Mar

Feng Shui Strategies – De-Clutter Your Life (cont’d)

Last time I wrote about freeing yourself up by eliminating unwanted thoughts and non-supportive people from your life. This time we’re going to continue to look at a few other things you might have in your life that don’t serve you.

Activities
Let’s start with the things that you do. If you’re like most people today you have a to-do list that’s a mile long. Sometimes people’s lists are so long they get overwhelmed just by looking at them and they may even become paralyzed by the thought of having so much that needs to get done.

I’d like to challenge you to take a good look at your list to see what you really need to do and what you could possibly let go of. A friend of mine taught me a really good system for evaluating a list – as you look through your list put a heart next to ( any items that you enjoy doing, put a $$ sign next to anything that makes you money. These are the things that you should focus on, because they benefit you in some way. Of course, if you have a heart sign and a $$ sign – you can put it to the top of the list!

Take a look at what’s left on your list – what could you let go of? What could you ask someone else to do for you? I’m sure if you’re honest that you don’t absolutely have to do all of the things that are on your list. Some of them could be passed to someone else and some perhaps don’t really need to be done at all. It’s amazing what you can eliminate when you have to.

Of course there may well be items on your list that you do have to do but you don’t enjoy them and they don’t bring you income, but you still have to do them. How urgent are they? Another technique is to mark the items on your list in terms of urgent (must be done right away), Important, but not urgent (must be done, but doesn’t have to be done immediately) and not important and not urgent – if it’s not important and not urgent then perhaps you can remove it.

The point is that you may have many things in your life that you’re doing because other people expect you to do them, even though you don’t particularly want to. You may be doing some things that cause you to feel resentment. There may be some things in your life that you’re doing because you’ve always done them, yet you don’t particularly want to be doing them any more, or you’d feel guilty if you stopped – let those go. If you’re really honest with yourself, I’m sure there are some activities that you can absolutely let go of.

Computer
When you’re de-cluttering your home, don’t forget your computer. It’s something that is often overlooked (I’m guilty of that myself) yet if you take a really good look you may find that your computer is full of stuff that you no longer need. I know mine is! Old e-mails, old files – things that are just taking up space. It’s just as important to pay attention to the space on your computer as it is to clutter in your home.

Emotional Clutter
This can certainly be a huge issue. What is emotional clutter? Anything that stops you from feeling calm and at peace. Emotions and feelings that stop you from enjoying life and appreciating what you have and who you are. Anything that says you’re not good enough, you don’t deserve, you’re not worthy. Any feelings of guilt or blame or judgment. Basically any feelings that are not good. If you don’t feel good very often try to get to the bottom of why that might be. What are the thoughts that go along with that?

This also ties back in to monitoring your thoughts – but your feelings, the emotions that you feel give you clues as to what limiting beliefs you may be hanging on to that do not serve you. Once you identify those beliefs you can change them or release them.

Ultimately, it’s important to be aware of what is taking up energy and space in your life. Whether it’s clutter in your environment, people who are not supportive, thoughts that are not positive, activities in your life that you don’t enjoy, old files on your computer or emotions that don’t feel good, all of these things take up energy and take up space. When you release them you allow that energy to return to you and you make space for the things you really want to come into your life. It’s very liberating.

So when you’re applying Feng Shui to your home, don’t forget all these other areas too. Working on your inner Feng Shui is just as important.

Share your thoughts or questions. We’d love to hear from you.

Linda Binns
The Feng Shui Success Strategist