Here in Virginia the weather changed from summer one day to fall the next. Then came the cold rains. That made it feel like winter! When I talked to my husband last night he told me that there were six mental health workers helping suicidal clients at the emergency room of a hospital in the town where he works as an emergency services mental health clinician. He said it happens every year about this time.  When the weather turns cold, gray and wet people get depressed and feel desperate enough to consider suicide.

I can certainly identify with a dip in mood with the change of seasons from summer to fall and fall to winter. When the skies turn gray and the air turns cold my chi (energy) drops. It is particularly hard to keep a positive attitude. It is so much easier to ruminate on things I cannot control, to give in to fear.

If you think about what is happening from an energy perspective, at this time of year the warmth of summer gives way to the cool air of fall, a drop in energy.  The angle of the sun changes and the days grow shorter, so the abundant light of summer becomes the more muted and limited light of fall, a drop in energy. And finally, the brilliant greens, reds, pinks, blues and yellows of trees and gardens turn to browns and golds, again a drop in energy in the landscape. Feng shui teaches that everything is connected. If the energy in the landscape changes, is it any wonder that our chi also drops?

When the chi outside drops, I work hard to keep my focus on what I can control, my own chi. It is especially important at this time of year that I get enough rest so I’m less likely to succumb to fearful thoughts. I meditate almost every day to keep myself focused on what is really important. I add warmth and color to my days by spending time with people who have good chi and by doing things that lift my chi like walking my dogs, clearing clutter (it’s fun for me!), and enjoying a meal with good friends. I also make sure that my home is filled with all the light, color and warmth that I can no longer get outside.

What can you do to lift your chi? One way to start is by listing the many things that make you feel grateful. Another is to fill a bag with things you no longer love or use and drop it off at a charity. Not only will your space feel better, but you’ll also find that you will feel lighter and have more energy. Or, you could make yourself a cup of coffee or tea and enjoy a good book and some good music. The chi of the landscape may be waning, but you can keep your chi high in the comfort and coziness of your homes and relationships. 

Comfort is associated with balance. We feel most comfortable when our lives are in balance. Looking at our world today and the chaotic busy lives we lead, you might think that we are most comfortable with busyness. But, few of us would say we’re comfortable with the pace of our lives. I suspect we have lost sight of balance and don’t know how to get it back.

One way to consciously commit to a life of balance and the comfort it brings is to strive for balance in the energies of our homes and offices. What the heck does that mean?  Feng shui teaches that what we have in our living and working spaces anchors energies that affect what happens in our lives. So, if we want more balance in our lives, let’s create more balance in our environments.

We know what being out of balance looks like in our personal lives. We have too much work and too little play, too much work and too little family time, too much rushing around and too little relaxation.  

Let’s see what being out of balance in your environment looks like. If we look at being out of balance as having too much of something that is not desirable and too little of something that is desirable and apply it to our living spaces, what we find are spaces with too much stuff and too little storage, too much darkness and not enough light, too much clutter and not enough order. What immediately comes to mind for me is closets packed to the gills, attics full of stuff that is rarely touched, piles of paper and other clutter, more things than storage room. Other ways it shows up is having too much furniture for the size of a room, rooms that have white walls, and rooms that have very little color in them. 

Balance, by the way, is relative. Balance for one person may not be balance for another. For example, a few months ago I visited a friend who had taken great pains to create a lovely, comfortable, clutter-free home.  Everything in the space was carefully chosen to be in the space. There was plenty of storage space for all of her belongings even in her small house. I was so impressed. And yet, her house seemed stark to me. It may have been perfect for her, but I needed more in my space to soften it up and make it feel cozy.  

Seeing her space, however, and feeling the pleasure that comes from a space with fewer items talking to me (the energy of things actually communicates with us), I realized that I did want more of that. I came home motivated to go through parts of my house and clear out things I no longer wanted or used. By looking at her house, which to me seemed a little stark, I could see that mine, though attractive and generally comfortable, was still out of balance in terms of the ratio of stuff to space. 

Do you have balance in your life and in your home? The question to ask is “how comfortable am I?” How comfortable am I with the pace of my life? And, how comfortable am I in my home? You are the only one who can improve the balance. Take at least one step today to bring your life into better balance! 

Sometimes client cancellations are really blessings. Recently a client cancelled and I was left with a morning to do whatever I wanted. Since I’m self-employed, and clients are my bread and butter, you might wonder, “Is she crazy?” What can be good about a loss of revenue?

In this case the client rescheduled for an open slot in the afternoon. So, that helped me relax. But, what was really wonderful was that I had just gotten back from being out of town and I was itching to do some clearing, especially in my office. I am an organizer and feng shui practitioner and I KNOW that lack of clarity in my space affects clarity in my head, heart and soul. But, the last few weeks had been chaotic and things had begun to build up. I KNEW I needed to clear because I could feel myself twitching every time I entered my office, every time I THOUGHT about my office. The schedule adjustment was really a gift from God. Free time all to myself! No husband. No one I had to call. The time was mine to do what I wanted.

I had fun with the clearing because I let my spirit guide me. I first found myself annoyed by all the little animal figurines on my spice rack. I very carefully considered each piece and whether I really loved it. Figurines are not useful, so the only way I was going to keep any one of them was if I really loved it. Loved it for it’s beauty, cuteness, it’s authenticity, it’s association with the person who gave it to me. I sorted out a whole bag that immediately went into a bag for Good Will.

Next I found myself annoyed by all the little photos and slips of paper falling out of my Daily Guideposts. I keep Christmas photos of special family members, friends and clients and their children in my Daily Guideposts to remind me to pray for them. Over time I had accumulated duplicates and that day they were making themselves known! I decided to get real about them too! Out went a pile of photos and scraps of paper that no longer spoke to me. Yes, it’s OK to pitch pictures!

By then I was ready to tackle the really big pile of stuff that was bugging me in my office.  I had pulled several bins of audio-CDs and tapes out of my car. My car is ANOTHER story! I was determined to create a new order from the chaos within those bins. I carefully evaluated the content of each CD or tape. Was I still interested in the content?  Did I get anything out of it the first time I listened to it? Did I think I would benefit from listening to it again? Again, I got real with myself. I ended up with a stack of CDs to give away, a bunch of cassette tapes to pitch, a bin of precious CDs and tapes that I knew I wouldn’t listen to any time soon that I to stored in my office storage cabinet, and just one full bin of really good stuff to listen to that I took back out to my car. There was one other grouping of CDs to store that I needed to reorganize by category so I could easily find those associated with speaking and business development. That little pile was a project to do after I purchased a few more CD cases. I left that out to do over the weekend. Whew! 

You should have seen me during that process. With each area that I cleared I got more energized. You see, every single item I examined was alive with chi (energy). When I examined each piece I was checking out its chi. Was the item still alive with chi for me?  And, was the chi positive or negative? If it held positive chi and I had space to store it, I kept it. Those that either clearly had negative chi, didn’t make me feel good, made me twitch in some way, or seemed to have no chi at all, I let go of. When I let something go, it released the energy it was holding. That energy was then available to me! My energy level just kept going up and up! What fun!

Now, to be perfectly honest, not every moment of that clearing process was comfortable for me. The smaller clearings of the figurines and the photos were easy because the volume was limited. But, when I got to the tapes and CDs, I really had to work with myself to keep myself from running away because of feelings of overwhelm that threatened to shut me down. Fortunately I knew that the discomfort was only temporary. I knew that the feelings of accomplishment and the visual order would be a big payoff for my perseverance. I did what I do with clients who have huge projects, I kept my head down and didn’t look at the big picture. I made myself focus where I was instead of focusing on how much more I had to do. That would only lead to overwhelm and shutting down. I also dealt with big items first so I could see rapid progress.  

Is my office perfect now? Certainly not! It will always be a work in progress because my business and my life are works in progress. But, it does feel better. And, getting clear about those projects helped me get clear enough to sit down and share the experience with you!  

Enjoy clearing to get clear!  

Do you know someone who has a hard time letting go of things?  That would probably describe all of us at one time or another.  But, there really is a range of letting go from those who have very little trouble at one end to those who are unwilling to release almost everything on the other end.  If you’ve ever known someone at the extreme end, those who are willing to live in utter chaos and filth, penned in by their stuff, I am sure you have wondered what is going on with them that they can’t let go and enjoy a more comfortable and clean life.  

I remember the first time I walked into the space of a woman who had called me to help her because she was at risk of being evicted from her apartment.  It had been declared a fire hazard.  The sight I saw took my breath away.  Things were piled up in every room with only small paths to walk through.  Paper had been thrown beside her bed and was at least six inches deep.  People ask me if I ever get overwhelmed when I work with clients.  Heck yeah!  This was one of those occasions.  All I knew to do was pray for guidance about where to start.  There were so many things to be done.  I just needed help to figure out what was the best use of our time, energy and her money.  Thanks goodness my angels came through for me and I was able to begin by breaking down packing boxes that took up a lot of space.  Then I was off and running for years and years. . .I still work with this client!

Why did my client have so much stuff in her space?  Why does anyone do that to themselves?  There are many possible reasons, but just recently I heard a possible reason that made me stop in my tracks.   Ekhardt Tolle, in his new book, A New Earth, states that “when you feel dead to life within you, you look outside yourself to try to feel alive.”  I wonder if people who for whatever reason are disconnected from themselves, not only seek things to fill the void, but then they begin to view those things as part of themselves.  If you view something as part of yourself, not just an inanimate object, of course it would be difficult to let it go.  And, if you go a step further and suppose that people who have traumatic experiences with people may have learned that things are safer than people, those things then take on the significance of being people substitutes.  How could you think of throwing away something that you perceive has saved your life?

For those of us who can pitch with ease, it’s important to understand that there is complexity to the attachment to things.  And, it takes much more than rational urging to let go.  

These days we are running so fast with work, with children, with outside obligations that we often neglect our personal space. Taking care of the house is often at the bottom of the list. It is the item that we can let go if time runs out. The chaos is not limited to the home, although it happens more often at home because our energy is used up everywhere else. There are fewer perceived consequences for delaying the tending of our homes.

Somehow we have lost touch with the reality that we have only a limited amount of energy to spend each day. We just keep running as fast as we can, doing the next thing that needs doing. We don’t design our lives, we endure them. And, as we speed along, our stuff falls by the wayside, debris that tells the truth of our hectic way of being. It says, we are doing too much. It says, we are not making time to take care of our space and ourselves.  

Are we happy living a tornado of a life? I wonder.

Clutter and chaos are symptoms of a bigger problem. They are symptoms that we have gotten swept away by the insane pace of life that we live in America. More is better, doing more, having more, being more. They are symptoms of being unconscious in our lives and of neglecting ourselves. Who would choose that?  

A first step to move beyond the chaos that we have created is to take a good look at it. Take pictures of it. Tape them to your bathroom mirror. Carry them around with you. Then allow yourself to feel whatever comes up when you look at the disorder. Most people feel shame, embarrassment or overwhelm.  Allow those feelings. They are normal.  Ask yourself, “Do I want to continue to feel this way? Is this the life I want for me and my family?” If your answer is no, you have just taken the first important step in a new direction.

The next step is to make a decision to do whatever you can to change the conditions that create the chaos you are experiencing. That may involve talking to friends about your decision and the changes you intend to make. It may require hiring professionals, a coach, a professional organizer, to help you act on your decision. Do it! It’s time to claim YOUR life consciously. Restore order. Restore sanity, and get ready to fly!

Feng Shui teaches that everything is connected. That is so apparent during this time of economic uncertainty. Everywhere I go I hear people lamenting the state of our economy and talking about how they are being affected by the wild swings in the stock market. Businesses are slowing down. Some businesses are failing. Fear seems to be spreading like wildfire!

I believe what we focus on we attract to us. It is tempting to jump on the bandwagon and get swept away by the tide of negative news. I know if I watch the news, read the paper and participate in conversations about all the negative things happening in the financial world, I too will succumb to fear. Fear is perhaps the most common form of negative energy. Fear makes me contract and attract more negatvie energy into my life.

Instead of participating in the fear feeding frenzy going on around me, I work hard every day to look for and celebrate the good in all aspects of my life. I find it in special relationships with people, in respectful behavior between people, in the weather, in business opportunities, in nature, in the antics of my beloved dogs, Jake and Oz. The list goes on and on. If I look for positive things, I’ll find them. If I focus on negative things, I’ll find them too. Not only will I find them, I will attract more of them!

Today as educational coordinator of my BNI group (Business Network International), I shared my belief in the power of staying positive. As I spoke I could feel an emotional sigh go through the room. Several people told me they appreciated the reminder and the permission to swim against the tide of negativity. One member told the group that he and his wife had agreed to have a “negative fast” for one day this past weekend. They agreed to refrain from negative conversation of any type on Sunday. He was amazed to observe that the rest of the family joined in as well. See, positive energy does attract more of the same!

You have a choice! What do you want more of in your life? Positive or negative? If you choose positive, seek it and live it every day, you will be a light in this time of darkness and uncertainty. Feng Shui teaches that everything is connected. Your one light will spread positive energy to everything around you. Your light really matters because it will attract more of the same. Help us light up our world!

When life gets complicated, this happens!

Too Much Going On to Get Organized!