How your home can help you find your purpose

I've moved to 27 different homes in my life. One of the moves I remember most clearly was at 19 — I left California and came to Israel on instinct. I had no idea I'd still be here almost 30 years later, but leaving was easy because I felt then as I still do now that it was the right call.

Career is harder. And I think most of us know that particular kind of restlessness, the one that sits quietly underneath a perfectly functional life, asking: is this it? Is this the thing I'm meant to be doing?

I have a BA in English Literature, an MA in Creative Writing, and I've spent the past 22 years working as a copywriter in Israel's startup world. I knew how to do it, but I didn't know where it was going.

Nothing shifted until I found feng shui, and something which had been restless for years simply settled. Almost instantly. I hadn't arrived anywhere, but I finally knew where I was going. Reading spaces, helping people create homes that support the lives they actually want, exploring that work in this newsletter each week. That's my destination.

This week's Torah portion, Bamidbar, translates as "In the Wilderness," and it names this exactly. The Israelites have already left Egypt and slavery is behind them. Yet Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out something counterintuitive: the journey from is always easier than the journey to. Leaving is propelled by urgency. The harder question comes after: what am I actually building toward?

Once you know where you're going, the difference between opportunities and distractions becomes very clear. It's getting harder and harder to create the conditions for clarity that comes from getting still enough to perceive divine guidance. Feng shui gives us practical tools to design an environment that supports exactly this, right inside our homes.

Symbolic items placed with intention in my entrance and gua 1

GUA 1, THE CAREER AND LIFE JOURNEY AREA

In BTB feng shui, the bagua is a map of nine energy areas overlaid on your home. Gua 1 governs your career and life path. Not just your job title, but the deeper question of direction and purpose. It sits at the bottom center of the bagua, which means in many homes it either overlaps with or sits very close to the Mouth of Chi or the main entrance, the point through which all energy enters.

This means your front door area is often doing double duty. It's where chi arrives, and it can also be where your sense of life direction lives. What you place there, intentionally or not, is what greets you every single time you come home.

In my entrance I have a picture of a woman in a kimono, a metal frog with red-painted eyes (symbolizes opportunity), a Jewish blessing on the Tree of Life, and Tibetan prayer flags. Together they form a single layered statement: this is a home that belongs to an emerging feng shui practitioner, living inside the question of what connects all forms of ancient wisdom. A large mirror leaning against the wall reflects all of it.

That mirror isn't decorative. In feng shui, mirrors often serve to double what they reflect. Place an intention in your Mouth of Chi and a mirror amplifies it back to you every time you walk through the door.

If your entrance is a powerful daily reminder system, what is it currently reminding you of?

The 7-Day Experiment

You don't need a fully formed vision. That's actually the point, setting up the intention is part of how you find and clarify the path. This week, look at your entrance as if you're seeing it for the first time. What does it say about who lives here and where they're headed? Stop for a moment after you walk through the door and notice: is that a feeling of arrival, or just the end of being somewhere else?

Identify one destination thread: a professional direction, a creative calling, a value you want to live by. Write it down in one sentence and place it in Gua 1, ideally in red ink or inside a red envelope. Find one object or image already in your home that reflects that thread and place it near your entrance with intention. And if you have a mirror in your entrance, remember that it doubles what it reflects. Make sure what it's reflecting is worth amplifying.

Closing Insight

"Remember your destination," wrote Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. "This will help you distinguish between an opportunity to be seized and a temptation to be resisted."

Make space for knowing where you're going.