Sensing energy flow in your home is vital when designing a space. We like to think that arranging our rooms based on our style alone will suffice in creating a nurturing home, but how the energy moves without a stick of furniture in it can make or break our well-being. 

I have the pleasure of being with a partner that takes his time each morning to center his energy before he starts his day. He has taught me through his own example that I have many more choices in life than I ever realized, and most of those decisions start from the moment I open my eyes in the morning. Instead of reacting to my day, I have started implementing the techniques he uses in his own life to orchestrate my day in ways that brings me more joy and makes me more present in my exchanges. I try to make good choices and recover quickly from bad ones to increase my personal power. Perhaps this is new information for you. Like me, you might have been raised to react to life rather than orchestrate your life. Here are some ways that I leave that notion in the past and find ways to make the most of my 24 hours.

I was sitting in a meeting trying to focus on the presentation when my attention was diverted to the corner of the room by two women carrying on a conversation. Y’all, this was not in the back of the room where one might expect people to get distracted. This was on the front row! I can only surmise they felt that Robert’s Rules of order did not apply to them.

I was speaking with a woman yesterday who mentioned that when she saw the people that had retired from her workplace, their faces seemed rejuvenated!

I walked into a high school classroom to assess the energy before I began to formulate a plan to feng shui it. The classroom had a lot of visuals on the walls. Being a foreign language class, that would be both typical and necessary to create the atmosphere needed to keep students in the language. There were posters of historical sites, cute images of animals speaking French, and of course the classroom phrases that all students need to know like “puis-je aller aux toilettes?” I also noted French vocab labels on everything from stapler to map. All the décor showed me this teacher was thorough in his coursework and the uplifting expressions demonstrated he cared about his students. How did I feel energetically in the space? Heavy.

As we listen to the radio in our cars, we have no problem changing the channel when we do not like the song. We make it a habit to play music we enjoy.

“No matter where we grew up, we have all had to adapt in order to survive and be accepted, conforming to the expectations of our families, religious traditions, and culture. Depending on our innate temperament and the level of repression to which we were subjected, we behave according to our own unique adaptations and defenses. Many of our idiosyncratic defense mechanisms may have originally served as brilliant survival tactics, particularly if we overcame traumatic events or circumstances. However, in most cases, these adaptations are now obsolete. They contribute to our sense of separation from ourselves and our world and now function as impediments to our happiness.”

-Suzanne Scurlock-Durana 

The other day I started to leave my apartment when I remembered that I had an extra set of keys to my door in my purse. I started to take them out and lay them on my tray in the foyer, and I hesitated.

My new prayer or mantra these days is what’s for me. I decided on this phrase because I woke up one day realizing how stressful my life can become when I try to control my world in order to keep myself from experiencing any pain or rejection.

Power: when you feel like you don’t have it, it becomes your focus. Who likes to feel powerless? There are so many situations in which we feel like we are at the mercy of someone who can determine our time, our financial output, or our worth. What’s that about and how can we shift it?