Hi guys! Welcome to episode 145 of the “Wildly Successful lifestyle” podcast!
I’m almost halfway through my FENG SHUI course and let me tell you. Just like everything in life, you have to take what works for you and leave behind what doesn’t otherwise you’ll drive yourself crazy. So that’s what I’m doing. I love understanding not only how we affect our space but mainly how our space affects us.
We are all so busy…some with kids, some with work or parents or school or maybe even all of that combined. Whatever it is, our home should be a place we look forward to. Bottom line. You deserve to have that. We are in a huge renovation right now and I gotta tell you…sometimes I don’t want to be here and I love my house. I don’t want to feel that way about my home, but now I really understand how a chaotic environment affects us.
It’s so important for our space to be a place of respite or refuge. But more than that, the way we live in our home actually affects our habits! Sometimes we are working against ourselves and we don’t even know it.
How do we start to make sure our home is supporting us? And this isn’t just La la land stuff. It’s things we can do easily that maybe we didn’t really realize was a big deal but subconsciously it’s a big deal. So I thought I would list a few quick things that may spark an idea for something you can do quickly to make a big difference.
I never really realized how major The Front door is. Do you use it regularly? Do you have plants to welcome you home or welcome guests in? Are the plants alive? That’s kind of a big deal. I recently had my evergreens start turning brown, I kind of ignored it at first and then of course after reading all the downsides to letting that kind of energy hang out, not to mention the toll it takes on your own energy because you’re having to constantly think about changing them out, why not just let them go? It’s better to have nothing than to have dead plants. I just did that and now I have big planters with nothing in them, and that isn’t so bad for a minute. How about the welcome mat, is it clean and not worn out? Is the door working and freshly painted? A lot of people never use the front door because they go in through their garage. I’ve seen that many times where the front door seems dormant. It does make the house feel off somehow. The front door is the mouth of your home, it has to breathe. So, if your front door isn’t welcoming you home, that’s usually a pretty easy fix. Something to think about.
This next one is HUGE. Clean windows. This alone can change the way you feel about your whole house. If you don’t want to pay someone to do it, you can go to lows and get the windex bottle that attaches to your water hose and wa la. My husband is kind of crazy about having our windows cleaned, which I have to admit I love.
How about clutter and let’s not take on the whole house let’s just start with your main point of entry for your family. Is it off the garage? That space as soon as you walk in from the garage or into your front door. Did you know that having clutter in your immediate entry area actually encourages bad behavior? Ok, not REALLY bad behavior but it just tells your brain it’s ok to drop things here and keep going because well that’s what you’ve been doing. When your space is clutter free and organized, think about it, you don’t want to mess it up by unloading everything and leaving it! So you’re actually encouraging and maybe even creating new habits by organizing your point of entry! Just doing this one thing could create a new habit without you even realizing it.
One last thing and I know I like to talk about this, but if you have little things that you have started to ignore that can be easily fixed like crooked pictures, burned out light bulbs, piled up mail, or dead plants or flowers. These sub consciously take a toll on not just you but everyone in the house. My husband had a shirt that a button popped off and I think it was on the chair in our room for 3 weeks before my brain saw it again and was like…what in the world??? Why have I not done something with this? So, I took it today and boy did that make me feel good. It took about 5 minutes. Pretty sure I’d been looking at it for 3 weeks but I had gotten used to seeing it…you know how that goes.
So take a fresh look around in a state of awareness because so often we stop seeing things but our subconscious doesn’t and that messes with us, that fresh look with awareness may be just what you need for a little win this week.
By the way, Your environment is more than your home, it’s your car, it’s your office and it’s the food you eat and the things you drink. There’s more to it than even that but those are the main ones we control. These are all sort of shaping us into who we are and they spill over onto each other. How’s that going? If you did what you are currently doing, in 5 years are you going to be healthier, happier, more relaxed? Is your home going to be in great shape because you maintain it? I read one article that says to name your home because it makes it come to life and it makes it where you view it as something you care about, which of course you do, we all do but sometimes we neglect it and it shows.
Our environment influences us. Being wildly successful doesn’t mean you have to live in a gigantic home on a beach somewhere. It means being the best version of you that you can possibly imagine. It means making your home a place you love coming home to, your office a place you look forward to and your body, a place that you cherish.
My challenge to you this week is to Take a fresh look at your environment. Your home, your office, your car, and your body. Take a fresh look, with awareness. Are you neglecting them? Pick one thing in each area you will do this week to show that space you care. For your home maybe you quickly declutter your point of entry, for your office maybe you add a green plant, it will be different for each of us, but you probably already know in the back of your mind what it is you need to do, this just may be the cue that it’s time to do it. I love you guys and I’ll talk to you in a few days!
