take ourselves to be. All we need to do is recognize the places where we are most susceptible to their showing up and build into our regular lives the elements to support them, just as an architect builds in places that make you feel at home in your remodeled house.

three • Identifying What Isn't Working Once my new clients have shown me what inspires them, I'll ask them to show me what isn't working in their existing home. This is where they'll take me from room to room, pointing out the problem areas. Often they'll refer to the awkward configuration of work surfaces in the kitchen, for example, and the lack of room for an island where others can sit while food is being prepared; but they won't realize that the kitchen's isolation from the main living area is at least as big a problem as any of the smaller issues they've enumerated. An architect's job is to look beyond the obvious, beyond the stated problems, to the larger but often hidden issues underlying the overall configuration of the house.

Similarly, in our lives we can readily point to the things we'd like to have time for, and we can rattle off a list of ways to do more efficiently what we have to do, so we can theoretically find time for the fun stuff; but, like the kitchen's isolation, we can't see that the real problem is not a lack of time but how we engage time in general. We think the problem is the way we're sequencing or managing what we're doing, when in fact it's the way we engage the doing itself. Like the architect for the kitchen remodeling, I'll be showing you some ways to look at things differently so that you can recognize the real obstacles to living a meaningful life.

four • Removing the Clutter Almost every remodeling client I've worked with has had at least a handful of secret stashes of clutter. They're not always obvious on first inspection, but dig a little—open a closet, perhaps, or look under the bed—and you'll find all sorts of old stuff that's no longer useful and now just takes up space and gathers dust bunnies. Most of these clients also have a few more apparent piles of unused detritus taking up space and making it difficult to get around while giving the impression that there's no room for anything new. In a house remodeling, these out-in-the-open piles are easy targets for removal in order to make the house feel bigger. But to remodel successfully, you also need to identify and sort through the hidden piles to make room for what's really supposed to go into those closets and drawers—the stuff that's still useful and that plays an active role in present-day living.

In our lives we tend to see the frustrations with our jobs or our mates, but we can't see that the reasons we're frustrated with them emerge not from them but from some old conditionings from our childhood and early adulthood—patterns that might have served us once but are no longer useful. These are the life equivalents of the hidden stashes under the bed or the pile of miscellaneous papers on the kitchen counter. Old patterns keep you locked into the way things have always been, unable to imagine what a small amount of remodeling can do. Here we'll be engaging a little psychology and a significant amount of self-observation. You'll discover that when you are given the right tools to work with, the materials for the remodeling of your life are delivered right to your doorstep every day.

five • Listening to Your Dreams With my clients' lists of likes and dislikes clearly in mind, I'll ask them to tell me more about what they long for. I tell them not to worry for the time being about whether they can afford these things. If I am to help them make their existing house into their dream home, I need to listen to everything they are willing to tell me about their true longings. It's not that they will be able to build exactly what their dreams suggest, but with a little interpretation I may be able to design some features they'd never imagined possible on their budget.

For example, one client told me that in her dream house she would love to have a library, but she knew this was out of the question. Yet as I worked on the design, I realized that the wide hallway at the top of the stairs on the second floor could easily be lined with bookshelves, turning a space that was otherwise just for circulation into an ideal place for book storage. She was, of course, delighted. Had she never told me of her dream, the idea would never have occurred to me.

The same thing is true in our lives. If we tune out our dreams because we don't think they're possible, there's no chance they'll ever come into being because we won't be listening. Here I'm talking not only about the dreams we have for our waking lives but also about the dreams from the realm of sleep. Whether or not you believe that dreams have anything to offer you, in a Not So Big Life you start to see that everything that enters your life contains meaning. They're like signposts directing you in the process of waking yourself up more fully to what's right in front of you.

six • Learning to See Through the Obstacles

One of the biggest challenges for any architect working with remodeling clients is helping them envisage what is being proposed. I'll often use models, hand-drawn sketches, or computer-generated perspectives and animations to help show how the house is going to look in its newly remodeled state. But learning to visualize the possibilities is usually an entirely new skill for the home owners, who are used to seeing their house the way it is right now. Imagining what it will look and feel like when a wall is removed or when the kitchen is relocated to the dining room's current position can test the visualization skills of even the most dedicated client. There are some tricks that can help the process, though, and when these are clearly communicated, it's possible to get a sense of the remodeled space long before the construction begins.

Looking at things in a new way is an important skill to master in the remodeling of our lives as well. To be able to see through the existing structure to the new shape that will gradually emerge can seem intimidating at first. But all it takes is practice. By learning to see through what appears to be absolute and permanent, you'll discover all sorts of flexibilities you'd never dreamed were possible in your life, and you'll quickly learn to see the potential that your life remodeling holds in store.

seven • Improving the Quality of What You Have

Now comes the creative work of remodeling; crafting a new design out of what is there by looking at the whole house differently. Usually it's not more space you need but increased flow and the reconfiguring of rooms to make you feel comfortable and able to live more the way you'd like. People often ask me how the process of design happens, and there's actually a secret that all artists and creative people know but seldom speak of. The fact is that when architects design or artists paint or composers compose, it isn't they who are doing the work. Their role is to collect all the inspiration and all the facts they need to execute the creative act and then simply get out of the way and let the art happen through them. It sounds mysterious, and in a way it is, but when it occurs, it's the most natural thing in the world.

This is the real key to a Not So Big Life. The creativity in crafting your life remodeling comes when you make all the preparations and then let go. This is how you improve the quality of what you have. You can't manage what you want into existence, but you can be the instrument of its creation by getting all the tools in place and then letting things unfold as they will. This kind of creativity is something we are all capable of, but in order for it to happen we have to be completely engaged in what we are doing, with no planning, thinking, or worrying about the exact form of what we are making.

It is possible to live much of your life in this state of creative flow. With the tools to start weaving this quality into the very fabric of daily existence, whether you are at work or at home, whether you are in pain or filled with joy, you'll find that the meaningfulness you've been looking for shows up of its own accord.

eight • Creating a Place and a Time of Your Own

The people who make the best architectural clients are those who not only want a better house but also recognize that their home is a platform for living and expressing more of who they are becoming. The most powerful step you can take in making your house an integral part of your growth is to identify a space, however small, that is yours to retreat to when you want—a place where you can simply be quietly available to whatever is arising in your awareness at that moment. It can be a place for a hobby or a place to sit and read, as well as a place for contemplation and meditation.

This is where house remodeling and life remodeling intersect, because if you have the place, you are much more likely to make the time to use it. It is there waiting for you, with the promise of a new and more profound relationship with yourself as the reward for engaging in some quiet time to yourself. In many houses the amount of extra space is very limited, but this retreat place need not be available all the time. I've known people who have used a guest bedroom, the corner of the dining room, even a walk-in closet in a pinch.

In the same way, you can designate a time in the design of your life just to be still for a while or to meditate for a few minutes before your kids get up each morning. Or maybe you'll decide to leave work a little earlier so you can take a quiet walk in the park before heading home. Although we often believe there's no time for ourselves in our busy schedules, when we commit to making time, we find it's been there all along. We just haven't seen the possibility before.

Whether you call it quiet time, meditation, or contemplation, the point is to have a period each day when you are not thinking, socializing, or working. What you are really doing when you make a time and place just for you is inviting your inner nature to become a player in your outer life.

nine • Proceeding Through the Construction Process

Whenever I advise clients of what to expect during the construction phase of their remodeling, I explain that you have to take things as they come. You can make all the preparations you want, but sometimes things just don't go the way you thought they would, so you have to hang loose and deal with matters as they arise. Lose your cool or get angry and frustrated by each unexpected wrinkle, and you'll drive yourself and everyone else involved in the project crazy. But if you don't panic and simply deal with what presents itself to be addressed each day, there's no problem.

When it comes to life remodeling, the same advice pertains. Enter the process knowing that there will be some unexpected plot twists and reversals but that you will be equipped with a set of tools that allow you to build with a composure you didn't know was possible. The construction phase of either a house or a life remodeling can be a remarkable time, because you can see the changes taking shape from day to day and begin to recognize the quality and character of the space that is being revealed through the remodeling process. If you focus simply on what is in front of you to do, everything else will take care of itself.

ten • Moving into Your Not So Big Life

Once the building has been completed, it is time to move in and start living in the newly remodeled space. This can be a tremendously exciting time as the home owners discover how their lives shift automatically as a result of the new patterns of living that the remodeling allows. All the things that previously got in the way of flow have been removed, and now the house is much lighter as well, with a feeling of spaciousness that wasn't there before, even though no square footage has been added. Life shifts quite naturally, and every activity or interaction seems more alive because of the character of the new plan.

Our life remodeling offers the same magnitude of shift. By implementing the plans as the remodeler of your own life, you'll find that in only a short period of time the way you are living changes dramatically. There will be more light, more delight, more awareness of the beauty that surrounds you, and there will be more room to breathe and to engage in the things you really care about.

eleven • Maintaining Your Newly Remodeled Life

The final step in any remodeling project is to pass along to the home owners all the manuals and directions for maintenance that will allow them to keep their new home in good working order. In its shiny new clothing, the house looks perfect, but without some long-term care and attention, it can easily slip into a condition of dishevelment not dissimilar to its preremodeled state. So I encourage the home owners to review at least once a year a checklist of mechanisms that require maintenance, as well as the intended functions of the various remodeled rooms and spaces in the house, to make sure they are all still working properly.

With all the effort you are about to expend to remodel your life, it would be a shame if there were no directions to help you keep everything working smoothly throughout the coming decades. So the final step in your life remodeling is the creation of an owner's manual, to be referred to at least once a year, that allows you to perform the routine maintenance that will ensure that the new form your life takes will continue to serve you and will continue to evolve as you shift and change. By making this review process an important feature of your year, as automatic as changing the furnace filter and as enjoyable as the celebration of a birthday or holiday, you'll be ensuring that you continue to live into the potential that you know deep down lies within you.

twelve • Being at Home in Your Life

The last and most delightful part of the whole process is that your life— all of it—will change as you engage your normal everyday existence in the remodeled structure. I can't tell you how often I've heard from clients that they'd never imagined when they began the process that just a small amount of remodeling could have such a huge impact on their lives. I remember one couple who'd lived for many years in a very average ranch house in south Minneapolis. After six months in their remodeled home, they invited me for dinner and told me that they were now living in the house of their dreams—a place they'd always imagined they'd have to build from scratch some time in the distant future, probably after they'd retired. It had never occurred to them that their current house had within it the potential to inspire them daily, as their remodeled home was now doing.

This is what I hope will result for you in your life remodeling. If you engage this material sincerely and intently, you'll discover that all that you need lies within you. You don't have to go to the top of a mountain. You don't have to travel far and wide searching for that certain someone who can touch you with a peacock feather and enlighten you. You don't have to desert your friends and family. You don't even have to get a new job. All you need is your full attention and an attitude of receptivity. Everything else will be delivered to your doorstep at exactly the right moment. So what will life be like when you have enough room for what really matters—with sufficient time and space to express the whole of you? It's a reality that words can only point to, because its richness and vitality are its most essential qualities. But there are some physical attributes that we can recognize from this side of the doorsill.

With respect to what you do in your life currently, you'll be a lot less stressed than you are now, and no matter what is happening—whether it's pleasant or painful, happy or sad—you'll be able to take it as it comes and be in it with grace and presence. Things that in the past would have deeply disturbed you for days you'll deal with on the spot and move them out of your mind. You'll see in a new light people who have bothered you for years. They may do what they've always done (at least until they notice the difference in you), but they won't bother you anymore. And all those e-mails, voice mails, text messages, phone calls, meetings, and so on—you'll be engaging with them on your terms, and you won't be run ragged by them. In short, you'll be the director of your life, and you won't be afraid or on guard or waiting for the other shoe to drop anymore.

By making the time and the place to listen to your inner longings, you'll start to live them. You'll find that you are capable of a lot more creativity than you had thought, and you'll find opportunities falling into your lap that allow you to do what you've always wanted to do—not by your seeking them out but simply because you are ready to engage and able to be present in what you do. You'll find there's a lot more to you than you'd previously imagined. The remodeling will have opened up some room into which those features can now enter and take their place among your existing furnishings.

A quotation from the mountaineer William Hutchison Murray's The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, written in 1951 (often misattributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), says it best:

... the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.

Murray understood that once you are open to the yearnings of your heart and soul, almost everything that shows up in your life can be used to help elucidate the things you are engaging in most passionately. Life prods us, cajoles us, and woos us in all sorts of marvelous ways when we are open to engaging. But you have to be willing to tune in to this channel of communication in order to be fed by it. Once you do, you'll never abandon it again because you'll know unequivocally that this is where the real nutrition resides, where the real wealth of living lies. This is what I mean by the Not So Big Life; it's a life lived wide awake, reading the signs along the way and engaging fully in what moves you.

Preparing Your Not So Big Life Notebook

As you go through this book and engage in the exercises at the end of each chapter, you'll need a place to keep your notes. So at some point in the next day or so, as you are beginning the process of your life remodeling, it's important to find a notebook that can be dedicated to the task of recording what you learn along the way.

Over the years I've used all sorts of notebooks—three-ring binders, blank books, legal pads, computer hard drives. Because the exercises in this book are especially interactive, it may be easiest to use a notebook that allows you to introduce additional pages where they are needed. There are downloadable blank versions of the questionnaires in chapter 3 and chapter 10 on the Not So Big Life website, for example, that you may want to insert. But if your heart is set on a particularly beautiful blank book, go ahead. You can always paste in an extra page or two of paper in a particular section if you need to.

The important thing is that the format of your notebook allow you the greatest degree of creative freedom. You are about to embark on a journey into parts of yourself that you never knew existed, so make sure your notebook is up to the task of receiving all your thoughts and insights, allowing you to keep them together in one place and reasonably well organized.

As you read this book, you may be surprised at some of the undigested experiences from your life that rise to the surface. There will be wonderful memories that you'd forgotten, that will allow you to see how you came to be who you perceive yourself to be today. And there will probably be some sad, embarrassing, or frustrating memories that you'll recall as well. As you explore aspects of your inner world, there may even be things that scare you a little, things that have heretofore been hidden from view—the everyday-life version of the stash of forgotten treasures under the bed.

This is all part of the process of self-discovery. Being able to see that the monsters under the bed are only illusory is an important part of the process. These monsters are the old and no longer useful patterns of behavior that keep us from engaging in the things we long to do. They are what get us stuck in our lives. We're being run by old fears that make us believe there's no room for anything new and stop us from becoming aware of the diversity of experience that's available. If such unexpected deliveries arise as you read, you don't need to do anything with them. Just notice them, write them down if you like, and keep reading. Gradually the tools to process what you are recognizing about yourself will present themselves.

At the end of each chapter, you'll find a major exercise that is important to perform before you proceed to the next chapter. Although this means it will take you longer to read the book, if you don't do these exercises, you'll be accessing only a very small part of what this material has to teach you. Your notebook is for keeping your responses to all the exercises in order, so that you can refer to them later. By preparing your notebook now, you'll be able to keep it with you as you read, so that you can jot down your thoughts and comments as you go. In this way you'll be creating your own companion to share the journey with. Over time you'll also be able to refer to insights you've had in the past in order to help yourself better understand what is becoming clear to you in the moment. Each exercise is self-explanatory and will require from 1 to 10 pages in your notebook, as indicated in the list that follows. But along the way there will be some other things you'll likely want to keep track of, such as strategies, phrases, questions, and behavior flags that can help you in both the life you are living today and the long term—the years to come. As you progress through the book, you'll be customizing your own owner's manual—the tool we'll discuss in chapter 11, toward the end of our journey together, that will allow you to conduct your maintenance checkup each year and ensure that your remodeling is functioning properly. The following list contains the primary sections you'll need along the way. There may be others you'll want to add as well, to personalize your notebook so that it reflects your particular interests and proclivities. But for now use the accompanying list of section dividers to help keep track of the things you'll want to recall later. You don't need to do anything with these pages now, other than label them. I'll explain how to use them as we go, and after a while you'll be able to tailor what you are creating to fit your specific needs and insights.

These are the primary sections you'll need right away (allow at least 5 blank pages per section):

Everyday routines to support my growth

Strategies for engaging my everyday life differently

Phrases to keep in mind

Questions to keep asking myself

Personal behavior flags to watch for

Insights and "aha"s

Issues that seem disturbing to me

Subjects to inquire into

Personal longings and aspirations

General musings

Surprising life events that seem related to what I'm reading

These are the sections you'll need soon for chapter 2:

Significant Objects (allow 1–2 pages)

Significant Moments (allow about 5 pages)

The other chapters will each require around 10 pages, though some you may want to complete more than once over the coming months and years and therefore will require more.

That's all you need to do right now. With your notebook in hand, you are ready to proceed. If some phrase or idea appeals to you or causes you concern, write it down on the appropriate page. As you'll see, everything that seems intriguing, exciting, or disturbing has the ability to help you see yourself more clearly. And through the process of this seeing, you'll discover more and more of your potential, and you'll find more and more tools to help bring that potential into being. When you look back through this notebook in a month or so, you'll be amazed at what you've discovered. Just like a photo album of a vacation, your Not So Big Life Notebook will help you remember where you've been and what you've discovered along the way.

P R I N C I P L E

the process of entering The way you enter a house provides a transition from public to private realms, so it's an incredibly important element in the design of a house. But the entry is not simply a door; it's actually a process— of first seeing the house from the street, then approaching the house along some sort of path, being received by the house as you stand beneath a porch roof perhaps, ringing the doorbell, and finally being greeted and welcomed inside. The entire sequence sets the stage for your experience of the interior of the house. A pleasant, well-designed entry sequence predisposes you to like the house. A discordant or unwelcoming entry sequence convinces you that you don't like the house even before you've set foot through the door.

So it is with the process of entering your inner life. It is important to set the stage. If you simply dive in without any consideration of the path you are taking, perhaps without even bothering to ring the doorbell, you may peer inside quickly, decide it's not for you, and beat a hasty retreat. The experience of entering your own inner world takes some time if it's done properly, but once you've set up the process, each time you enter, you'll be welcomed by the same sense of wholeness and integrity that you set in motion with your first explorations.

Like a well-designed house, a Not So Big Life doesn't shriek "I've arrived" from the sidewalk, but as you step into it, its richness far exceeds any exterior flourishes intended to impress the neighbors. This isn't about the neighbors. This is about receiving yourself. And just as a beautiful sequence of places that leads you to the door of your house can make you feel delighted to return home each day, so the preparations for the journey into your innermost self can endlessly delight you. If you spend the time now to weave them into your life's fabric, they will serve you for the rest of your days. So roll out the welcome mat, and let's begin the process of finding out what's inside.