The Spiritual Feng Shui newsletter Issue No.4, March 2007 Where to Begin - Motivation Separating Use from Less Also… Feng Shui Tip Inspirational Quotes ........................................................................................... Page2 Dear Friend, Welcome to The Spiritual Feng Shui newsletter for March 2007; we are glad to have your company once again! This month, we will look at the first and most basic step in Feng Shui practice – being motivated to change. We have the third part of our Clutter-Buts series, to help you free yourself from excess baggage. We also have inspirational quotes and Feng Shui tip, as usual. May peace and harmony reign for you in March. Announcement: Local Feng Shui consultation is ready for you! Myself or my associate will go to your home or business, face to face, one on one, to help you improving life quality via Feng Shui remedies and enhancements.For more details,please go to http://thespiritualfengshui. com/localconsultation.php 03 Feature Article: Putting Some Motor into Your Motivation - We help you to start at the start. 04 Q&A: Clutter-Buts #3 - Do you really have useful junk? 05 Feng Shui Tip – A Breath of Fresh Air 06 Inspirational Quotes Enjoy! Mike Z. Wang Author of The Spiritual Feng ShuiTM Thespiritualfengshui.com 1-866-888-0222 1-435-792-7325 Unit 616,220 Lake Promenade, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, m8w1a9 ........................................................................................... Page3 Feature Article: Putting Some Motor into Your Motivation Well, it’s a great start that you actually started reading this article, instead of skipping through it! Unless you were too lazy to look for the next one …! Seriously, the first and biggest step in jump-starting your motivation is thinking about it, recognizing the problem, and taking steps to correct it. So, you’ve come so far, you can’t give up now! Do you find yourself putting things off, until they become urgent, overdone or late? Are you the sort of person that can’t quite be depended upon to be on time; to meetings, to pick your kids up from school, or being home for dinner? I bet that at least you have built up an impressive catalog of excuses! Then, when you get home, do you have dishes piled up on one side of the sink, with the dish rack full of clean ones from a few days before? Do you have a big stack of bills in the pile, waiting for the right time to pay them? These things all happen in your life because you are not motivated to change, or to do anything about them. Although you mightn’t have known it, you have plenty of motivation (or reasons for doing what you’re doing), right now! Your motivations may be things like not wanting to get out of bed, or you might be motivated to do something by wanting to stop your kids nagging you, but you do have motivation. Now you just have to turn it to positive use. Your motivation can also be the pleasure you feel when you make someone happy; or when you get things done! By using The Spiritual Feng Shui techniques, your life will be much better and easier, imagining yourself bouncing out of bed in the morning and jumping to the wardrobe, with your newfound energy and vitality! Procrastination is the nemesis of motivation. If they were in a cartoon, procrastination would say, ‘I’ll get you next time, motivation…’! These are some of the various types of procrastinators, and knowing which label to put on your particular brand can really help you to overcome it. You can probably guess which one you are just by the names… Slow or no-starter Diversion Seeker Inefficient Worker Racer at the End Deadline Pusher If you know what sort of procrastinator you are, you actually have a shot at overcoming the habit. Procrastination is due to various emotional causes, many of which involve you being hard on yourself. You know you don’t deserve that! Procrastination can be due to a fear of failure, which comes from low self-esteem. It can be due to a lack of self-control, which really means that you only take a short-term view of yourself. See yourself for what you really are – worthwhile, and worth investing time in. So, what do you do, when you have stopped doing nothing?! Great question! Some techniques you can use to build your motivation include: Starting small. Let yourself feel the pleasure of achieving something, no matter how small the goal. Become hungry for more of that feeling! For example, just clean one room in your house. Make it one that doesn’t constantly have a muddy husband or toys-strewing baby going through it! Let your work be appreciated for a while. Changing your routine. A new routine can give you a fresh perspective on your life, and lift you out of the rut where you want to do things, but just don’t. A great way to do this is by going to bed early, and getting up earlier, if you normally go late. Or you could stay up later doing your chores, if you normally go to bed early, and get up a little later. Have lunch somewhere different, or bring it to work. Buy something different to drink. Even watch a different TV channel! Just start small when you are breaking out of your rut. Rewarding your successes. You have worked hard, and you deserve it! We all know the most important part of being motivated is starting something. Inertia can keep you going once you’ve put on your shoes and jogged down the driveway, but a body at rest likes to stay at rest! One of the biggest components of your motivation is your association with whatever activity you want to accomplish. If you associate cleaning the house with drudgery, dirty hands, and being interrupted by the kids, it isn’t surprising that you tend to put it off. If you keep the result in mind when you think about performing the task, you will be much better off. For example, think about the sense of clarity and freedom you have when your house is clean and organized. Remember that dirty hands only last for a while; you can wash them clean once the job is done! So many of the essential Feng Shui techniques we discuss with you need your motivation to make them work. Unfortunately, just thinking about them will not make them occur! But, we would like to guide you through every step, and help in every way we can. You can read more, right now, without getting out of your computer chair! Just click on www.thespiritualfengshui.com/freebooks/downloadmotivation.php and you can learn more about how to motivate yourself, for nothing! Maybe just a little movement of your eyes… ........................................................................................... Page 4 Q&A: Clutter-Buts #3 – It’s Useful Clutter! I have to keep my clutter because it is all useful, or it might be in the future. How do I remove the clutter from my home when I need it all? As a little fact to keep you motivated to clear up your clutter, did you know that the Gua or area your clutter occurs in affects your life in different ways? If you have a cluttered, untidy bedroom, your love-life will stagnate. If your kitchen is where you dump all of your junk, your health can suffer. And if you have a whole heap of stuff on your desk, you will find your finances become disorganized, and your control of them can just slip away. You would remember that the first step in de-cluttering your house is to honestly decide what is useful. There are heaps of things which are dragging your Chi down, that you might not currently consider clutter. Things like: unpaid bills (pay them!), unanswered mail (answer it!), and receipts and bank statements (file them!), are all clutter. You do need these things, but they need to be organized. Other things which fall into the category of ‘useful when organized’ are: miscellaneous paperclips, pencils etc; coupon books; and business cards. If these are put away in appropriate, organized places, having them in your house will not interfere with your Chi. A great way to organize yourself is to make sure you have a place to put everything. Go to a storage shop and grab a heap of different sized and shaped boxes. Get some that match your home, or are at least in attractive colors, so you feel happy about using them! Bring them home and put like with like, in a place which is easy to get to when you need it. There are other sorts of clutter in your home which definitely might be useful – but to somebody other than you. If you have clothing you haven’t wear for years in your wardrobe, glasses or sunglasses that don’t fit your prescription, or pairs of shoes no longer be fashionable, give them to somebody who will use them! We know you would feel bad about being wasteful if you threw them out, but you don’t have to throw them out. There are plenty of people out there who are not as lucky as you, to have a ton of things they don’t need in their house! Pop all the clothes together in a garbage bag, and they can go in a charity bin. For other things you don’t need which are a bit more fragile, it might be better to take them into goodwill store in person. You could do this on your lunch break, or on your way somewhere else, if you are busy. The same principle probably applies to a heap of things hanging about your house. Do you bother getting out the neon Santa to put up on the roof every year? If not, it’s time to give him the heave-ho, ho, ho! You probably also have a bunch of paperbacks in your bookshelf, just in case you want to re-read them, that have been sitting there for years, right? I did… Give them to an opportunity shop, and someone else can have the pleasure of reading them for the first time. Also, you will have the pleasure of freer Chi! ........................................................................................... Page 5 Feng Shui Tip: A Breath of Fresh Air When we finally get away to the country for a while, everybody appreciates the air! It’s clean, revitalizing and energizing. You need fresh air, and so does your home! Most people don’t get fresh air as much as we needed; both our lungs and our Chi feel the effects. Flowing air can help get things moving, giving you motivation and energy. Fresh oxygen is great for your body too, giving every cell just what it needs to work at its best. Make sure your windows are in good working order, there is no furniture in front of them, and the curtains are easily opened. Then if you are feeling a bit bored, or tired for no reason, open your window and let you and your home breathe! ........................................................................................... Page 6 Inspirational Quotes: “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to constantly fear you will make one.” ~ Elbert Hubbard, The Note Book, 1927 “Jumping at several small opportunities may get us there more quickly than waiting for one big one to come along.” ~ Hugh Allen “A child can ask questions that a wise man cannot answer.” ~ Author Unknown