Week 2: Detoxing Our Living Spaces with Clear Vision & Clean Energy
I love visiting the homes of my friends and family, especially when there are overnights and extended stays in the mix! It can be fun to explore and experience the energies that different spaces and places have.
When I am invited to dine, lounge, bathe, and sleep in someone else’s home, I am given a chance to see and feel their life vibe and vision in a very REAL way. Even more cool is the opportunity to “try on” different styles, scenes, and ambiances (which helps expand my awareness of my own evolving preferences).
These days, when I am someone’s houseguest, I approach the experience of shared time in a much more mindful fashion. Doing so allows me to appreciate my hosts’ company in a new and richer way, and to take a more active and intimate role in their routine and daily experience.
I not only walk away feeling fuller from having been more present with them, but I always leave with an applicable revelation or idea. Whether I take away a new thought about how to enhance my own home, or a clearer sense of what I might not prefer to include in my personal environment, the opportunity to move around in someone else’s space with intention and awareness always sets the stage for REAL discovery.
What’s Your REAL Story?
Our living spaces reveal a lot about us. They, too, are chock full of potential for REAL discovery. With a mindful lens, we can uncover those discoveries and use the insights they provide to learn about ourselves and intentionally create the REAL amazing lives that we want and deserve.
Our outer worlds tell a quiet, but profound, story about our inner worlds. When the stories don’t match up, the disparity throws us off balance. We can say that we want to feel more peaceful and content in our moments and days, but if we design our physical spaces in a way that promotes chaos and anxiety, we will never fully experience REAL peace and contentment.
If we want the story of our internal experience to be an inspiring best-seller, we need to make sure that each page’s content embodies clarity and flow.
Taking a Mindful Approach to Detoxing
As I delved further into my REAL space detox ritual this past week, I thought quite a bit about the stories that my family room, bedroom, kitchen, and car have been telling.
What messages do these places send to me, to the family members I live with, and to my visiting friends and family? Do they tell positive and inspiring tales that align with the REAL life I am actively creating today? Are there any parts of the story that I want to revise, omit, or add new, so that the content has more clarity and flow?
I surveyed each area in preparation for my second week of cleansing and clearing, reflecting on these questions (and the many more that popped up as I pondered). Avoiding the habitual urge to jump in immediately, I took a generous pause to allow for some introspection. Then, armed with an outline for my freshly-edited story, my intention, and my dust rags, I mindfully moved through each space and poured it through the following new and fresh filters.
Our Space Requires REAL Quality Assurance & Risk Assessment
Each of us has our own unique energy field, and so do our spaces. Everything we think, say, and do fuels that energy and creates a vibration. The stuff we surround ourselves with and the environments we exist in also create energy and affect us at the mind, body, and soul level. Though the impact is invisible, it is potent. It ripples out into every aspect of our lives.
It is important for us to know what vibrational frequency we are each aiming to live in. Once that target vibe is identified, we can effectively run our living spaces through our own quality assurance process in order to ensure that the energy coming from them is supporting that vibe and not sabotaging its cultivation. We can evaluate each and every space for potential risks, and we can ultimately remove them.
Most of us want to feel positive and relaxed, and those are the vibes we desire to absorb and exude as much as possible. We all want to feel good, feel happy, and feel peaceful. What vibe do you want your waves to send out into your world and to the universe?
Do all of your spaces hold the energies and qualities of that desired vibe? Ask the questions below to find out.
A REAL Space QA Screening:
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What vibe would you (and your family) like to accentuate? What brings you and your family unit happiness, joy, & good vibes?
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Do the pieces of art, photos, books, table dressings, and other items strewn about your living space all make you feel good when you are relaxing among them?
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Do the specific items in your living spaces, as well as the organization of them, reflect the type of life you and/or your tribe are in the process of creating, and the aspects you envision integrating into your experience?
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Do the environments in which you spend the majority of your time inspire a cozy, happy, hopeful mix of emotions? Do they speak to the experiences and states of mind and being that you and/or your tribe aspire to?
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Do your spaces project regret or celebration? (hint: the goal is celebration!)
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Are your spaces a greater reflection of the past, or the present? (hint: the goal is the NOW!)
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Do your spaces give off a sense of resentment and sadness, or vision and hope? (hint: we are shooting for hope!)
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Do your spaces depict who you (and your family members) were, or who you are all working to be now (and ultimately want to become)? (hint: we are aiming for the present and beyond!)
The answers to these questions will help you identify what risks should be removed as well as what could potentially be added or refined so that the vibrational quality of your space is improved (and more closely aligned with the energy you are going for). Throwing these questions out to your family members will inspire fun and thoughtful conversation and likely generate some interesting and unexpected revelations!
Our Living Spaces are REAL Vision Boards
A classic vision board is typically a collage of pictures, images, and words that we create to set an intention for what we desire and envision our life to look like in the future. The idea is to hang the completed board somewhere we can look at it often, as a way to inspire ourselves and to place a direct call out to the universe about the specific experiences we want to manifest in our lives.
In line with the Law of Attraction, a vision board contains representations of the things, people, places, experiences, and feelings that we want to attract into our worlds. They represent the grandest and highest vision we have for our REAL lives.
Start to look at all of your primary living spaces as giant vision boards. As you work your way through each area, consider the following:
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Does each room and space reflect your (and your family’s) vision, dreams, desires, & joys?
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What would you/your family members like to see happen and manifest in the future? Do your spaces reflect those things?
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Where would you/they like to travel to? Do your spaces say anything about those places & plans?
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What are your family’s individual and collective hopes and dreams? Do your living spaces represent those?
If you do share physical space with family or friends, make this a collaborative effort and run through this list together. This is an excellent way to teach your children about their own creative power and magic! It is time to begin showing them how to shape their own experience and build the REAL lives they deserve.
Using the results of the group dialogue, scan your spaces and evaluate them with the following in mind:
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What fits our vision(s) and should remain? (Remember that what you keep will attract and be a magnet for more of the same)
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What does not work well with our vision(s), and should be removed? (Remember that we awaken in a REAL way when we shed the old stuff that no longer serves us)
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What could be added to enhance & support our vision(s)?
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How can the space(s) be rearranged and reorganized to make our vision(s) more REAL and palpable?
Our Home Should be A REAL Stay-cation Destination
I once read a quote that said something about the importance of building a life that we don’t need a vacation from, and it REALly resonated with me. A REAL life should indeed be one that feels like a vacation. Our home space should NOT be a place that creates an experience we are eager to escape from at any opportunity. Rather, it should be the place we long to escape to when we need shelter from the noise and stress of the outside world.
Of course, this is not to say that vacationing to new and distant places is a negative thing. There are enormous benefits to be gained through travel and adventure! However, if waves of dread and anxiety typically come over us when it comes time to pack up and return home from our travels, we have a REAL problem.
Do you look forward to getting home when you come back from vacation? Would you enjoy a “stay-cation” day in your home? What could you add to, remove from, or revise within your living spaces to make them more inviting, relaxing, and enjoyable?
Our Home Space should be our REAL Sanctuary
In his book Making Space: Creating a Home Meditation Practice, Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us that it is hard for the mind to be peaceful when the body is not in a physical space that is peaceful.
He says that when we rest, everything becomes easier. By turning our living spaces into environments in which we can relax, breathe, rest, and heal, we can restore our well-being and better the odds that we can operate at our best. At the end of the day, isn’t that what we are all shooting for? Being our best self and maximizing our enjoyment of the moments and days we live in?
Would you consider your home to be your sanctuary? Do your living spaces bring you and your family feelings of comfort, security, and contentment?
A sense of safety and calm allow us to rest for REAL. Our living space should be a place where we can most easily rest and recharge.
What can you remove, add, or renovate within your living spaces so that all who move around in it feel protected and at ease?
Empty Space is not the REAL enemy.
Cleaning and clearing with a mindful lens will result in some empty spaces in your rooms, on your walls, and on your tables and shelves. It’s OK to have blank spots for now!
Recognize that not all clear space needs to be filled. We tend to over-decorate and overstock our rooms, our shelves, and our lives. The resulting overage causes energy jams and blocks. There needs to be a clear path for the REAL good stuff to flow in and through.
Resist the urge to fill bare spaces immediately. Give it time, reflect on your vision, ask the universe and angels for guidance.
Remember that REAL transformation requires wide open space.
The Universe Needs REAL Space to Weave its Magic
The R in REAL represents recognition. It can be difficult to recognize the universal support system that works in our favor if we live in a constant state of clutter and disarray. The universe is SO eager to help us, but we need to be awake and clear enough to notice.
Spending our moments and days in spaces that reflect negative vibes and chaos create fog and rob us of the focus and clarity needed to pick up on the signals and guidance that the universe is placing in our path everyday. With too much junk to wade through, we can literally trip over a sign or message and never see it.
Cleansing and clearing our external environment is the first step in creating open spaces where the universe can leave us its REAL treasure.
With mindfulness and intention, we can refine our homes in ways that foster REAL spirit, REAL vision, and REAL energy. We can move through our renewed spaces with the intense gratitude that comes from knowing with full certainty that the universe will help to make our visions and dreams very REAL.
And that, my friends, is the REAL tea.