Clarity, Beauty, and Joy

When you think of Feng Shui, what comes to mind?

Do you think of beautiful rooms, a home that feels like a hug, or do you think of gaining clarity in terms of what you want in life?

All the clutter in our homes, the imbalanced energy, and the things that block the flow of energy is a byproduct of mental clutter. There’s this interesting relationship between the ways we feel stuck in our lives, and the way we often keep ourselves stuck through our environments.

You see, the outer world is like a mirror of what’s going on internally. Now, at this point you might be thinking of someone’s immaculately clean home, or even patting yourself on the back for being clutter free. But even when there’s no clutter in sight, there can be clutter in hidden places (drawers and closets? Yeah those too), but another thing for people to consider is who’s life we’re living.

What I’m saying is even a person with a really clean home. Not a messy drawer or cabinet in the place, can be living a life that’s wrong for them. They might be a high achiever who’s always doing all the right things, making their families proud, but are they happy?

I hope the answer is yes, but there are more successful people who are miserable than successful people who are happy. Just like people who live modest lives without a lot of high power titles, the level of success by societies standards, doesn’t tell the whole story.

We all know people who think you must have sold your soul if you’re rich. We also know people who think you can’t be happy if you have a blue collar job with hands that always look a little dirty.

Similarly, we’ve all come across people who think that the only way to be happy is through “good honest work” with the dirty hands to show it. And we know people who think that money will erase all my concerns, “if I just had enough money I’d be happier”. 

None of these beliefs are helpful. What is helpful is clarity. If you love working with your hands, taking a machine that’s not working and bringing it back to live, then that is your path. If finding a way to create something that can shared around the world in a way that illuminates a problem and the solution for people is your jam, then don’t fix machines. 

But we’re all brought up in environments where people give us their opinions as if they’re absolutes. Our young formative minds soak that up as fact. 

Annoyingly, those of us living in first world countries also have the challenge of way too many options. How do you find the perfect path? There are so many. People might notice you’re good at something you hate doing, then you feel like you should do that thing. 

You’ve probably been told to follow your passion. I’m just going to say it. That’s a load of crap. Very few of us feel some passion for some kind of work, and the people who do are already on top of everything which means they’re probably not reading this. 

So what do the rest of us do? We try things, we don’t expect them to feel effortless and magical because that’s not how things work. Start to look for common threads. Follow your curiosity, develop your own sense of self and your skills. When you start to notice common threads, take note of how they weave together.

For me, for example, I noticed I kept coming back to some kind of teaching. I love sharing information. I get a thrill out of sharing information that ends up really helping someone. So it’s not any specific topic that thrills me, it’s finding out I helped someone.

So for me I need to make sure I share information that helps people, preferably in a format where I get to find out it helped people, and then repeat. If I help people through a format that I don’t get that rush of hearing from people who’ve used what I taught them, I get sad. 

My podcast is kind of like that. There’s this new app called Clubhouse, where I do get instant feedback. If I didn’t occasionally hear from someone that they liked a podcast episode, or that the message helped them on a given day, then I couldn’t keep doing it. I’ll often lose steam, think about giving it up, but then someone will write me and give me enough fuel to go until my next wave of doubt about that platform.

What’s your thing? Do you have clarity? This is a cool thing about Feng Shui, this mirror of our mind works both ways. Since we create a space that mirrors our inner landscape,  we can change our outer environment to free up the flow of energy inside us. 

If you’re feeling stuck, clean something out, donate a bunch of stuff. Do some repairs. If everything is already clean, then question where you’re ideas of success came from, and if that framework is right for you. Maybe you need to disrupt everything, be a rebel and change something big. Only you can tell for sure.

Want to improve my day? Take one of my courses, and tell me how it helped you.

*Typos and errors provided at no additional charge, for your entertainment.