What did you do for yourself today that helped you be more energetic, productive and prosperous while reducing your stress and anxiety about the future? Do you believe there is something you can do or you need to do to change the status quo or do you feel it is out of your control?
The answer to both of these questions is found in the ancient lifestyle known as Feng Shui. Its principles provide you a roadmap for creating a better future – one that is more energetic, filled with better relationships, less stress and more prosperity.
This lifestyle philosophy is often thought of as only the placement of things like furniture, the direction your home faces and making sure your entrance is clear and visible from the street. But the reality is, Feng Shui is about the use of positive energy to create the future you want. That includes improving your productivity and prosperity while limiting your anxiety and stress.
Even more important, Feng Shui isn’t just about your personal environment, it is about your physical well-being and your internal alignment of your thoughts with your external surroundings and actions. In other words, you can make your home spotless and absolutely clutter-free but if you do not care for your physical body and your internal thinking you will create imbalance and wage a huge war between your thoughts and actions.
Prosperity Roadmap
To be successful, your prosperity roadmap needs to be simple, easy to follow and in alignment with your objectives and the future you wish to create.
Surroundings. The personal environment you surround yourself with today is exactly what you chose five years ago. Take a close look as it is a mirror image of your past thoughts, decisions and actions. If it is not what you want, now is the time to change so your future is what you want. Unclutter your surroundings – get rid of chaos causing energy blocking “stuff” that is standing in your way.
If you haven’t used something in three years, get rid of it! If it doesn’t fit and look great on you, get rid of it! If it is broken, chipped or doesn’t work and you have no intentions of ever fixing it, get rid of it. Then organize what is left so it is easily accessible and useable. The uncluttering process reduces chaos, reduces distractions and provides you more time to do the things you want to do while also making you more effective.
Well-being. The physical body needs refueling and care just like an automobile. Eating and sleeping refuels your body much like gasoline refuels your car - but you don’t just refuel your car. You also change its tires, get it lubed, washed and keep it regularly maintained. Even the best cared for high performance car needs downtime and a bit of pampering.
For people downtime means scheduling time for you to rest, restore and revitalize your energy. That begins with getting enough sleep to keep stress low and daytime energy high. Women especially suffer from lack of enough sleep with their significant multi-tasking daily routines. One could argue “well there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done and sleep, too.” That is exactly the type of dead-end thinking that leads to anxiety, inefficiency and stress – which leads to poor health and nervous exhaustion.
Carve out space to create a sanctuary at home and set aside time on your calendar to enjoy your retreat and take care of you. Use that time to regenerate, re-energize and reduce stress. Spend quiet time in this space, play meditative music and light a candle or dim the lights – allow no one to interrupt you while in your sanctuary. Your weekly visit (more often the higher the stress) will help you refuel while lowering anxiety, reducing stress and making you more effective.
Thoughts. The third leg of this journey is your thinking. In order to create the future you want and be able to look back in three to five years to see that you have exactly what you chose to create, you need to get rid of “stuff” in your thinking too, not just your surroundings. Evaluate your thoughts and align them with your actions. It is time to unclutter your thinking and eliminate those old thoughts from years ago about success and what the future should look like. Those thoughts can hold you back and block new energy and new thinking from entering.
Eliminate those negative thought loops that say “I can’t, it’s someone else’s fault, I’m too short, fat or tall, no one will listen to me, etc.” Eliminate childhood negative thoughts from parents, early school teachers and well-meaning friends and first-time bosses that helped to imbed some of that “you’ll never be a success” thinking. Once you eliminate them, fill your thinking with positive can-do and will-do thoughts to bring yourself into alignment with the future you are creating. The old thoughts will try creep back in so be vigilant and keep them away. This step will allow new ideas and thinking to enter and increase your prosperity because your feelings, thoughts and actions are in alignment.
Taking care of you should not be at the bottom of your to-do list but rank right up there with taking care of your family and providing excellence at work. If you don’t take care of you, who will? Start today – create your own prosperity roadmap to reach the future you want.
© Pat Heydlauff, all rights reserved 2013
Pat Heydlauff, a “flow of focus” expert, speaker and consultant designs home and workplace environments that unleash the flow of focus and maximize performance while creating balance and increasing prosperity. She is author of the forthcoming book, Engage, Unleash the Power of Focus and published books, Feng Shui, So Easy a Child Can Do It, Selling Your Home with a Competitive Edge and The Way We Go, A Roadmap to a Better Future. Contact her at 561-799-3443 or www.energy-by-design.com. Her spiritual artwork is at www.spiritualartwork.net.