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!

I don’t know why – do you?

So have we been setting goals people? Fed up with me yet? Are you thinking – “I have made goals. I have listened to all of the greats. Brian Tracey shares my bed, Dale carnegie  hikes a lift in to work with me, Anthony Robbins is in my kitchen: I am taking their advice BUT I still am not seeing the money rolling in?”

In fact I am sure that you all have goals. If you fancy yourself to be in the top 5% of the population – then I am willing to bet that you have goals written down in a diary, on the walls. Like me – you have probably even dabbled in the vision board. I am in the top 5%. My money will follow one day.

I have lots of goals. And sure enough, as Anthony Robbins launched in to his chapter on goal making; I rolled my eyes at the long road in front of me, and grunted. ‘Here we go again…” I groaned.

But he shook me up. There and then – in my car at 7am in the morning, as I went to collect my ‘mothers help’, I nearly veered off the road. It was a real EUREKA moment. Anthony Robbins in his sexy funny voice (yeah I’m hooked); asked me WHY was I following these goals that I had made?

Huh? I was stumped and I paused Mr Robbins for a long moment. Well I thought- I want to help poor people, do something about world peace, save the animals and be able to wear a really small bikini. And just to add to that, as an afterthought of course, I wouldn’t mind having lots of the green stuff!

Well, I wasn’t entirely sure if truth be told. What are my fundamental reasons for wanting to  be wealthy or at least being successful? Usually, when we achieve a goal or project  we have a driving force. Occasionally it is a monetary reward, but more often than not, there are other drivers. I mean, is a massive house and butler enough of a driving force? Well it isn’t for me. Your ‘why’ needs to be deeper – it needs to go further. Your ‘why’ – needs to motivate you for long enough.

For example, when I was a teenager I was mercilessly bullied by my cousins as I was Miss More Than Porky, and they were Miss World wannabes. In the end they were my drivers. I just wanted to lose weight to ‘show’ them. And it worked. The satisfaction was priceless. The ‘why’ in this situation, went to my core. I used my negative emotions to achieve a goal Make use of your negativity, it’s there for a reason. Every emotion is.

As a people, us British, are uncomfortable with admitting that we desire anything. Most employees have burning passions for art or literature. Some want to show their bosses the door and go and venture out on their own. But more often than not keep our wants wrapped up in the dark corners of our psyche. We don’t want to allow anyone, including ourselves, to think about what it is we really want – and why. It is safer to live in a bubble of daily monotony -than to express our innermost thoughts and risk failing.

It’s fear of looking stupid if we don’t get what we want. It’s fear of being mocked – or worse still its the fear that if we don’t achieve our dreams – we may suddenly realise that – that’s it. Nothing is going to improve in our lives.

In fact it’s just easier to roll over and watch Jeremy Kyle to make ourselves feel better. In fact, you may be grateful that your life is almost regal compared to that of those atrocious items of people that grace his studio.

In order to succeed your ‘why’ needs to be powerful in every way. It needs to include an image. You need to be able to see why you need to achieve your goals. For example; as an employee, I had no need to want change – until I had children. Naively I didn’t think I would ever want out of the rat-race, but as soon as I held my first born – reality dawned.

And now, with two children, my ‘why’s’ are for them, and my family. I want to be there for my children. I don’t want their childhood years blurred in to oblivion through tiredness and a frazzled nature. So much pressure comes from being a full-time working mum; I know I have been there. Motherhood a is full-time job whether you work or not. I want to be able to create a living from home.

The other enormous ‘why’ I have, has to do with my more ‘mature’ years to come; where false teeth and hot water bottles will be the norm! Imagine being old and relying on a pension. The thought of living in a cold, dirty house is awful. Yuck. Horrifying. I want my retirement to be a holiday. I want to enjoy those years. If I don’t try and live my dreams now – it will be too late then. I don’t want to EVER say ‘what if I’d…’ So I am doing it now.

I’m putting all my spare time in to me and the future of my beautiful family. I have my reasons and by God’s grace I have found what I am destined to do. I could do it around the clock. Despite my lack of sleep due to a baby, I don’t ‘want’ to sleep. I have only just realised what it means to find something you are passionate about.

Give yourself time too. As you sit at your desk at work: work on what you want and what your reasons are. FEEL your reasons. Write them out. SHOUT them out. Embrace negative emotions: USE ANGER to get busy. Use JEALOUSY to inspire you. Then repeat the process whenever you remember.You must work on yourself before your dreams will begin to materialise. You could be doing the job of your dreams – if only you’d let yourself dream.

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