I’m a change-maker, a change-lover and a change-believer.  I believe so completely that everything in the world can transform.  I believe that you can personally overcome any demons.  I know that habits can die, traumas can dissolve and everything in life can look and feel the way you want it to look.

There are things you can’t change.

That statement is so disruptive that I believed for a long time it wasn’t true.

You can not change other people, nor can you believe that your actions or their feelings will ever prompt them to change.

A lack of peace arrives when you can’t accept the present for what it is.  You live in a disconnect.  You’re living in your wishes.  That disconnect wears on your mind, your heart, your soul and yes, your home.  It rattles the core of your wellbeing.  It robs your attention and drains your greatness.

The lack of peace that arrives when you come up against a brick wall of what you can’t change that makes you feel unsafe and unsteady and you mistakenly believe that you can somehow change it or that it will magically change.

You can’t make people like, love or cherish you.  You certainly can’t control how anyone behaves, how anyone prioritizes you or how you are acknowledged.  You don’t have the ability to change anyone’s habits, addictions, fears, loves or core beliefs.

If you believe that your boss, your co-workers, your family, your partner or your friends will somehow magically become something other than they are- even if they say they want to be- you’ll always lack peace.  Those decisions to change come from within each and every one of those people. It’s their free will and there is nothing you can do anything about.  Absolutely nothing.

That doesn’t mean you have to live without peace, though. In fact, there’s immense peace in accepting what you can’t change and embracing all that you can. 

Bob screams at the door, he growls at other dogs, he jumps when he’s not supposed to jump, he begs for food to the point where I can’t eat near him… and I love him 100,000%.

I’ve never tried to change him, nor did I ever think he’d change.  He’s utter peace to me.  I love him unconditionally.

If you want to really be free of a lack of peace in your home, your mind, your soul and your heart, try that unconditional love.

It’s a challenge, especially when you feel threatened, disrespected or even ignored. It’s even more of a challenge where you feel challenged, provoked or mistreated.

Here are a few things I’ve learned from helping thousands of people now to de-clutter and shift their lives toward more love.  It’s easier to recount than to do for oneself sometimes, so please don’t think I have life all figured out.  As Deepak Chopra says, ““Walk with those seeking truth… RUN FROM THOSE WHO THINK THEY’VE FOUND IT. ”

In essence, sharing this is sharing what I’ve seen, experienced and gathered over a long time. I’m still learning it all, every single day.

PLEASE STOP DEFENDING YOURSELF.   I believe so so profoundly that no one should ever start begging for love or for respect or for safety or, actually,  for anything, ever.  You don’t need to defend your right to feel happy or to be treated with respect.  I mean, what are you actually defending?

One of the darkest days of my childhood was watching my mother literally crumble at the feet of her cold, distant, abusive boyfriend, begging him to not leave her.  It was, I’m fairly sure, the day she had her first heart attack in her forties.  Not only did he leave, he’d run to other women who were friends of his, over 20 years married two of them, and all the while, I watched this cycle perpetuate itself.   My mother never wanted anyone to leave- I mean, who does?-  and fought her whole life to have someone treat her with respect (the scary part).  He always left…and she never respected herself and was never respected.

It taught me in a chilling way that you never have to defend yourself.  Please don’t feel like you’re on trial in life.  Please don’t beg for anyone to love you more or value you more highly.  If you do, you’ll most likely be disappointed, or, and the very least, you’ll lose yourself in the process.

LOADS of people will love and cherish and value and protect your feelings as you will do for them.  You’ll see it in actions.  You’ll feel it in words.  And you can start giving that love to yourself today.

Love, love, love, love, love.

Judgements do no good.  Really, they don’t.  And I do have judgements. So do you, I bet. You know what you like and what you don’t like.  You know what you respect and what you don’t respect.

But when you find yourself in a feedback loop of being critical and wishing that a situation could change, I promise you that judgements won’t help you to change it.   In broad strokes, the wife who badgers her husband to help her with her problems, the sibling who becomes so angry that she truly can’t stand being kind to her family because they ignore her needs…  Small examples I see all the time…

All judgements create anger and that creates clutter and that puts a stop to flow 100%.

Unconditionally loving doesn’t mean that you tolerate what harms you.  If you’re in situations where you are being overly-depended upon, or where you’re being asked to accept things that are against your morals (ah, the boss I had who tried to convince me to help him break very big federal laws…!) or you’re putting up with uncomfortable secrecy, behaviors that are abusive or anything else that is crazy-making,  you can still accept a person for who they are… but you can’t change it.

Try to convince a criminal not to commit a crime or an alcoholic very comfortable with their drinking to stop doing it and see how far you get!  You see what I’m saying.  It’s just a very no-win situation.

Whatever you put up with, you end up with.  I’ve had a multitude of the most notoriously imbalanced, difficult and somewhat rage-filled bosses in my past life.  They’ve all had inordinant amounts of love for me as person in my professional position because I felt totally fine with their outbursts and eccentricities because they were far away from me. I saw them raging at other people and accepted it as just the way it was… until the rage came straight at me.   If you put up with things, you’ll end up with things.  Make sure what you’re building is aligned with what makes you feel peace.

If you don’t feel at peace in a situation, as yourself why you let it stay in your life?  So many people go bananas in relationships that lack trust rather than just leaving those relationships, and it’s always boggled my mind until I did it once… and once was enough!  If I had a dime for every woman and man I have seen dance around trying to make someone love them and persist in trying to get the love they’ll never get, well, it would be a lot of dimes.  Or… the times I’ve done it myself in the past!

Constantly complaining and feeling drained and mentally captured by someone and still magically thinking that an awakening is coming, a transformation will happen or more love or effort will change things is your own choice.

It’s not a positive choice.

It’s also an addictive cycle.

Pat Allen, the love guru scientist of Los Angeles says that you can accept or reject a relationship but you can’t tolerate it because tolerating creates the stresses that make you crazy, sick and otherwise powerless.

Putting down the drug of toxic love on any level means just that: stop your need to tolerate and wish for magical change.

You decide what you keep in your life.  You choose what you build.  Your thoughts, words and actions create every moment.  If you’re wound up in a cycle of criticism, wishfully-magical thinking, somehow tormenting yourself in order to be loved …or if you’re sitting in a space where you simply can’t be yourself… you can’t change anyone else but you.

This for sure I believe 100%.

You can clear your clutter.  You can break your own patterns.  You can love yourself far more greater in actions every day.  You can show up with your best self.  And you can choose to let go of anything that doesn’t serve you.

It’s enormously empowering to de-clutter your life because in doing so you find tremendous clarity.  It’s also terrifying because you’ll find that where you have been in these struggles where there’s no peace, you have your own choices to make.  You might need a new job, you might need to move, you might need to set boundaries that are bigger than you ever have.  All of this is immense and awesome.  It’s also one of the big reasons why people stay small and stuck: these choices mean you often have to let go of things, and sometimes they’re things that you’ve let overly-define you. 

If you’ve struggled to let things go, you’re not alone.  Do it anyway.  Start with you.  Stick with you.  In a decade I’ve seen clearly that this is the best and only way to make your dreams come true and create lasting peace.  The universe tends to reorganize itself around your positive intentions if you stay in that space of clarity and grounded well-being.

xoxo Dana

P.S.: The Catalyst Camp is coming to open up your life to the new like never before! It’s 8 weeks of de-cluttering, letting things go any lightening up life in radical ways.  You can sign up HERE to start the free 3-video series & revolutionize your clutter clearing.

xoxo!!!

 

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Welcome to Creating Genius!

I spent the last year creating this e-guide to balancing and unblocking life by pulling together the best of a decade of space-changing and life-shifting feng shui! It’s 50 days and 50 ways to use feng shui to shift your space and your routines to move from “stuck” to creatively inspired and alive.

Start Creating Genius right HERE!

And… As a special bonus when you get the e-guide– a bonus that thrills me!— I’m leading a private Creating Genius + Artist’s Way Group for all of you, to guide you online through twelve weeks of creative awesomeness this year!

Gather up your magic & make gorgeous dreams come true!

xoxo Dana