139After grasping Hardison’s metaphor of home, I im-
mediately saw that I needed to move out of my house. I
needed to move up in the neighborhood. I needed a bet-
ter home. A home that contained habits that would keep
me focused on goal-oriented activity. Hardison helped
coach me in that direction until the new activities be-
gan to feel like where I should have been living all along.
Hardison’s metaphor of “home” as the equivalent of
old disempowering habits has stayed with me for a long
time. Recently while I was putting together a tape of
motivational music to play in my car, I included the en-
ergetic “I’m Going Home” by Alvin Lee and Ten Years
After. As I drove around listening to it turned up all
the way, I thought about what Hardison taught. I let
the song be about the new home I would always be in
the process of moving to.
Don’t be afraid to leave the psychic home you’re in.
Get excited about building a larger, newer, happier home
in your mind, and then go live there.
In Colin Wilson’s brilliant but little-known, out-of-
print novel Necessary Doubt, he created Gustav
Neumann, a fascinating character who made many dis-
coveries about human beings. At one point Neumann
says, “I came to realize that people build themselves
personalities as they build houses—to protect them-
selves from the world. They become its prisoners. And
most people are in such a hurry to hide inside their four
walls that they build the house too quickly.”
Identify the habits that keep you trapped. Identify
what you have decided is your final personality and ac-
cept that it might be a hasty construction built only to
keep you safe from risk and growth. Once you’ve done
that, you can leave. You can get the blueprints out and
create the home you really want.
Try to sell your home