Ahhhh the life lessons are never-ending, and that is a great thing, isn’ it?
What I’ve come to now is that I don’t need to flip my life upside down to get the lessons any more (!) and this past year was incredibly less stress albeit an enormous, “How is happening right now?!” ride in all ways.
I got more than a glimpse of what I hadn’t been paying attention to, I got a dose of “get your s*%t together on a new level if you want to have a bigger life,”and I’ve never felt so much purpose and connection to everything around me as a result.
These were my blindspots, my reckonings and my learnings that most stand out. I hope in sharing them at the very least it might move you to share your own wise lessons of late.
We all need to celebrate our wisdom!!! It is the fuel of love in feng shui, and it makes life magically easier!
So, here we go…
I can’t ignore certain parts of life and pretend they take care of themselves.
It was humbling to get a haircut after nearly two years without one. It was also really weird to confront how much I have ignored something that’s often frowned upon but I think is pretty important in a healthy way which I: how I look.
I always dress up for a video/TV/event thing, but for myself and my life… not so much.
Considering that my first interest in art and design — and my first big jobs— were in the center of the fashion world, it’s pretty off-kilter for me to have gotten so misaligned.
That said, it’s been really fun shopping vintage, gathering up clean makeup I love and getting into my fun of the day again, because I want to!
I also found other areas of life I thought would take care of themselves and I’m really loving the process of breathing life back into them.
Knowledge is powerful but practice is transformational.
I started practicing things that I once just “looked up.” Astrology. Energy practices. Being a better listener. Showing up more fully. I started practicing even little bits of skills that I may not master tomorrow, but I’m actually USING the data.
We’re inundated with data. Practicing what resonates with you is 100,000,000% more powerful than consuming data that’s not useful.
I started skipping over articles I would once read just to read on my feeds. I started giving away books that were not useful for me. I started honing aspects of my practices and gathering the data to do the, without all the extra.
If you look for even a few minutes you’ll find 20 right ways to eat 100 ways to exercise, 10 different oils that are both good and bad for your health, who knows… and more and more data. How frustrating! How confusing! What clutter!
Follow your feelings and embrace practice of what grabs you. You won’t be disappointed at the results!
Stress is optional in a lot of cases, and it has blocked a lot of great things.
Oh, the time I have given TO STRESS!
I really didn’t fully comprehend on a cellular level the damage I was doing to myself by justifying some stress that was not warranted as “good stress” or “I’m just excited…” or “I’m giving it 100%.”
All of this built great big wall in my life to good things.
Achievement while feeling terrible to me is not achievement any more. Also, it’s smaller than the achievements in my life that have come in FLOW.
Yes, I can work for a marathon of days or fit a hundred things into a short period of time— when it’s in flow.
When it’s not, I walk away. I watch a lot of movies sometimes. I go for long walks. I see friends and get immersed in love. Anything to feel better, and find my way to true connection.
All the self care in the world couldn’t erase the damage I was doing to my manifestation magic, my body and my life and much more by stressing over things in the name of, ” Well, this is really important so I better get really hyped up about it.”
Nope. When I dropped that finally ( *and now catch it and drop it if it decides to visit!), my life became bigger in ways that my friend summed up as, “You seem incredibly different.”
And, she meant it in a good way. 🙂
Self-care is feng shui in my method and approach… as long as it’s really a rejuvenator done in the spirit of fun.
K-Beauty. Energy clearing. Seaweed baths. Heavy Metal Detox Smoothies. These are just some of the experiments in self-care that are on the roster (*and on the roster for the blog!) in the year ahead. As I wait for my 100% natural ( and affordable) skin essences to arrive, and head out to get a pile of seaweed to soak in, I can tell you… THIS IS FUN!
Self-care is only self care when it feels good. That’s when it moves the energy higher. It’s when it restores your whole system in layers. It’s when things come together magically.
You can do self-care as a chore. That’s more stress. You can do it as an achievement to cross off a list. That misses the point and loses that feeling of love.
I don’t care what you do to care for yourself— be it wild and experimental or extremely basic and fundamental– but doing it because it feels great is a big deal.
Some of this for me included— watching TV I love again (yep!), experimenting with flower essences in new ways, doing EFT tapping with my puppy Bob, and getting into Audible e-books while I roam the local parks in long walks.
If I can’t wait to do it and it makes me feel incredible and restored, it’s my self-care. And, it’s totally energy-shifting feng shui.
Trusting in my own unique creative process is where it’s at….and that includes collaboration.
I had a few big reckonings with these ideas this year. I had to own my creative process in so many ways. Doing this can spark a revolution. I stopped apologizing for my weirdness, I stopped second-guessing, I started opening my mouth and speaking unfiltered a whole lot more.
!!!
Starting the year utterly exhausted, I had to finally wrap my lifestyle around the idea that doing more isn’t doing more. I was so tired that I slept 16 hours a day for nearly a month, thought I had broken my body, doctors told me I was fine and… I was not fine. I was completely overloaded with other people’s energy, being busy and generally thought it was great until it wasn’t. Doing less was extremely valuable. Everything I did became incredibly more valuable, meaningful and resonant.
Quality over quantity is my key creative mantra.
Starting The School of Intention Professional Feng Shui Training totally impromptu after years of planning and developing my own feng shui practice was a year-long lesson in leaning into my core values and how they inform what I create. It was humbling, insane at times, incredibly confronting (Um… I created a method?! That was mind-blowing to see, and to see that I didn’t do it alone– I created it in synergy with 1,000’s of people) and, it was the most awesome thing I ever did!
Starting to work on bigger interior design projects with feng shui, I got a few shocking lessons about owning my creative process. I like details, I like order, I like to over-deliver on these specifics because they are part of the design magic! Not everyone feels the same, and finding great collaborators has eluded me. One bog blow-up happened that led me to find the perfect designer to collaborate with at least! Someone who is on the same page about details, order, specifics, style, creativity— and it’s expanded my creative horizons.
It’s amazing to collaborate, but it’s only amazing for me when the collaboration is well-aligned.
I’ve underestimated the power of a few minutes of daily meditation.
Closing my eyes and following my breath for 10 minutes a day is a really big deal.
Money isn’t motivating– wish lists are motivating!
I can’t strive for dollars. I never could. And the truth is, none of us do.
Money is not motivating. Our brain can’t comprehend it, quite literally. Money is an energy, and it’s an abstract concept to a brain looking to “obtain it.”
If it was raining and you needed an umbrella, that’s motivating.
If you have bills to pay and the money is going somewhere, that’s something motivating.
To reach to a new paradigm beyond what’s needed, a dollar amount is not the thing that will summon creative forces and energies to move you forward.
Wish lists are a great thing for me. What do you want to do, experience, have, give, help with, build??? List all your wishes and don’t judge yourself for wanting “things.” See how that lights a fire under your motivation!
Cutting the cords is a spectacular practice.
I did more cord-cutting in the past year than ever before, and it was epic. If you don’t know what it is, essentially it’s process of disconnecting unhealthy attachments to people, places and things from your life. Especially people. It’s potent. It frees everyone. It takes the draining energy out of life. You can learn more HERE.
If I’m not engaged in what’s happening in the day, something needs to shift. That something is sometimes me. It’s sometimes what I’m doing.
Whatever it is, I know one thing for sure: it’s not worth pushing forward with things when the energy is off. It’s sort of like trying to make a mis-matched relationship work.
Instead, I do whatever it takes to feel better first and then come back to the matter at hand!
Giving is where the healing happens.
Giving is everything. It’s where we connect. In the giving, the sending intention, the prayers for others, the helping out… that’s when everything is enormous.
Love is enormous. Intimacy is enormous. The human experience is enormous. The magic of life is enormous.
I used to wish people would pray, intend and support my wishes all the time. Believe me, I still need support as much as anyone else, but it’s not my starting point now. I’ve come to see that it’s way more fun to ask how I can help. It’s also changed my life in ways I can’t articulate because they’re so incredibly enormous.
Resting. Enjoying. Connecting. Learning. Daring. Beautifying.
And… every single one of your own lessons from self-reflection.
Celebrate these gains. Celebrate what’s made you feel amazing. Celebrate it all.
And don’t just celebrate on special occasions.
Every single day is a special occasion!
xoxo!!!
Dana
A big P.S. today: Every New Year, an intimate and extremely magical group of people come together online for eight weeks of Feng Shui to clear all their clutter, eliminate creative blocks, doubts, disorganization and negativity from their lives.
The results never fail to astonish me. It’s the most mystical way to multiply your manifesting magic with practical action.
It’s The Catalyst Camp, and it’s now OPEN for 2019!!!
xoxo!!!
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