How To Love Your "Ugly" House

Hi there!

Let's begin by taking an intentional breath together,

Closing your eyes if you feel comfortable,

Inhaling deeply,

And exhaling.

And one more time inhaling,

Filling the stomach with air,

And exhaling,

Pulling the stomach back towards the spine.

Beautiful.

So today in this video I want to show you how I have started to love my so-called ugly kitchen.

My dated kitchen,

My kitchen that definitely doesn't pop out of your,

You know,

HGTV or if it is on HGTV it's probably the before of before everyone like takes the sledgehammer to it.

But I want to show you how I've started to really cultivate a love and a respect for my kitchen and I think this will help you as well if you are in,

You know,

Whether it's your kitchen,

Your bathroom,

Your whole house maybe that you just decided you just can't,

You want it to look beautiful and it just never does,

I think if you take these tips you're gonna really feel a different relationship with your home or your room or your kitchen.

So if you've ever walked into a brand new home or you went to your friend's house or your neighbors or your aunt's and it's just it's just this gorgeous thing or you see it on the TV and you're like wow why can't I have that?

What is wrong?

Why can't I have this?

And you come home and everything just looks worse like you may not liked it before you you saw this beautiful house but everything looks ten times worse once you compare it to that and what's happening is your energy is being sucked away and once it's sucked away it's being replaced with this negative,

This heavy,

This angry,

This frustrated restricted bad energy and then that energy is being put into your home or in this case into your kitchen right?

So if you're like me this is this is what I've done.

I'd walk into my kitchen every morning and I would be so dark in here.

Why would anyone put the kitchen on the north-facing side of the house?

Never gets any light.

I'll never be able to grow any herbs in here because there's never any sunlight.

It's so dark and disgusting and terrible and the cabinets are old and the counters are old and I hate everything about it and there's the refrigerators in the middle of the room and I just keep going right?

I'm making my coffee and I'm just saying I'm opening my drawers and I'm like banging them because it's just what I don't care.

I don't really care right?

I went through all this work of trying to find someone to renovate it.

I went through Lowe's catalogs and Home Depot catalogs and okay I want this I want this I want this I want all these things I want this new all things new I want a new flooring I want new cabinets I want new counters and let's be honest it's expensive it's expensive and I also realized I was spending all this money and I was getting like the cheapest lowest cost thing so I wasn't really happy anyway and I sat there and I thought to myself okay I'm gonna spend this money and I'm gonna get this kitchen that I don't even want and what I'm gonna feel exactly the same because I'm gonna say the same thing when I walk into the kitchen I'm gonna find what I don't like about it and what happens is the kitchen whether you believe in the physics energy whatever this is how I felt so take it or leave it that's totally up to you but the kitchen can take on that energy because what happens is it feels your anger it feels your frustration it feels your disgust it sucks it in right so each time you walk back into the kitchen it gives it back to you it gives you it shows you back this disgust that you gave it right so it's just this self-propelling going on going forward of disgust of anger because you're just giving it back it's a mirror right so how can you break this cycle how can you love your ugly kitchen well first foremost you got to stop calling it ugly right what are different words for ugly charming character rustic cute simple there are other words you can use and you can find them you know you can and if you say you can't if you say well you haven't seen my kitchen ask you just dig a little deeper because there is something beautiful if if nothing else you have a kitchen right what about all the people in the world you said you have to cook on fires you have a kitchen so can we at least pull that back and say yes I can be grateful for it because it is it's something right it's something okay so that's so step number one is just that it's finding the things that you can be grateful for whether that's you're grateful that you have a dishwasher a disposal a fridge a stove you're grateful that you have running water right you're grateful that you do have the space that you do to cook maybe it's not as much as you want but you're grateful that you have cabinets to hold all your things you got to really get down to it and realize what it is that you can be grateful for because gratitude is going to lift you out of this it's going to lift you out of this and your kitchen will feel it your kitchen will feel it it will feel that you'll be starting to at the very least if you just become neutral right so you don't throw the disgust to it so step number two is start to clean it with love so I actually love cleaning certain things but I would take this whole new approach when I was trying to cultivate this love for my kitchen and I would clean it very very gently right like I was bathing a baby you know you don't want to go too hard you don't want to scrub you don't want to fling I would you know get my water nice and warm and my soap or whatever I have and I would wipe down the cabinets I would wipe down the counters I would get on my hands and knees and wipe down the floors and I'm not doing it with anger I'm not doing it with disgust I'm not even doing it with I hate having to clean the kitchen right because your home your home can feel this yeah you can feel this if you're always upset about having to clean things it's part of life isn't it and of course we can work to maybe you know our partners need to help or our family our kids need to pitch in putting that all aside you're doing it anyway you might as well try to enjoy it you might as well make it something that it's putting more love into the air rather than bringing you down right so even if you don't believe in the hole your kitchen can feel it you're feeling it right so the very least you can do is help yourself by cleaning with love maybe you have like some essential oils maybe some lemon or some lavender maybe you just light a candle while you're cleaning and just allow it to be an experience of it to be a token an action of your love right your gratitude thank you kitchen for being this place where I can make food for my family for myself where I can find nutrients thank you this can be an expression of love if you choose to make it one and you can make this even a ritual too so sometimes I will like on the weekends I will decide okay I'm gonna do like a real rub down of the kitchen we have white we have white cabinets that have been painted so they really get the like finger dirt on them so then you wipe down so every Saturday or Sunday I'll wipe down the cabinets I'll wipe down I'll move all the things that are on the counter and like wipe underneath them and yeah I'll make this a ritual and I'll light the candle with an intention right so I'm not just lighting it for it smells but I'm saying okay I want this to feel like a home I want this to feel loving I want this to be a place where I feel joy when I walk in right and I'll do that and I'll make it I'll make it a ritual so it's not just a one-time thing but I do think if you make your very first time that you do this with love like extra epic whether maybe you go out and buy flowers or you pick them or you do something that really helps you seal in that you're you're gonna try to be different with with your kitchen and maybe it's something that you you purchase or something that's in a different room like a vase or something that brings you joy and you decide okay I'm gonna put it in the kitchen so that each and every time I walk in I feel joy I feel that joy and the joy is radiated from me so whatever that is for you but just trying to make this a ritual that will what rituals do is not only do they create like a habit but they help your brain cement in that like okay we're gonna think new thoughts now we're doing these actions and we're moving the body to create within the body a muscle memory okay when I walk into my kitchen do I tense up and say oh or do I feel relaxed and I smell a beautiful candle and I see this beautiful vase of flowers and I just feel joy right and you can feel that I think also you know I don't know what step we're on but another tip is recognizing every single time you see an Instagram photo you whenever you see you know HGTV recognizing that this is specifically trying to make you hate what you have this marketing this ad even this Instagram post or even like on reddit you know like that our cozy places you don't ever feel cozy you feel jealous because they have this beautiful spot right you don't ever feel oh wow that's so nice for them you feel angry because someone's showing off and you don't have something right so you're creating this like oh why don't I have that I'm so scarce and lacking but you do have something beautiful right you have your beautiful kitchen and it's beautiful if you choose to think that so definitely remember that this can take time it can take time to have new thoughts to get those new grooves in place you've probably harbored a lot of angry negative energy so far and it's it's still in your kitchen it's in your brain so just be gentle with yourself when you notice yourself saying something maybe you don't like be like don't judge it don't be like oh see on you don't know no bad bad bad you just say oh oh I think I want to think something different you know like you walk in it's morning and you just can't haven't had your coffee and you're like oh and you right you're like oh wait actually and you look around and you're like I'm grateful that I have a stove to cook my oatmeal on right even if you're not like 100% there this is starting to get you into a new rhythm into a new muscle memory that when you walk into your kitchen you feel joy you feel gratitude and this can be again used in any part of your room it can be used in your whole house if you need to do a whole house ritual of you know loving loving your house and loving loving where you're at right it's it's really about acceptance accepting where you're at and and loving that right so thank you for watching this video thank you for taking an intentional breath with me I'll see you in the next video