Pardon My Feng Shui-ness
September 9, 2010 by Cherie
Filed under Featured, Misc. Ramblings
I’m a big believer in writing down my goals. I’ve done this for years, and it helps me to focus my energy. Before you laugh at me, think about all those negative folks who do nothing but whine and complain. Know what kind of energy they project? Don’t deny it, you can’t stand to be around them. If you get happy news they immediately pour down on you like a bucket of cold water with their selfish and negative thoughts, and you probably feel a letdown.
So if people can bring you down with negativity, you can bring yourself up with positive words. That’s the whole deal behind beautiful words, isn’t it?
I started writing down goals and positive thoughts several years ago. I was really young, and still trying to deal with the aftermath of growing up with so much verbal abuse. Verbal abuse messes with your head, because your thoughts – the normal ones that everyone seems to have about being loved and having people treat you right – doesn’t exist. You’ve been told you’re a piece of garbage so you look for things in your life (relationships, friends, jobs) that support that. It was hard work to get out of that mindset, and I sought out help. One of the things a counselor told me was to actively replace those automatic negative thoughts with positive ones, and to write them down and post them somewhere to help me get started. Again, you might find this funny, but if you’ve ever been in an abusive situation you are delicate and unsure of yourself. I wrote down positive thoughts and then, some goals I wanted to achieve. Writing it all down and putting it right in front of me stopped me from reverting back to that “I deserve this” kind of thinking when something negative would happen.
Anyways, that was years ago now. Point is, I’m no stranger to written goal setting. Last year I interviewed Ellen Whitehurst for another client I worked for, and I immediately liked her. Ellen deals with feng shui, astrology, and combines them into what she calls shuistrology. As a thank you for the interview she did a reading for me. I have to say, this is totally not my thing, but I was amazed at what she came up with. Besides that, I admired how hard she worked to promote herself and her book. She is actively out there everyday promoting herself and you can really get caught up in her positive energy. She’s a spitfire, and her blog is funny and sweet and filled with great stuff. Authors, in particular, can learn a lot from the way she promotes her brand.
Recently Ellen wrote on her blog about goals. She recommended writing them down, putting them in a red envelope (red has special significance in feng shui) and then letting them sit for a specific number of days. After the time is up, you take the note and burn it. The symbol here is your wishes floating to the sky so they can manifest. I write down goals all the time anyway, so this was a no brainer for me. I found a notecard with a red envelope, wrote my schtick, and put the thing aside. Over the weekend, the time had come to burn it. That’s where things got tricky.
I put the envelope in a bowl by the sink and tried to light it on fire. It wouldn’t burn! I tried again and again, and finally went to get my husband, who absolutely hates it if I so much as burn a candle in the house. He also isn’t so much into the feng shui. So you can see why I wouldn’t want to drag him into this. But I had to. I went into the bedroom where he was getting dressed and said, “You’ve gotta help me burn a notecard.” God bless him he didn’t even ask why! He looked at for several seconds and finally just laughed. (Life is never dull in this house, I’ll tell you that.)
I didn’t want him to think I was burning an old love letter from someone or whatever, so on the way to the kitchen I told him, “It’s a feng shui thing.” He smiled at me and said, “I figured.” He knows me so well. Anywho, after the fire marshall lecture he gave on the type of bowl I was using for this (which was apparently the wrong type) he said, “Come with me.” He took the notecard, put it on the grill, and put some lighter fluid on it. Here I had used a notecard with coating on it, and that’s why it wouldn’t burn.
Still, it’s kind of an interesting parallel to the darn goals I’m trying to achieve. I have several things in my personal and professional life I want to accomplish, and every time I think I’m getting close I get pushed two steps back. So it was interesting seeing this “symbol” of these goals (the notecard) stubbornly sitting in a bowl refusing to burn! It reminded me that in order to accomplish what I need to, I just have to keep plugging along. It might be more difficult for me than someone else, but eventually it will happen. I’ve learned that it’s okay to ask for help. (And I’ve also learned that next time I will use a plain old piece of paper rather than a notecard for this type of activity.)
