Self-help is a seductive place to hide out, safe from all scrutiny, while you do the noble deed of learning to love yourself more.

After all, what is really more valuable than mastering self-love, even if it means hundreds of hours of immersion in processes that take over your life and conveniently give you reason to not do things like: work, love other people, experience life or make art. 

Does this sound familiar:

Since you are still a work in progress with a racing mind (more meditation needed), the ability to attract lots of bad dates (still have to work on those internal issues that bring these pull these people into life),  a lack of total certainty on life’s purpose (perhaps another retreat is in order, this one where we clarify purpose?) and perhaps some energetic non-alignment (acupuncture, yoga, and hours of energy work aren’t quite tapping into the core issue)….. with all these things going on, it’s a very good reason to take it easy and hang back and wait. That risky business decision is way too big a risk when it is Mercury Retrograde!   And the people you met at a party where you weren’t quite nice were not all vampires, some were wanting to meet you but you were too closed off… too much involved with everything wrong to see everything right in the people around you.

I am well aware that this blog is a massive tribute to the best of DIY energy work, artistry, design, feng shui and, yes, mainly science-based self-help philosophy.

This is not a space for you to come and hide.

I hid for many many years.  After a series of relationships ended in my final walking-out-the-door without a sense of who I was, feeling I wasted much of a decade with men who were just wrong for me, not sure what power I gave away and what I still had….I went deep. Deep into self-help.  I stopped having normal jobs. I reasoned that I needed to devote myself to this exceptional self-fixing journey.  I fell into debt, all the time heading to resorts, to cruise ships filled with self-help in the Carribean, to day-long seminars and symposiums.  Nothing I was doing did anything but give me a momentary boost and then leave me flat… more broke… and more lost. Lucky for me, I almost accidentally killed myself during a “cleanse” and wound up in the hospital.

Rock bottom really is a good place to start rebuilding when your life has been half-fantasy or all-fantasy for a long time.

I had to build. Build my body.  Build my days.  Build my career (I hadn’t had one yet!)…. Build my friendships…

I couldn’t hide in self-help.  I had to figure out how to live.

Living is, in my experience, the best self-help ever.

Use all the homeopathy, energy work, feng shui, self help and more to amplify, recharge and find your balance… As you move through life, you will find much more of your purpose in action, your true calling will emerge as you do things…

You can do your work without clary sage aromatherapy and a full-scale feng shui makeover.  That said, both will make your days lighter, more inspired and next-leveled, if you will… but even before that time comes, you have to make things.  You have to be productive.  It doesn’t matter if you are living your life’s purpose yet or not…. you still have to live it.

My friend who is a powerhouse artist was talking to me about work-life balance.  She’s close, but decided it was a lifetime endeavor to keep re-adjusting to create more balance , not something to have every moment as a pre-requisite to doing anything in your life that is valuable.

You will never ever be perfect… but the best way to help yourself is to actually start doing things to be productive in your life.

Your heartbreak will go away, your house will get remodeled as you go, your energy work will get done.  You heal faster in action than in stagnation.  Circulation heals things.  Staying still creates dis-ease and, yes, disease.

Are you using self-help to hide, in a somewhat noble and ironic fashion?!

Today, I challenge you to take a really big personal risk and start taking action to do, to make or to experience something that you would typically say you just aren’t ready to do.  You are ready… as ready as you will ever be!

xoxo Dana

 

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And, if you want to dive in to your own personalized feng shui in a modern, practical way, Say hello to Feng Shui 101.  Its the guide I made for you to create your own personalized feng shui at home, in the office, wherever you may be… in 8 weeks.  It’s not filled with strict rules or what you “must” do.  Its filled with information, questions, exercises and even videos and classes to help you confidently create amazing spaces with killer feng shui and live with more flow.   Learn more about the 8-week feng shui adventure & grab your copy to get started right HERE…   And, as always, please let me know what happens!