Feng Shui for Healthy Work-Life Balance

We’re all striving for more balance in our lives, as the alternative leads to stress, anxiety and disease. An unbalanced life is an unhealthy life. Whether you’re a recent grad or a seasoned professional, maintaining equilibrium between your working life and personal time is critical to maintaining balance.

Feng Shui is all about balance and intentionally creating it in your own everyday reality. Ancient yet innovative, this 5,000 year old practice from the east provides tools to allow healthy energy to flow through all areas of your life. By taking command of your space, your surroundings won’t take command of you, freeing up energy, focus and time in subtle and obvious ways. Simply being organized at both the office and home, and establishing clear boundaries will help you feel less scattered and stressed.

Feng Shui Your Lifestyle
Are you living to work, or working to live? Excessive hours spent at the office takes away precious time from your personal life, relationships, exercise and play, and deep relaxation of body and mind. Setting clear boundaries to avoid your work life creeping into your home life is the first step to establishing balance. The art of disengaging from the workplace is different for everyone depending on your profession, but leveraging your personal “me” time is the first step. For example, disabling your work email on your smart phone when you get home, signing up for recreational activities that get you outdoors and exercising, or saying “no” more often to unrealistic demands.

Feng Shui Your Office
A relaxing, calming and orderly work environment is not only easier on the nerves, but a pleasure to spend time in. Be sure your work space is supporting you, not draining you!

• Clearing clutter is essential to the healthy flow of energy, as excessive piles of papers and debris are disorderly and scattering. Cleaning out your work space will allow fresh chi to flow smoothly;

• Invest in organizational tools and workplace practices that promote efficiency and time management;

• Replace glaring fluorescent lights with softer lighting, full-spectrum lights, sun lamps or crystal salt lamps;

• If possible, lighten up any dark and drab wall colours with brighter tones such as yellow, green or blue, which boost happiness, creativity and calmness;

• Place inspirational pictures of happy occasions, which promote self confidence and empowerment;

• Healthy potted plants will disperse negative chi, as well as playing soft and uplifting music.

Feng Shui Your Home
Although invisible, the energy that flows around your home greatly impacts the quality of your well being, and if energy becomes blocked or stagnant, this imbalance can lead to symptoms such as lethargy, irritability, depression and poor sleep.

Applying the Feng Shui Bagua Map to your home, (as pictured below), the front entrance represents your Career area, so be sure this is clear of all clutter, allowing fresh energy to flow. Having a healthy family and/or friends is vital to a happy and balanced life also, so be sure to pay attention to these areas of the home, by placing positive pictures, crystals and other intentional objects to promote health in your personal life.

Along with a good cleaning of your home of old and useless objects and fresh paint with bright, calming colors, there are five elements to incorporate into your environment to promote balance:

• Earth – Stones, plants and healthy soil to enhance the grounding balance of the earth element. Colors representing earth include brown or yellow.

• Wood – Wooden planting boxes, or decorative wooden pieces such as a carving, bench or bamboo pieces. The color representing wood is green.

• Metal - Wind chimes, planters or copper decorative pieces. Colors representing metal are white, gold or silver.

• Water - Still or slow flowing water such as an indoor fountain, bird bath, pond or pooled water from a stream. Colors representing water are black or blue.

• Fire – Candles, lanterns, fireplaces or an outdoor fire pit. The color red represents fire.

Applying a few changes to your work space, home and overall lifestyle choices will naturally promote more work-life balance and uplift your energy and well being.

How Feng Shui Can Help in Tough Economic Times

With living amidst a challenged economy, everyone is looking for innovative ways to either increase or just maintain a steady income. The question so many are now asking is what can be done at a personal level to create our “own economy” and thrive?

Solutions can arrive from thinking outside the box and stretching into new territory, such as meditation, visualization and positive affirmations to supplement our efforts. An increasingly popular practice here in the west is the 5,000 year old science of Feng Shui, which is gaining new appreciation as an effective tool for attracting abundance.

Two areas that need attention for increased prosperity include good Feng Shui in your home and office, and harnessing the power of your mind and thoughts.

Feng Shui Cures for Prosperity

Your state of being is strongly linked to your everyday environment. Feng Shui is about working with the energy of your surroundings, and the intentional clearing and arrangement of objects to allow the circulation of positive chi, which directly affects and uplifts your own energy field; setting into motion the law of attraction.

An essential first step for kick-starting positive energy flow is clearing the clutter, which blocks the flow of chi. Embark on a thorough cleaning of your home and workspace. This means not just piling things into the corner, but clearing out home cupboards and closets, office filing cabinets, computer hard drives, organizing business cards and if possible, changing the color of paint and the artwork from depressing to uplifting, to shift the energies.

The next step is to work with the Bagua map in your home and workspace. When applying this map to your own space; the far left corner of a house and each individual room is the Wealth/Prosperity area, and this area in both your home and office deserves special consideration to power up the Feng Shui energy to attract abundance.

In analyzing this area of each room in your home or office to attract prosperity, consider the following:

• Ensure the area is clear of clutter, well maintained and has the color purple somewhere.

• Place crystals, lights or candles, and healthy flowers or plants there.

• Write down your intention(s) for more money and place this piece of paper in the area, which doesn’t have to be seen, but can be placed underneath or behind an object.

• Your office or workspace should have some type of action going on in the Prosperity corner, and along with being clean and orderly, have uplifting pictures, crystals or a lamp, and functioning equipment like a fax machine or computer is very good, generating a lot of energy happening in that area.

• Spruce up your book shelf to allow more prosperous energy to flow, with books about building wealth such as “Rich Dad Poor Dad” or other positive topics.

• To compliment the above mentioned Feng Shui cures in your Prosperity corner, another area to apply the same cures to is the corner of Helpful People, which is directly opposite the Prosperity corner. For example; from the entrance to a room, the Prosperity area is the far left corner and the Helpful People area is the corner directly to your right, forming a diagonal line across the room between the two corners.

The Power of the Subconscious Mind

When you want more money to come into your life, you need to be clearly focused to encourage the Laws of Attraction. Your conscious mind needs to see what your needs are very clearly, and the next step is to integrate those thoughts into your subconscious mind. Think of your mind like a magnet and know that your thoughts can help bring your goal to you faster.

An example of a positive, affirming statement is “I am happy that I now have additional wealth brought into my life.” Or “All of my needs are met, and more money comes to me every day.” A plan of action would then be writing down this positive statement or focus seventeen (17) times before you go to sleep, and again seventeen times when you get up in the morning. These times of day is when your mind is in the Alpha state, allowing your conscious thoughts to take root in your subconscious more easily. It takes twenty-one (21) days of repeated writing to shift your thoughts or habits.

The powerful combination of good Feng Shui and harnessing the power of your thoughts will boost your “own economy”. Try it and see for yourself!