Every week I sit here and tell you that design matters most and that if you want to make the most of your home, be it castle or cottage, you should try to make it a custom home. But if you really take it to heart, how do you go about creating something truly unique and original? How do you find your voice? There are only so many materials available with which to build. The real world is full of rules and codes limiting what you can do and how you’re allowed to do it. There are ten thousand home improvement magazine articles and websites and TV shows but it doesn’t take long to realize that most of them look pretty much all the same.

I feel you. It’s frustrating when you think about it. We’ve all been told from birth that we could be anything we want to be, do anything we want to do. And we weren’t just told we could, we were told we should. That’s a lot of pressure. And now here I am putting even more pressure on you by telling you your originality needs to extend into where you live? That’s tough. Especially in a world that’s just a full of more derivative formulas than ever. And because we now all have access to what everyone is doing everywhere and at every moment the thought of finding a recipe for originality that hasn’t already been been baked and rebaked ten thousand times before seems utterly impossible.

So let me take a little pressure off you. Artists have struggled with these same questions from the beginning of time. The long and the short of it is this … Originality is never about materials or techniques or styles. It’s never about who’s done it before or how many times it’s been done before. In the art world we all mercilessly beg, borrow and steal from one another. As Mark Twain once said … “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We take old ideas and put them into a kaleidoscope that we keep turning and making new combinations; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”

Truly custom is never about being utterly original. Truly custom is always and only about one thing … just being who you are. It doesn’t matter if that’s not what someone else thinks you should be. It only matters that it’s who you want to be.

C.S. Lewis put it this way “… no-one who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”

And what got me thinking about all this in the first place was a wonderful little film called “Vengeance” by B.J. Novak (it’s a gem, you should give it a look). In it you’ll find these life-changing lines … “If I came here for advice about finding my voice in my writing, what would you tell me? Well, I’d probably say that nobody writes anything. All we do is translate. So if you ever get stuck and don’t know what to say. Just listen. Even to the silences. Listen as hard as you can to the world around you and repeat back what you hear. That translation, that’s your voice.”

I agree wholeheartedly. No material or style or technique will ever be truly original. It’s all been done before. It’s you that hasn’t been done before. It’s how the world gets translated through you. That’s your voice. You don’t have to go find something original. You’re it. Once you’ve decided you like yourself enough to just do you, that’s when you’ll shine like the original you are. And that’s when you’ll be ready to build yourself a beautiful life