Why having a clear vision, recognising what we don’t know and seeking the right expertise can help us turn our dreams into reality.
I’ve been wanting to transform my home into something that feels more like an art gallery.
Not a formal gallery where everything is carefully displayed and nobody dares to touch anything.
I want a beautiful, comfortable home filled with art, colour, interesting objects and spaces that make me happy simply by being in them. It’s been a while since I started feeling like my home has the potential to be way more beautiful than it already is.
I imagine a modern, quietly luxurious interior.
White marble, large colourful paintings, beautiful natural materials and a few unexpected details that give the space my personality.
A home that feels elegant without being pretentious. One that feels like yeoyu.
A place where I can enjoy my morning coffee, spend an afternoon reading, entertain friends or simply appreciate a beautiful painting as I walk through the room.
And one of the most important features of this vision is a large stone kitchen island.
I can picture it quite clearly.
A generous island with a beautiful stone surface that becomes the centrepiece of the space.
Something that feels almost sculptural.
A piece that brings together the kitchen, dining and living areas and sets the tone for the rest of the home.
I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of years.
At the beginning of this year, I started visiting stone suppliers, looked at countless photographs and imagined different combinations of stone and cabinetry.
Yet despite knowing what I want, I haven’t committed to the project.
And there’s a reason.
I know what I find beautiful. But I don’t necessarily know how to create it.
When Having a Vision Isn’t Enough
I love beautiful interiors.
I enjoy visiting spaces with interesting architecture, thoughtful design and beautiful materials. This is probably one big reason why I love Paris so much, enough to choose the city as a place where I’d stay for 2 months to celebrate my 25 years of corporate experience, reflect and look forward to the next half of my life.
I notice the way lighting changes a room, how artwork brings personality to a space and how certain combinations of colour and texture create a feeling that’s difficult to describe.
As I’m writing at my desk in my bedroom that faces a balcony with so much greenery, I can already feel the beauty of a quiet Sunday morning.
But appreciating good design and knowing how to execute it are two very different things.
I can walk into a marble showroom and immediately be drawn to a particular slab.
But how do I know whether it will look equally beautiful when installed as a large island in my home?
How will it work with the existing flooring?
Will the stone compete with the colourful artwork I want to collect?
Should the cabinetry be white, warm grey or something more interesting?
Will the island feel elegant and understated, or too dominant?
And how will all these elements look together, rather than individually?
These aren’t questions I feel particularly qualified to answer.
The island is also a significant investment.
It’s not a cushion or a decorative object I can easily replace if I change my mind.
Once the stone is selected, cut and installed, the decision is largely irreversible.
So I’ve hesitated.
Not because I don’t want the island.
But because I haven’t felt confident enough to make the right decisions.
Recognising What We Don’t Know Is Part of Wisdom
I find this interesting because I’m generally quite comfortable making decisions.
I’ve spent many years in a demanding professional environment where decisions often involve uncertainty, competing considerations and significant consequences.
I’m used to evaluating information, weighing risks and moving forward.
But interior styling is not my area of expertise.
And I’ve realised that confidence in one part of life doesn’t automatically translate into confidence in another.
Nor should it.
Just because I’m experienced in making complex professional decisions doesn’t mean I should assume I can make equally good decisions about stone, cabinetry, lighting and spatial design.
Perhaps one of the advantages of growing older is becoming more comfortable recognising the limits of our knowledge.
When we’re younger, we may feel pressure to appear capable of doing everything ourselves.
To have the answers.
To demonstrate competence.
To avoid admitting uncertainty.
But the older I get, the more comfortable I become saying, “I don’t know enough about this yet.”
Not as a reason to give up.
But as a starting point for figuring out what I need to learn.
Confidence isn’t always about knowing what to do. Sometimes it’s about knowing how to find the help we need.
An Unexpected Connection That Might Help
Recently, I discovered that a colleague’s wife is an interior stylist.
I was delighted.
Not because I expect her to design my entire home.
But because I’ve been looking for someone with the expertise to help me evaluate the decisions I’m considering.
Someone who can look at my existing space, understand the atmosphere I want to create and offer a professional perspective on whether the materials I’m considering will work together.
I’ve already started thinking about how to approach the next stage.
During the second week of my upcoming leave, after returning from my trip, I plan to visit more stone suppliers.
I want to explore different marble and natural stone options, compare colours and patterns, and narrow down the ones I genuinely love.
Then I’d like to meet my colleague’s wife and invite her to see the house.
I want her to understand the scale of the island, the surrounding spaces, the existing furniture and the artwork I hope to introduce.
I want to hear her perspective on the stone, the cabinetry and the overall design.
Perhaps she’ll confirm that one of my preferred options would work beautifully.
Perhaps she’ll suggest something I hadn’t considered.
Or perhaps she’ll point out a problem that would have been expensive to discover after installation.
I don’t know yet.
But I feel much more comfortable about moving forward now that I have a plan for getting the advice I need.
The vision hasn’t changed.
What has changed is that I can see a practical way to make better decisions.
The Difference Between Dreaming and Doing
I think many of us have experienced something similar.
We have a clear picture of something we’d like to create.
A business.
A new career.
A healthier lifestyle.
A beautiful home.
A project that would make our lives more meaningful.
We can imagine the outcome.
Sometimes we can imagine it in extraordinary detail.
But when it comes to actually making it happen, we discover how much we don’t know.
And that can be uncomfortable.
Because the distance between imagining something and executing it is often filled with decisions we haven’t made before.
I think about my own experience building BYORM.
I know the ideas I want to share.
I know the kind of impact I’d love to have.
I can imagine participating in meaningful conversations, mentoring others and creating work that helps people approach the second half of life with greater intention.
But I’ve never built a business like this before.
I don’t know everything about developing an audience, organising speaking opportunities or creating a sustainable business around intellectual ideas.
Those are skills I’m learning.
Sometimes through research.
Sometimes through experimentation.
And increasingly, through conversations with people who have experience in areas that are new to me.
The same principle applies to my home gallery project.
I don’t need to become an interior stylist to create a beautiful home.
Just as I don’t need to know everything about entrepreneurship before I begin building BYORM.
But I do need to become resourceful enough to find the knowledge, people and support that can help me move forward.
Seeking Expertise Doesn’t Mean Giving Up Your Vision
There’s an important distinction here.
I don’t want someone else to decide what my home should look like.
I have a strong sense of what I love.
I know that I want the space to feel beautiful, modern, warm and slightly playful.
I know I want large, colourful original paintings rather than a room filled with generic decorative pieces.
I know I want the stone island to be a statement piece without overwhelming the rest of the home.
And I know how I want to feel when I spend time there.
Those preferences are personal.
They’re not things an interior stylist can determine for me.
What I want is someone who can help translate those preferences into decisions that work aesthetically and practically.
Someone who can help me understand the implications of different choices.
Someone who might see possibilities—or risks—that I haven’t considered.
Ultimately, I’ll still make the decision.
And I’ll still be responsible for the outcome.
But I’ll be making it with better information.
I think this applies to many areas of life.
We can seek advice from people who know more than we do without handing over responsibility for our dreams.
We can learn from experts without losing our own perspective.
And we can welcome different opinions while remaining clear about what matters to us.
The right expertise should help us realise our vision, not replace it with someone else’s.
Beautiful Surroundings Are Part of My Well-Aging Philosophy
There’s another reason this home project matters to me.
It’s not simply about interior design.
It’s about the kind of everyday life I want to enjoy. I will be spending more time at home after retiring.
As I’ve become more intentional about how I want to live, I’ve started paying greater attention to the environments I spend time in.
I love beautiful cafés where I can sit for hours reading or writing.
I enjoy hotels and spaces that combine thoughtful design with a sense of calm.
I appreciate art that makes me smile, sparks curiosity or adds unexpected colour to a room.
And increasingly, I want to bring more of those experiences into my everyday surroundings.
Not because I need everything around me to be luxurious.
But because I find genuine pleasure in beauty.
I want to walk into my living room and enjoy what I see.
I want to sit at my kitchen island with a coffee and feel happy to be there.
I want my home to be a place where family and friends enjoy spending time together.
And I want it to continue evolving as my interests evolve.
Recently, I’ve started experimenting with plants around the house.
I’ve also been exploring Korean and Japanese artists whose colourful, playful paintings appeal to me.
My daughter is planning to create artwork that I hope to display at home.
None of these projects needs to happen all at once.
In fact, I’m enjoying the process of discovering what I like and imagining how the different pieces might eventually come together.
Perhaps that’s another aspect of intentional living.
We don’t only design our careers, finances, relationships or health.
We can also design the everyday environments in which we experience our lives.
And those environments can become sources of happiness in their own right.
Knowing When to Wait—and When to Move Forward
Looking back, I don’t regret taking time before committing to the island.
It’s a costly project, and I think the decision deserves careful consideration.
But I also recognise that waiting can become a habit.
There’s always another stone to look at.
Another photograph to compare.
Another possibility to explore.
And at some point, additional research may stop making the decision meaningfully better.
I don’t want to spend years imagining a beautiful island without ever enjoying it.
So I’ve decided to give myself a more practical process.
Explore the materials.
Narrow down the options.
Seek professional advice.
Understand the trade-offs.
Then make a decision.
I won’t be able to eliminate every uncertainty.
There may still be details I would do differently with hindsight.
But I don’t need a guarantee of perfection.
I need enough confidence to make a thoughtful choice and move forward.
That feels like a useful lesson far beyond interior design.
Sometimes the next stage of our lives doesn’t require another year of imagining.
It requires us to identify what is preventing us from acting, find a sensible way to address it and then take the next step.
You Don’t Have to Be an Expert to Begin
My kitchen island hasn’t been built yet.
I haven’t selected the final stone.
I haven’t decided on the cabinetry.
And I haven’t had the consultation with the interior stylist.
But I feel more optimistic about the project than I did a few months ago.
Because I now have a clearer understanding of what was holding me back.
It wasn’t a lack of desire.
It wasn’t that the project didn’t matter enough.
It was that I didn’t have sufficient confidence in my ability to make the right design decisions.
And rather than continuing to hesitate, I’ve found a way to address that gap.
I think there’s something reassuring about recognising that we don’t have to know how to do everything ourselves.
We can have ambitious dreams without possessing all the skills required to achieve them.
We can imagine a future life without knowing every step that will take us there.
We can seek advice, learn from others, experiment and gradually become more capable.
And we can do all of that without losing sight of what we originally wanted.
As I look forward to creating my home gallery, I’m excited not only about the finished space.
I’m excited about learning something new.
Discovering beautiful materials.
Meeting people with different expertise.
Making decisions that reflect my taste.
And eventually enjoying a home that feels increasingly like the life I want to live.
Perhaps that’s the real lesson this project has reminded me of.
We don’t have to become experts in everything we dream of doing. We simply have to become willing to learn, ask for help and keep moving forward.
Because the life we want isn’t created only by knowing what we want.
It’s created by finding ways to bring that vision into reality.
One thoughtful decision at a time.
BYORM — Be Your Own Role Model
You don’t need to know every step toward the life you want. You need a vision worth pursuing and the willingness to figure things out along the way.
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