The International Quilt Festival, held in Houston TX, has become an annual event for my two sisters and our Mom. Every year, we gather from where ever we live (TX and NY) and spend some wonderful 'girl-time' together. We giggle a lot, share family stories and revel in the joy of just being together in an incredibly creative environment.Article: Essential Feng Shui strategies to ensure you're not a three-day wonder!
When they take a drug addict into detox they know better than to put him back in the same environment - same colored walls, same friends, same room.
Have you ever been to a workshop or a personal growth event and felt your life had changed? You're away from home, away from distractions, surrounded by others who are going for it. As you drive down your street to go home everything looks different.
How do you ensure your changes are not just a two or three day wonder - you know what that's like: come home on a high with notes and information and all kinds of good intentions for BEING different and creating different results? If you live with others, more than likely you don't make a lot of sense when you try to explain what you got of out the event, or how you've evolved. They might even feel threatened by you sweeping in with all your enthusiasm for the changes you want to make NOW.
You look around your home and all kinds of things seem out of place or no longer a good fit. I feel compelled to declutter my books and rearrange them right now! The reason for this compulsion to declutter is that your environment represents who you are - or in this case, who you were. Before you left home your environment and your own energy were a pretty good match.
When you make shifts within, if the energy of your environment doesn't change, it will pull you back into your old patterns. It will be a challenge to really anchor your shifts and move forward as the new you.
8 Tips to Anchor your Shifts and Changes so they don't disappear.
1. Hear the urge to declutter, to clean out your closet, or repaint your office, on returning from a life changing experience? It's your spirit calling for the energy in your home to step up into a higher vibration. If you don't feel the urge, take a look around and feel the energy - what's not a good match for the new you? The sooner you can let go of what no longer fits (and there will be things!), the faster you can integrate your changes.
2. Move the furniture around - furniture that stays in the same place starts to create stagnant energy. Even moving it a few inches will shake up the energy in your environment and energize your space. And energized space supports an energized YOU!
3. Put your travel things away - you're staying, right? This new you is staying too. It used to be that I'd empty my suitcase onto the floor and from there start to put things away - who knows why? It would take me days to put everything away. Now I do the 'one touch' thing - I grab 'like' things from my case and take them directly to where they need to be. Unpacking is way faster. Feels great!
4. What's incomplete? This might well be a different list from one you would have made before you left - remember, you're seeing your environment through new eyes. On my latest trip, having made prosperity shifts, it didn't surprise me to come up with a list of about 10 money incompletions on returning home. Took me about 2 hours to address the lot.
5. What needs cleaning up? Autumn leaves, the last of your summer flowers, inside plants given some attention? It's good to put energy into your home - it's a sort of nesting, a transition between the old and new.
6. Take time to go through your notes, read any materials you were given at your event and create a one page list of actions you commit to implementing, based on specific strategies or awarenesses you gained. Find a home for materials you returned with.
7. Create an environment that inspires you, reminds you of the shifts you've made and anchors these changes in your body. This is the enhancement part of Feng Shui and needs to come after the clearing away of what is no longer a good fit. I've just returned from a retreat and a marketing event. I hung the vision board I made at the retreat in my bedroom. I hung the marketing strategies poster on my wall right in front of my computer so I see it all the time.
8. Enhance the Knowledge & Self-Cultivation area of the Bagua in your office, bedroom and home: this is the area specifically related to learning, personal growth and your inner self. The most powerful enhancements are always ones personal to you - a great place to put your vision board. That's where mine is: in the K&SC area of my bedroom. Other things you can use in this area: books/DVDs/CDs related to your inner growth or what you're learning, anything that reminds you of inner wisdom or contemplation, quotes and inspirational sayings, and pictures of mountains. You can also enhance other specific areas - for example my marketing strategies poster I returned with is now in the Wealth & Prosperity area of my office!
For more information on the Bagua and where the different Guas are, see: Bagua Map
If your physical environment doesn't change you'll be pulled back into who you used to be because that's the energy you're most familiar with. It's a big thing to have travelled to a workshop, spent a few days soaking up a new way of being, hanging out with others who are on a similar path. It's a huge commitment to yourself and who you're being in the world.
You may not have even travelled to a workshop - you have the potential to make shifts within yourself at any time and the same principles apply - you can raise the energy in your home to support a change you wish to make, or you can raise the energy in your home to be a closer match with the person you now are and where you're going!
What a waste for it to be but a three-day wonder as you slip back into the person you used to be - wonderful as that person was!
Clear out what is no longer a good fit for you, and surround yourself with items that reflect where you're going. That's how to have your environment support you rather than working against you - and all it takes is intention and consciousness.
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