My place: the energy of your home

The neighborhood we live in and the house in which we wake up every morning... You may see this as everyday magic or simply as common sense, but our life, energy and vitality depend greatly on whether we live at "our place". That is why we should afford great care and attention when choosing a place to live.

In the past 10 years Kyiv has become engulfed by the stream of new development that springs up like mushrooms in violation of all sanitary, construction and legal norms in the book, but our compatriots frequently prefer buying an apartment with clean walls to a pre-revolution era building at Podil. For those who often completely irrationally (our mind comes up with rational arguments after the decision has been made) have a thing for new buildings, it is important to build something of their own, to leave their trace in history and not to overlap with that of prior owners and their story, often called spirits, atmosphere or energy.

Others, on the contrary, love buildings "with history" and are attracted by the Patriarch Ponds, Golden Gate, Ostrozhenka or Green Park neighborhood – depending on the tastes and financial standing. Cities and houses, especially those "with history" have their own character, spirit, and, in some ways, their own fate, which is passed down to new and new generations of homeowners. By way of illustration, it so happened historically that creative intelligentsia resides (or strives to reside) in the area of Andriyivskyi Descent and the Golden Gate, while rich businessmen prefer Pechersk hills and Ostrozhenka. The history of the place does matter, and we cannot underestimate its influence on the people who live there, on how they sleep at night, and, of course, its great impact on real, not ephemeral, real estate prices in the neighborhood. If the world around was linearly rational, the price of apartments in Babyn Yar neighborhood would have been higher.

When choosing a new apartment, be it one to live in or to let, take a breath and feel how you like it, whether you belong there or not – I think that even the worst of skeptics and rationalizers will agree that it is possible to feel whether the space suits us or not. Don't discard your intuition, even if the apartment that "doesn't feel right" is well located and connected. If we live in an apartment or neighborhood that we don't like, it will eat up our energy and become an additional source of irritation every day.

Remember – you are not a tree, you can "uproot" yourself at any moment and move to a place you will feel happy to come back to every night.

Let us speak about a smaller circle now – about our home. Is there anything in your apartment that irritates you and weighs you down? Can you do something about it? The list of things that "eat us up" in our own homes every day is very long – i.e. the last piece of wallpaper that we need to hang or the skirting board that we haven't managed to install in three years and keep stumbling upon every day. These are also our chipped cups instead of the ones we'd like to have. This is a bad mattress, which we don't replace because "it is enough for a rented apartment". These are our ugly slippers or dirty windows. It is important to understand that our "sore spots" are very individual – some of us lead a very comfortable life not bothered by the dust on furniture, while others cannot sleep knowing that the socks in the drawer do not match. Listen to yourself and be as honest as possible about your "boiling" points. If something bothers you, try to do something about it. You spend much more time thinking about a broken socket, then it takes to call an electrician to fix it. We normally have more than one or two "tails" like that – and all them "eat us up" piece by piece every day. Obviously, not everything can be addressed at once – yet, even having a list of tasks and a tentative plan for competing them will make you feel much better.