Dear Earth, I promise to work on the crisis in our relationship! Part 1

Our Planet

Dear Earthlings,

As we know, feng shui helps us humans to live comfortably and thrive in and on our home planet in a supportive, coexisting, harmonious relationship.

Alas, that relationship is in crisis. Climate crisis, that is.

I want to hold up my part of the bargain and work on this relationship. And that’s going to take some action. Happily, I’ve got feng shui to help.

Feng shui asks us to do something to bring about the changes we want. Some people believe individual change won’t do a thing to impact the climate crisis, but I respond with my favorite Margaret Mead quote:  “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.

People working together on a common goal
Together we can accomplish a lot!

Are you with me?

If so, read on for some feng shui principles and their practices to help us reach our biggest goal ever: living in harmony with our planet. I’ll be posting some ideas on how I’m working on my relationship with the planet, and I’d love to hear yours!

Feng shui principle: live with what you love and get rid of the rest!

The feng shui action here is getting rid of that stuff without just throwing it in the landfill. So, what can you do?

Clean out your closet and donate/recycle/sell those clothes and shoes.

Goodwill, Catholic Charities, and the Salvation Army have drop off spots for clothing, shoes and other household items and often have trucks to pick up large items. If your stuff is not good enough to donate, you can recycle it by using a service like Ridwell, which works with partner companies that turn recycled goods into something new. Ridwell takes a LOT of stuff you might not know what to do with, too. Check them out!

Need new clothes to love? Buy/sell using online consignment retailers (many are upscale!) or clothing creators who have “green” policies.

You can sell gently used (or never worn) clothing on a variety of online consignment retailers. Poshmark, The Real Real, Thred Up and Tradesy are great websites for gently used clothes and accessories.

These brands have eco-conscious policies and commitments to consider if you want to purchase new.

And, finally, here’s an idea that I am embracing:  spend a little more for something truly worthy and buy less of other stuff. Less stuff purchased means less stuff tossed or recycled. Check out this Levi’s ad campaign with the tag line: buy better, wear longer.

Sell or donate furniture you no long want/use and buy used.

I have bought and sold furniture and household items through Facebook Marketplace, Craig’s List and at the local Habitat for Humanity store. Facebook Marketplace and Craig’s List feature buyers and sellers that have local connections creating less transportation waste for everyone.

Re-gift things or give consumables or experiences as you give gifts in the future.

I received tickets for the Immersive van Gogh exhibit as a birthday gift and recently visited the venue: what a treat! This is a giant moving digital display on the walls and floor put to music showcasing this master’s artwork. Truly memorable and delightful.

Immersive van Gogh experience showing Starry Night
A photo from my immersive van Gogh experience.

Other ideas for consumable gift giving include homemade goodies, a new plant, a downloadable book or music and the always well-received (at least by me!) dark chocolate.

Do you know other places or organizations who are doing their part to work on our relationship with our planet? I’d love to hear about them or ways you are making a softer imprint as you walk your path in life and I’ll share them in a future post! Email me!

 

 

Next up:  how I think of refuse management as another way of balancing and harmonizing my life!

Host a private Zoom vision board workshop!

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

A private vision board workshop is a unique gift to give.

Host a private vision board workshop for your group – employees, clients, book group, volunteers, board members, friends, family, or any group you think would benefit. All vision board workshops will be via a live Zoom call — with you and I co-hosting the event.

The best way to predict the future is to create it.
Create, envision and predict the year ahead!

Have you considered a private vision board workshop in your home, community center or conference room?  This can be a great bonding, fun, craft-y, connecting, and appreciation activity for your group. I have worked with Realtors and retailers to share this workshop as a thank you to their clients.  I have led this workshop as a holiday party activity for groups of friends, for networking groups and board members.  It’s fun and meaningful, a great way for people to connect with themselves and others, whether everyone knows each other or not.  This workshop is easy to do via Zoom; everyone is at home in their comfort zone with their materials and you and I co-host the event, connecting with them via the chat feature.

You can brand the workshop with your logo and style.

As a co-host, you get to welcome your guests into your home (or wherever you Zoom from!)  As host/hostess you can brand the workshop with your own logo and style. It’s all customizable!

The price is $35/guest. I present the private workshops for groups of 10 or more. If you are hosting and want each guest to pay their own registration fee, I set up a custom online registration and payment link for your event.  If you are gifting this workshop to your guests, we will work out a payment option for you to cover all the registrations.

This workshop can be hosted any day of the week or a weekday evening.  I schedule three hours so there is plenty of time for networking while unmuted or through the chat. You can choose the time you’d like for your workshop and if you want to include extra time for other activities before or after; it’s up to you!

I lead the workshop and make sure everyone knows how to proceed. While I can’t spend individual time with all your guests, we can communicate via the chat and I’m happy to offer some time after the workshop for individual contact.   Everyone completes the workshop and has their own, unique vision board.

I’d be honored to help you plan your group’s vision board workshop.  Contact me if you have any additional questions.

Here’s to envisioning and manifesting a fabulous year ahead!

 

 

 

 

Want to know how to become a feng shui practitioner? This book is for you!

Front cover of Yin Yang and Prosper

If you want to know how to become a feng shui practitioner then my book is for you. I’m excited to announce that Yin Yang and Prosper: How to Create a Thriving Feng Shui Practice, has been published on Amazon and through Draft2Digital books. It’s available as an e-book and print-on-demand paperback for your e-reader or bookshelf.  (Those of you who’ve heard me speak at workshops or classes know that in the feng shui world we pronounce yang like it rhymes with song, not sang!  Now, trying saying that title again out loud: Yin Yang and Prosper!)

A call to action.

Front cover of Yin Yang and Prosper
The paperback version can be purchased on Amazon.

The book was inspired by a retreat focused on how to create and run a heart-centered business. Most of the attendees were feng shui practitioners like me, but several were starting their own organizing businesses or therapeutic health practices. I spoke about marketing and quickly realized that everyone wanted more information on how to get established, how to find clients, how to stay energized and how to hone their services. I answered this call to action by writing a book about how to become a feng shui practitioner — or any heart-centered entrepreneur — by using my own practice as the blueprint.

I used my own practice as the blueprint.

As readers of my blog know, I have been offering residential and commercial feng shui consulting services, teaching workshops, and writing about feng shui through my Denver-based business, Thriving Spaces Feng Shui, since 2009.  Using my consulting practice and experience as a guide, I structured the book around the feng shui Bagua—a tool practitioners use to balance, organize, and enhance areas of their homes and offices to create a more balanced, organized, and enhanced life.  The book covers all aspects of creating a heart-centered business, from defining your mission and creating your brand to selecting essential marketing tools and deciding which services to provide. Yin Yang and Prosper: How to Create a Thriving Feng Shui Practice is a book about how to create a heart-centered practice as an entrepreneurial journey of abundance, harmony, and joy.

Options for purchasing my e-book.
You can purchase my e-book on Kindle (through Amazon) or through Draft2Digital for iBooks, Nook, Kobo and more options.

Thrilled and grateful to be endorsed!

I’m thrilled and grateful that my mentor and colleague, Terah Kathryn Collins of the Western School of Feng Shui™ in Solano Beach, California, enjoyed and endorsed my book.  She is also an internationally recognized consultant, speaker, teacher, and best-selling author of several books on feng shui.  About Yin Yang and Prosper: How to Create a Thriving Feng Shui Practice, Collins says, “This book is pure gold! Now, Feng Shui practitioners and independent consultants have the template and expert guidance they need to create and enjoy a professional practice. Lorrie’s business acumen and pure generosity light up every page with clear, concise, step-by-step advice on manifesting a successful practice that harmonizes with your goals and lifestyle. Yin Yang and Prosper: How to Create a Thriving Feng Shui Practice will be your go-to reference book for years to come!”

Front cover of Yin Yang and Prosper
Front cover of my book.
Back cover of my book.
Back cover of my book.

 

 

Contact me if you want to learn more about the book or get the book on Amazon or through this link to other booksellers.

Remote Feng Shui consultations during Covid-19 are safe, easy and effective

Phone or computer works for remote consultations.

First, I hope you are well and staying safe and sane during this trying time. I am one of the lucky ones, with my health intact, the opportunity to walk in a peaceful open space nearby, and with work that I love and can continue to do while under quarantine. This just touches the tip of how lucky I am; I hope you are one of the lucky ones, too.

I have always offered feng shui consultations remotely, via FaceTime, Zoom or Skype to clients that were not in the Greater Denver Metro area. Today, this is the service that I offer, period.

Remote consultations are safe, easy and effective.

As we slowly move from our stay-at-home to our safer-at-home restrictions, remote consultations may be the service I offer for the foreseeable future. Feng shui always looks to safety first, as a way to remind us that we can’t get creative about our spaces until we feel safe in them.  Now and in the future, I can connect with you while we are both safe at home.

How does it work? Quite easily, I’m happy to report.  And, the results are equally as good!

Already we can feel the new energy coming in …. and we look forward to implementing the other changes. Since we will be spending lots of time at home this feels like the perfect time to set our home up in such a nurturing and supportive way. Many Blessings and Gratitude to You,

Elizabeth and Rob (Metro Denver remote feng shui clients, March 2020)

Are you ready to try it? Here’s how a remote feng shui consultation works:

  • You fill in the questionnaire on my website which tells me about your interest in feng shui, your favorite and least favorite areas and what goals you want to achieve with a feng shui consultation.
  • I follow up with you about what I can do to help you reach your goals with a remote consultation. We determine the scope of the work and set our “appointment” based on an agreed technology.
  • You send me your floor plan, digitally (either a scan of a hand-drawn plan or from architectural plans), photos of your space, and/or videos of your home or office. Start with the outside, and walk through the front door and through the entire space. Sending the videos via Dropbox, or other file-sharing service, works best as these files are usually quite large.
  • I go to work reviewing the floor plan, photos and videos to help me get a three-dimensional sense of your space.
  • I draw the Bagua grid on your floor plan, often including any additional floors you may have. I can show the command position for your desk in a home office, or best placement for beds. I send the Bagua to you in advance of our appointment for you to review. I may have questions about your space, such as location of storage areas and your choices for room usage at this time.
  • I make notes to go over with you after I review your space through the lens of the Bagua. Now I’m ready to share ideas for enhancing with the 5 Elements and balancing with yin and yang.
  • We have our scheduled video call on a phone or tablet, using FaceTime, Skype or Zoom.  Together we “walk” through your space just as we would in a live consultation. You have the choice to record our conversation, stop and take notes along the way, or have me write up a report for you.
  • We determine the best time for me to check back in with you. I remind you that you can contact me anytime with follow-up questions; it’s all part of the consultation package – live or remote!

That’s it!  You have received a feng shui consultation remotely, with recommendations and a Bagua grid you can follow; you’re ready to get to work on bringing about the changes in your environment to help you reach your goals. If you request a report, I get that to you within five days. I have done remote consultations for clients in Oahu, Seattle, Boulder, Aspen, Santa Fe, San Francisco and now in Denver.

I would love to meet you in your space to share feng shui, but a remote consultation is a wonderful option to get you started now on making the changes you may have the time and energy to implement while you stay safer-at-home.

Stay safe and healthy!

 

 

Photo by William Iven on Unsplash

 

Communicate and Co-Create: Register for your 2020 Vision Board workshop today.

Imagination is everything.

While you’re prepping for the holidays stop a moment and give yourself the gift of envisioning your year ahead.  Sign up for a vision board workshop to help you envision, then manifest a fabulous 2020.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
Preview your 2020 “attractions” by creating a vision board — at a workshop or on your own with my online course.

You can:

  • Sign up today for your 2020 Vision Board workshop (see dates, times and locations below) by emailing me: lwgrillo@thrivingspaces.com.
  • Host your own vision board workshop for employees, clients, friends and/or family. Contact me for more information or read more here.
  • Take the workshop on your own this year, by registering for my online version of this workshop called Create A Vision Board That Works Using Feng Shui.  Learn more here.  Register here.

Two workshops to choose from in Denver:

Sunday, 1/5/20 Schlessman Family Library, 1st & Quebec St., Denver, CO, 1:30 PM – 4:30 PM

Sunday, 1/19/20 Lowry Print & Ship, Lowry Town Center, Denver, CO, 1 – 4 PM

The title of this year’s workshop is Communicate and Co-Create because a vision board is about transformation. It’s about listening to a calling deep inside to transform yourself and your year.  Who makes a Vision Board? Anyone who wants to envision their future, seeks clarity, and is brave enough to ask for what they want.

A Vision Board is a collection of images that represents the hopes, goals, and dreams you have for your future, often created around the New Year. The images are mounted on a poster board and hung in a place that you can see every day. Vision Boards are proactive, intentional, and fun. And, best of all, they work!

We will use Feng Shui organizing principles — the Bagua, Five Elements and Yin/Yang balance — to design and make our boards. With Feng Shui guiding us, we will make sure to balance our visions with work, rest, and play.

The workshop includes materials (including your board, scissors, tape, glue and extra magazines) but attendees are encouraged to bring their own folder of images.  Upon registering, each attendee will receive a how-to-get-started list, an FAQ and payment instructions.  You must register in advance for this workshop.  Registration is $30 through 12/31/19, $35 after 1/1/20. Contact Lorrie Webb Grillo, Thriving Spaces Feng Shui @ lwgrillo@thrivingspaces.com.

Here’s what a Vision Board workshop participant said about the workshop:

I just wanted to drop you a note and thank you so much for the opportunity to attend your Vision Board workshop!  I have not been so excited or inspired about co-creating the life I want for myself in such a long time.  I have not used my imagination in that way in a long time and came home and finished my Board.  You were absolutely wonderful in leading the workshop and I so much appreciated the context and background you shared on creating a vision board. 

Sue, Workshop Attendee

Register for the workshop of your choice by emailing lwgrillo@thrivingspaces.com — be sure and specify which workshop you’d like to attend.

Host your own private vision board workshop

Private vision board workshop
Hosting a private vision board workshop allows you to invite your clients and friends to your space.

If you are interested in hosting a private Vision Board workshop for your employees, clients, friends, book group, work colleagues or fellow board members, just contact me.  I like to have a minimum of 10 participants.  You choose the place and I come to you!

Take my online vision board course

Can’t make the above dates?  Take my online course on your own time schedule.  Here’s what one online workshop registrant said about the course:

I love this course!  Great content!  It ended up being an amazing exercise that everybody should do.  Before going through the course and having to work on my board, I thought it would be just a fun activity.  What I realized is that this is a powerful and eye-opening exercise as you face different areas of your life and hard questions to answer.  Do it! You’ll learn important things!

Andi, online workshop registrant.

Learn more about my online course here.

I can’t wait to help you create and manifest a magical, magnificent year ahead!  If you have any questions, just email me:  lwgrillo@thrivingspaces.com.

 

 

Are you my perfect feng shui client? Read on to find out if we are the right fit!

My perfect feng shui client and I shaking hands.

I love my clients! They are a perfect fit for me, and I for them. It is such a pleasure and a privilege to work with them and I am grateful for them everyday. Just who, you may be wondering, are they? And, what makes them so perfect? 

I believe we attract the people we want in our lives by being very clear about who they are and what we have in common. If we want to intentionally draw to us what we need and want, we have to be able to articulate what that is. I have been drawing my perfect customers into my life and business in the past few years. It’s not magic, even though it sometimes feels like it, but it does take intention and practice.

I learned how to do this with help from the book Attracting Perfect Customers, by Jan Hall and Stacey Brogniez. It’s a good and interesting read, but an even greater handbook on how to actually attract your perfect customer or client. The caveat? You have to do the work in the tasks outlined at the end of each chapter. If that sounds like “homework,” you’re right. In fact, I read this book through a couple of times thinking how brilliant it was but I didn’t do the exercises. Those perfect clients did not show up. No surprise. But then I did my “homework,” which BTW is really fun to do, and the clients started emailing and calling me.

I’m not going to tell you everything in the book (that’s for you to find out!) but I will share with you one of the assignments, that has become part of my morning ritual of intentionally “calling” my perfect clients into my life everyday. This exercise asks you to write out all the things that you have in common with your perfect clients. Because I don’t know you – yet – I have to describe you! And, because we humans like to work with people who share common beliefs and values a lot of those descriptors are about the values we share. This is the shorthand to find people who are comfortable with each other, and speak the same language. I am not talking about surface things – where you went to school, where you grew up, what you drive. That doesn’t matter at all in this relationship. I’m speaking about motivation and inspiration. Please understand that there is no judgment involved in creating your list. We are all unique souls looking for connections – one common value is no better than another.

Here is what my perfect clients and me share:

We know and believe that change is possible through learning something new and applying it to your life. We create our lives through our visions, thoughts and actions.

Are you my perfect client? Here’s how I would describe you:

Greet the rising sun with a positive attitude.
Greet the rising sun with a positive attitude.

Why do you get up in the morning? Because

  • you have a passion and purpose for your life
  • you are a seeker
  • you believe that your thoughts and actions make a difference
  • you are grateful for another day

Who is the most important person/s in your world?

  • family
  • friends
  • your own client or customer base

What is most important to you?

  • kindness in your family, your work and in the world
  • creating value with your life – either raising your families and/or through your work
  • seeking a higher path – harmony and balance over strife and “being right”
  • creating your own happiness and “luck”
  • achieving your goals with integrity

What do you want to achieve before you leave this world?

  • raising good people (if you have children)
  • being responsible for your thoughts and actions
  • teaching others by example
  • providing valuable service through your work and receiving abundant compensation for it
  • kindness to others and yourself

What do you really love about your life?

Our precious world!
  • having an opportunity to be here, now and make a difference
  • your family
  • our beautiful planet
  • giving and receiving positivity and hope
  • creating peace and prosperity for anyone who seeks it

Do you see yourself in this list? If so, please call, email or FB message me and introduce yourself! I want to know you. And, if the time is right for you, it would be my privilege to share feng shui with you and help you experience whatever shifts in your life that new, positive energy could bring. In the meantime, join my mailing list here so that you are aware of classes (live and online) or speaking engagements and other treats that I have coming up.

Let’s connect and find out if we are a fit.

How to make a vision board that works!

A graphic of the 8 feng shui bagua areas with symbolic images representing their meanings, for example, a pair of birds to represent the Love & Marriage area.

There are many ways to create a vision board. Find one that inspires you.

There are many ways to make a vision board. You can tag and curate photos from Pinterest and create one on their app. There are software programs now that will help you create one on any of your devices. I’ve seen examples of people who have created multi-media vision boards with photos and video and scrolling text that they can pull up and play whenever. There is a way out there for you to create a vision board in any medium and form you like!

The key is to find one that will work for you. And, by “work for you” I mean it helps you to successfully manifest your visions!

Feng shui principles can power up your vision board.

The key that has worked for me, and my clients, is using feng shui principles to organize their vision boards.

As a feng shui practitioner, I use the principles and practices of this ancient Chinese design and placement philosophy and program – the Bagua, the 5 Elements, and yin/yang balance — to help my clients reach their goals by arranging their environments to support them. I use those same principles and practices to help my vision board workshop attendees arrange their vision boards to help them manifest their dreams.

We start our organization with the Bagua, which identifies areas of our lives and locates them in space. The Bagua areas for each of us are:

  • the journey (can be a career, life’s work or current activity)
  • self-knowledge and learning
  • health and family connections
  • wealth and prosperity
  • fame and reputation
  • love and marriage
  • creativity and children
  • connecting with others (helpful people) and travel

And they are organized in space like this:

A graphic of the 8 feng shui bagua areas with symbolic images representing their meanings, for example, a pair of birds to represent the Love & Marriage area.
Using the feng shui bagua helps to make your vision board work for you.

Your life is a multi-faceted jewel! Honor and balance it.

The Bagua helps us to place images that represent our life areas in the correct placement on the board. This helps us to intentionally honor and balance our dreams and create vision boards that are not just focused on one area of life, like a job or a romance. The board literally shows you that your life is multi-faceted, like the beautiful jewel that it is. And when we balance and harmonize all areas of our lives, we often find that the goals we hope to achieve in one area begin to manifest. This makes sense. If we get too focused on one aspect of life, a job, for instance, doesn’t something often fall through the cracks?

When we remember to be ourselves and balance our lives with work, rest and play, usually things work out. Countless books and movies express my point here. Working Girl is one of my favorites. Shy but brilliant assistant, Tess (played by Melanie Griffith) doesn’t get the big job until she starts being herself. She allows herself to enjoy the process and fall in love with Jack, (Harrison Ford) who’s already fallen in love with her. OK, you get this.

In addition to the organization of the vision board around the Bagua, I also recommend balancing the board with a variety of color, in both light and dark, and different shapes. Some folks love a vision board that has picture overlapping picture and others like space between their images.This is a personal choice. I like a board that is big enough to capture all your dreams.  I recommend a 20” x 30” (at least) vision board on a rigid poster board that you can place around your home or office to find just the right space to put it so you’ll engage with it every day. (See an example here.)

This one action is crucial.

The last and arguably most important key for how to make a vision board that works is actually looking at every day. Yep, soak up those selected images that represent your dreams, revel in them and enjoy your creation. This act alone is important because you are changing the neural pathways in your mind while you’re looking at your board. You are feeding those dreams directly into your brain, whose job is it to figure out how to make them come to life.*

Now that your board is finished, place it in an area where you’ll see it and engage with it every day. I like to stand in front of mine in what author Amy Cuddy (Presence, Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges) calls the Power Position. You may know this stance from yoga as Star pose: arms raised and reaching up and out, feet apart for support, head held high and straight ahead, focused on your masterpiece. Now that’s engagement with your board!

One of my dreams every year is to share the powerful organizing principles of feng shui and help my workshop attendees to use them to create and complete their vision boards for the year.

*For a wonderful explanation about how the brain works to do this read John Assarof and Murray Smith’s excellent book The Answer, Chapter 4, The Universe inside Your Brain. Yep, this is the same John Assarof you may have met when reading The Secret (or watching the film) who tells the story about manifesting his beautiful new home from his vision board.

A vision board is different than making resolutions or setting goals.

A completed vision board with cut out images from magazines, photos, postcards and maps placed on a white poster board organized by the 8 feng shui bagua areas.

Looking for a different way to plan and manifest a great future? Read on.

Are you a planner extraordinaire, or a goal setter and realizer, or maybe even a resolution-maker and keeper? Good for you! Have you ever done a vision board? A vision board is different than making resolutions or setting goals. Most of us have planned, set goals and made resolutions before. We have the lists to prove it! And, even if we plan, set goals and make resolutions, sometimes plans fall apart, our goals are not realistic, and our resolutions just peter out. (Witness the echo in a fitness club in February.) If our plan, goal or resolution doesn’t look like the end we had in mind, we feel bad or defeated. Worse, we compare ourselves to others and the whole process can make us feel hopeless. And we start again the next year, sometimes even by writing out the very same plans, goals and resolutions on our lists! Ouch.

Looking for a different way to plan and manifest a great future? Read on.

A vision board is a powerful picture of the year ahead.

Scheduling plans, setting goals and making resolutions are all great strategies for organizing your life and making things happen. I know that they are crucial in business and life. I encourage you to do what works for you – any or all of them! But they aren’t the only way to envision and experience the future, particularly your best future. A vision board is another way of looking at your year and it doesn’t include making to-do lists or creating Excel files or calendars that need to be updated. A vision board is visual, not verbal; artistic, not data-driven; hopeful, not admonishing — and once completed is so unique it cannot be compared to anyone else’s life!.

If I ask you which comes first, the vision board or the plan, goal or resolution, the answer is hands down: the vision board. It is your over-arching picture of your year that inspires you to take action. And that action might be to make plans, set goals and even, if you must, make resolutions.

A completed vision board with cut out images from magazines, photos, postcards and maps placed on a white poster board organized by the 8 feng shui bagua areas.
An example of a completed vision The board.

The difference is in the definition, and your brain.

These different tools that help you think about your future work with different areas of your brain (and one works with your heart). Let’s look at their differences by starting with their definitions:

Definition of a New Year’s Resolution (from Cambridge Dictionary.org): a promise that you make to yourself to start doing something good or stop doing something bad on the first day of the year.

Definition of a plan (from Oxford Living Dictionary): a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something.

Definition of goal setting (from Your Dictionary.com): the process of identifying something that you want to accomplish and establishing measureable goals and timeframes. Goal setting is a process that starts with careful consideration of what you want to achieve and ends with a lot of hard work to actually do it.

Definition of a vision board (from English Oxford Living Dictionaries.com): a collage of images and words representing a person’s wishes or goals, intended to serve as inspiration or motivation. (Read my definition here.)

Here’s the thing: humans are predominately visual creatures. More than one third of our brain is devoted to processing visual information. This is far more than that devoted to understanding sound, smell, language and movement!* Vision boards use pictures; plans, goals and resolutions use words and data and much too often, pounds (as in desired weight lost).

If you want to create something new in your life,  get creative, and put those dreams on a vision board so you can actually SEE them. That’s what vision boards do differently than planning, setting goals or making resolutions.

* Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep, Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

 

Download my Holiday Tips for free!

Silver gift bag

Here are some holiday tips for you this season to help you enjoy the peace and harmony of the holidays with a little less stress!

Click here to download.

Happy Holidays!

Balance your life with rest and play, even when you’re not on vacation.

Feng shui reminds us that we’re at our top physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual power when we are living and working in a harmonious space that allows us to balance work, rest, and play. When we intentionally set up our environment to create this balance, we are supported to maintain it in our daily lives.

I was disheartened, but not surprised, to read recently that more than half of all American workers left their vacation time unused. In a 2015 survey, that amounted to a whopping 658 million unused vacation days in one year! For the past 15 years, according to Project: Time Off, Americans have been taking fewer and fewer vacations. We are the only country that doesn’t require employers to provide vacation time, but that is not the only problem. Equally at fault are the employees who simply don’t take the time off they are entitled to!

We’re working our way to disharmony, imbalance, and burnout! When we don’t take care of ourselves, things fall apart around us, including our relationships and our physical and mental health. I understand that not everyone feels they can afford to take time off, but I also think that we’ve lauded work over other ways to spend our precious time, and have made being busy a badge of honor. How do you balance work, rest, and play? Feng shui can help.

Here are some ideas:

  • Create a Vision Board that showcases ALL aspects of your vision – including work, rest, and play. Post it in a place you see every day and make it a point to review it several times a day. Let your subconscious soak it in.
  • Set an alarm on your phone or computer to take a break during the day – a walk outside, a visit to a co-worker, a brief closed-eye meditation.
  • Make your bed every morning. This “accomplishment” feeds into your sense of taking care of yourself and being a powerful, organized person.
  • Clear off your desk at the end of the day. This is another way to signal to your subconscious that you work smart, and that when your workday is done, you make time for other activities.
  • Speaking of your desk, place something on it NOT work related that makes you smile. A small Eiffel Tower, an animal statue, a squeeze toy – you catch my drift. This will communicate that you are more than your output, that you have a personality and life beyond your work.
  • Turn off all electronics 30 minutes before heading to bed.
  • Keep electronics to a minimum in your bedroom. If you must have a TV or desktop computer in your room, house it in a cabinet that has doors you can close when it’s time to sleep.
  • Create a beautiful oasis of calm in your bedroom so that when you’re prepared for bed, the space is ready for you to rest and relax.
  • And, finally, take that vacation! Hang a 12- or 18-month calendar in your office or at home and mark your vacation days. Keeping them visible will remind you to plan something special and commit to doing it!

Work is vitally important to all of us, but so is rest and so is play. I hope these ideas help you find the balance that will keep you both happy and productive every day.