If you’re in the process of redesigning your home, it may seem the most natural thing in the world to look around for inspiration. Whether it’s via the web or interior design magazines, or friends’ homes – we’re all influenced by external factors and ideas, some of which we like, and some of which we know we’d like to avoid.

Before you know it, you’re out there looking to buy a new kitchen or bathroom suite, or to buy cheap oak furniture online or whatever else has popped into your head lately.

The trouble with this kind of approach, however, is that we all have different moods depending on a whole range of factors from financial success or setbacks, to our hormones to the weather or the season we’re in.

How many times have you been on vacation, for example, and thought to yourself “wouldn’t it be wonderful to live here, living this kind of lifestyle?” before going somewhere entirely different and thinking the same again?

Many of the troubles of the modern life are caused by too much noise and too may competing external influences. And the march of modern technology and communication simply makes this worse.

It’s a far better approach to look within yourself first. The way to do this is to use a few meditative techniques of clearing your mind of all extraneous factors then gradually trying to build a picture of your perfect internal home environment. You may be surprised at just how difficult this is at first, but persevere. When irrelevant thoughts about other aspects of life inevitably come into your head, simply accept them, then dismiss them and return to your interior design thoughts free of other factors.

In this way, you should get gradually closer to the ideal home environment for what is truly you – then look for ideas that fit neatly with your ideal; see what’s really do-able in other words. What’s out there for the bedroom or living room furniture, for example, that fits with the mental picture you built?