I hope no one ever gets the wrong idea about what I’m constantly pushing forward during our time together. I don’t want your home to consume you. I want it to serve you. I don’t care if it lives up to some arbitrary ever-changing standard. I want it to live up to your standards and I want to give you permission to raise those standards until they are worthy of who you really are when you are being your best self.

I’m well aware of how the home improvement world presents itself in media these days. It’s rather silly really. Voyeuristic, unrealistic, clearly vapidly entertaining on some level, but in the end, largely unhelpful. And equally sad, I know how the design world—with its air of posh sophistication and insatiable lust for the next new thing—is constantly calling you to never be satisfied, and always consume more and more, all in the name of living someone else’s rich and famous life instead of encouraging you to find contentment by discovering YOUR own best life.

Your best life … THAT is what I’m all about. So I’m here every week to address real issues in real homes without taking ourselves too seriously and without all the trumped up drama. And I’m here to promote design. Really really good design. Design is an act of intention, and I want you being intentional with your life. Yes, all sorts of things happen to us that are outside of our control, but in my mind that only underscores the importance of making the most of what we can. And even in those things beyond our control, things tend to work out best for those of us who make the best of the way things work out.

So every week I encourage you to act with intention toward your home, to design your home as one step in the larger journey of becoming intentional at designing your life. To find your True North and set sail with your hand at the wheel.

I’ll share with you one of my all time favorite quotes. One that so deeply resonates with me and has been a compass point in my own life. The great Robert Thurman once said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

I don’t care whether or not you have a luxury home. My dream is for everyone to have a passionately designed custom home to go along with their passionately designed custom life.

So, I’m not here to encourage you to go get more. Honestly, if you’re a middle class American you could get by just fine with far less … but better. Quality over quantity. You deserve better, whether we’re talking about door hinges or sofas or food or relationships. They don’t have to be fancier, just better made, deeper, longer lasting, more meaningful, and more you. That’s what I mean by a custom life.

And you wouldn’t need a custom life if you weren’t such a uniquely individualized person. Maybe you’ve never seen yourself that way. Maybe you’ve never been encouraged to think of yourself that way. But you are. You may not think it and you may not act it but you are one of a kind and what a shame it would be if the world never got to see the real you.

Who cares what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. People like you, who have decided to be intentional with themselves. People who’ve come alive and are ready to get out there and build themselves a truly custom and very beautiful life.