Feng Shui: An Alternative Route to Success

This article is going a little new age and I’m going to try and help you bring a little magic to your business lives and office space. So how can we make this year more productive?

Your workspace, office or desk at work, is often something that you give little, if any, thought to. However, it is the place where you will make life changing decisions, write inspiring articles, write those cheques, pen that book or file away any receipts. All of these activities carry with them such significance in your lives, so therefore it makes perfect sense to devote a lot of time and energy to making your ‘special space’ – perfect.

Energy is everywhere around us, it flows all around. We are energy. Every object is energy. This is a scientific fact – not something that I made up. So bearing this in mind, it is important in the way that we conduct our businesses. If there is positive energy flowing around us as we work then it will be reflected in our daily work.

Think back to a time when you entered a building or a room that had a ‘cold’ feeling,or an eerie atmosphere. Perhaps you remember a time that you went in to a house and were immediately uneasy? Maybe another individual has this effect upon you? These feelings may lie in our intuition, or our ‘gut’ instincts – however they are usually caused by certain energies.

Therefore, you owe it to yourself, your business and your employees to think about honouring your desk and workspace and making it burst with the right sort of ambience and atmosphere.

You must make moves to give the appropriate consideration to the space that leads to your development, the completion of a business project or an assignment.

In the Eastern world – there are entire cities erected on the principles of Vastu Shastra. Vastu Shastra is the Indian version of Feng Shui. It is the older and original version of its more modern and ‘chinese’ counterpart.

For the purposes of this article I will be focusing on the work and office place – however, there are plenty of useful books on the subject for you to delve in to at your leisure.

Your office and study space should be inviting, cosy, and soothing. It must feel easy to settle into and inspire you at the same time. So I have put together some very basic Vastu principles that will hopefully get your juices flowing and will be fruitful to your business life. So let’s commence with my favourite topic: clutter

Clutter:

Clutter is the bane of most people’s existence. According to Vastu, the primary way to improve the abundance of material wealth to your home or office is to remove, and keep on top of clutter.

Clutter just creates a stagnant energy. Those with clutter free surroundings are much more productive than others who battle with clutter every day. Clutter creates obstacles to your success. There is nothing very magical about this.

Clutter stifles creativity by the energy it releases to the way it looks. It creates a sense of unease and this can hinder your progress. So do everyone a favour and get rid of it!

So, the clutter has been dealt with, here are some further tips to create a more productive workspace:

• Place your desk so that you face north, especially when you are doing finances, paying bills or accepting transactions.
• Try to face East for creativity. It may sound a tad barmy but it is to do with energy fields.
• Perhaps you should think about painting your work area a colour that makes you feel inspired, creative and calm. Choose between the colours that Vastu recommends. White purifies and heals. Violet calms and soothes. Indigo supports the development of intuitive qualities and can be used as an accent in mediation rooms. Blue can be used to inspire, aid personal growth and bring peace of mind. Green is the most predominant colour in nature. Green has purifying and reassuring qualities. It is also supposed have renewing qualities and it stimulates learning.
• Try to add plants to your study or office, this will support the growth and prosperity in your business as well as purifying the air. Yellow can aid concentration.
• Keep your study as clean as humanely as possible, to invite in positivity. Create a need within yourself and try to create a space for your office that every pore of your being wishes to enter. This will automatically aid in putting behind you endless hours of procrastination.
• Another technique to make your study and office more inviting is to carefully choose objects that speak to you. Organise groups of important objects together. You may want to place pictures of friends and family on the wall together, this reminds you of why you’re working and keeps at the forefront of your mind that – life is not just about work, but also about love and giving.
• Perhaps pictures of nature will stimulate the desire for beauty and perfection in your own work
• Place a clear crystal pyramid on your desk for positive energies and creative flow and energy.
• On the north-east corner of my desk you will find a small B&Q bamboo water fountain. Fountains at work or home enliven the atmosphere. Falling water produces the same effects on the nervous system that you experience near a waterfall or the ocean…Moving water is also known to enhance creative thinking, as well as calming and purifying the environment. It looks like the Romans knew this, as the city of Rome has many wonderful waterfall.
• Finally, I have several demi – gods scattered around my study. The goddess Saraswati sits calmly on my windowsill with her sitar lying across her lap – she has her notebook in the other hand. Lord Ganesha, with his elephant head, peers knowingly at my chair – promising me to remove my obstacles and helping me to increase my mental prowess.

So gather together all that you value and love, be creative and build a space that beckons you every day of 2011!