feng shui

What better way to start the year off than with some fun, quick desk design tips to help you get laser-focused and super-inspired for the year ahead? 

Try one, or all, of the following feng shui guidelines and see if they make a difference in your energy, focus and work habits in the coming weeks and months:

1.    Clean it like You Mean It.

Cleaning is one of the foundations of feng shui. While perhaps less-than-glamorous, creating a desk-cleaning ritual can be the very best place to start.  I’m not just referring to wiping down your work surface, but rather than mindful, methodical, detailed cleaning that brings a sweet sort of satisfaction.

Get out the Q-Tips. Pull out the can of compressed air. Dust off the tiny details around your keyboard and computer equipment. Then open the drawers, and pull out the sweeper and dust-rag. Make sure that both the inside and outside of your desk are spick-n-span clean. It’s the quickest, easiest, cheapest way to make your desk – and you – feel awake and refreshed!!!

While your basic feng shui studies might lead you to some powerful design insights – the ability to shift the energy in your home and office in powerful ways - there are levels of energetic influences that rarely get talked about in the feng shui world.

Energy (that mysterious, invisible, powerful stuff that makes up everything we see, think, and feel) sometimes gets overlooked simply because it’s less visible, tangible and quantifiable. To understand energy is like trying to understand God itself: any words we put to it just leave us feeling like we’ve missed the spiritual boat.

But what we CAN do is study the effects of this mysterious stuff upon our seemingly real, everyday lives. And that leads me to delve into three different types of energy that can make a huge (yet often overlooked) impact on our outlook, opportunities and openness throughout life.

1. Residual Energy:

Day after day, month after month, and year after year, we live our lives and emit energy with each up or down, high or low, stress or success. This energy, whether we can see it or not, starts to build up pathways, patterns and piles of energy excess - like that filmy slime on the sides of the tub! This comes not only from your own personal experiences, but also from the build-up from previous tenants or your nearby neighbors.

The effects of this build up can show up as stuck patterns, repeating cycles and limiting habits that keep you from living your life full out. It can hold beliefs in place that can make you feel helpless - doing everything to change and grow, yet falling time after time back into well-worn invisible ruts.

Before hiring someone like myself for professional space-clearing help, consider doing the following to begin lighten your home’s energetic load:

• Clean like God is coming over for dinner - in, under, around and behind everything, as thoroughly and mindfully as possible

• Purge all the clutter from your cabinets, cupboards, closets and closed spaces

• Paint walls, refinish floors or somehow resurface your home’s outermost layers

• Use high-quality essential oils to help boost and build up the positive Ch’i