Tips for Working with Greater Inspiration and Focus

Each day that we spend in our business enviroment is an opportunity to bring forth creativity and inspiration or to react to things happening around us.  Most days, it’s a see-saw back and forth between focus and reaction. 

Oftentimes, our thought patterns are generated by fear.  Fear causes obsessive or compulsive behavior.  Using the tools below can help you feel energized and focused.  The little things you do each day with intention add up to increased enjoyment of each day.

1-  Remove superfluous files on your screen saver.  When you open your computer and see a screen full of files and folders you’ll subconsciously feel overwhelm and chaos.

2-  Every night when you leave your office take five minutes and straighten the items on your desk. If you make this a nightly ritual, each morning you’ll feel more energy than you will if you come back to a cluttered desk.

3-  Set your work schedule in one-hour increments.  Make a commitment to work for an hour and don’t succumb to interruptions during this time.

4-  Create a designated time in your day to answer phone calls, check emails, and do social networking.

5-  Schedule your week in advance as much as possible.  On your day planner, commit to certain activities each day.  You don’t have to schedule eight hours each day, but do schedule priorities. 

6-  Take time in the morning to connect to Spirit, Presence, Love, God, or whatever you choose to call it.  When you are still and present, guidance or little messages can pop into your awareness.  Inspiration is found through this connection.

7-  During the day, every time you feel anxious or obsessive about completing a project stop and connect to Presence.  A good way to do this is by pausing at your desk or moving to a quiet area and simply becoming aware of your breathing.  Stopping for as little as a minute can bring you focus.

8-  Schedule a break in your day to connect with nature, take the dogs for a walk, eat lunch, go to a yoga class, etc. 

9-  If you work from a home office make it a rule that no one disturbs you when the door is closed.  Create a schedule to balance work sessions with family needs.

10-  Give yourself a boost of energy by dusting and organizing your desk.  Take a couple minutes and dust your computer keyboard, monitor, and anything around your space that needs it.

11-  Set realistic goals each week.  Make it a habit to sit quietly, ask for inspiration and write down your goals for the week.  Err on the side of fewer rather than too many.

And…one parting thought….don’t take things too seriously and have fun!

Reconnecting with Your Creativity and Inspiration

When it comes to decorating your home it’s creativity and not the size of your budget that’s most important.  Decorating can re-connect you with your creativity.  And rest assured, you ARE a creative person.  Creativity never wanes, we’re born with it.  It is inspiration.  It is Spirit.  Spirit is abundant and can never be extinguished.  When you access your Spirit, you’ll find yourself naturally energized and focused. You’ll find yourself being rather than reacting.

How do you begin? Become the child you were.  Before you felt the demands life and fear of the wreckage of the future, all you had to think about was right now.  That gave you freedom to create.  To make things like macaroni necklaces, tuna-fish-can Christmas ornaments, and Easy-Bake Oven cakes.  When you’re in the present moment, not thinking about the past, not worried about the future, and fully engaged with what you’re doing you are inspired.  Creating allows you to access the present moment.  So even if you’re not there when you start, you’ll can find it if you fully give yourself to your project.

You can be creative in everything you do, whether it’s writing out a grocery list with a pink marker or selecting fun words to use in a conversation.

Need a nudge?  Here are some ideas to connect you with your inspiration.

1. Schedule an hour in a hobby store.  You don’t have to commit to buying anything, just see what speaks to you.  They may have a class that sounds interesting you can sign up for just for fun.
2. Your home is full of creative projects.  If you’ve got worn-out wood or metal items revitalize them with a can of spray paint.  Find something that you’d like to restore and then spray-paint it with a color you love.
3. Put together a collage with pictures and words that inspire you or things you’d like to create in your life.
4. Paint the outside of small flower pots.
5. Go to a toy store and meander.  Buy something that you liked to play with as a child.  Place it in a prominent place in your home or office for inspiration.
6. Write about things you liked to do as a child.
7. Find an easy, yummy recipe and make it.
8. Take photos of nature.  If you don’t have a camera, a disposal camera works great.  Put together a piece of wall art with the photos.
9. Go somewhere different.  A park, a museum, a new bookstore or library. 
10. Arrange or re-arrange things that you collect.  Do you collect shells, books, or photographs?  Put them in jars, or on shelves, in albums, whatever is most appropriate for the item. 

Extricate yourself from distractions that keep you busy but not inspired and start doing something creative.  You can take baby steps if you need to. You’ll find yourself feeling more content in all areas of your life when you connect with the energy that creativity brings!

What I Learned from a Bumper-Sticker

If you’re reading this you know that life is full of learning opportunities.  Lessons are given in a beautifully-constructed way if you pay attention.  I had an unexpected realization the other day.  Ironically it happened while I was driving to a downtown spiritually-based meeting.  I found myself in Austin’s typical noontime traffic.  I tend to people-watch in traffic to see what state of being they’re in. As I was observing, I noticed a bumper-sticker on an older-model black pickup truck in front of me. Let me warn you before you read this – it’s probably going hit you with negative energy.  The bumper sticker read, “This truck is protected by a pit-bull with aids.”

I was disgusted.  How un-compassionate!  I told myself it wasn’t surprising to find such a sentiment on “an old black truck”.   And when I passed the truck I’m sure I gave the young male driver a look of scorn.  I judged him to be very un-enlightened and therefore the kind of person I avoid. It wasn’t until I was sitting in my meeting, about 30 minutes later that I got the lesson – the  light-bulb came on. 

The lesson was —

I had reacted to this person’s expression of hate and fear from the same mind-set that he had when he placed his bumper sticker on his truck. 

That mind-set is the ego-mind.  It is borne from separateness and fear.  And reacting from my ego, I did what the ego excels in – judging and punishing.  I wanted to hurt that driver in some way just as he wanted to hurt anyone that messed with his truck.  And both his and my action were fundamentally the same – we were reacting from fear and separateness.

The world is populated with egos.  And hard as it at times, facing an ego with light and compassion rather than with another ego reaction is the way to bring peace and one-ness into the world.  Instead of my judgment about how awful and obviously UN-enlightened the driver was, I could have offered him love and understanding and connected with him rather than separated myself from him.  After all, don’t we all share varying degrees of the fear of being robbed?  And don’t we all get a feeling of security (albeit misplaced) from our stuff? 

So I could have accessed Spirit rather than ego and given him what I need too – compassion, love, understanding and connection.  And we can all choose to connect to the whole and to Spirit the next time we meet an ego.  We can be the change we want to see in world.  We just need to pause and remember Who We Really Are.

White Christmas – Green Thanksgiving?

The idea of having a White Christmas is popular, why not have a Green Thanksgiving?  Thanksgiving is a perfect holiday to celebrate being grateful to the planet and honoring the loved ones in your life (including you!). If you’d like to focus on eating healthy food, consuming less, and being grateful for your life exactly as it is right now, here are ideas that may help.

Eating Healthy Food

Buying food that’s locally grown and organic if possible is a great way to have an eco-friendly Thanksgiving.  Locally grown food tastes better than food that has to be grown and packaged for maximum shelf life, and it requires less fuel to reach store shelves.  Organic fruits, vegetables and grains are grown without chemical pesticides and fertilizers; organic meat is produced without antibiotics and artificial hormones. Organic farming also produces higher yields, increases soil fertility, prevents erosion, and is more cost-effective for farmers. Locally grown food also contributes to the local economy.  For a local Austin company that delivers local and organic food to your door, visit www.greenling.com.

On a national level, the Good Food Guide www.goodguide.com rates all types of food and they have a special guide to Thanksgiving foods.  If you’re going to serve a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, you can find out how much salt is in your turkey, how much high fructose corn syrup is in your cranberry sauce, which preservatives are in your stuffing, and the amount of trans-fat in your pie.

The guide shows health and environmental impact ratings based on nutritional data from the USDA.  Their ratings for Diestel Farms Organic Turkey, Kraft chicken with whole wheat stuffing, and Libby’s 100% pure pumpkin are all high.

Reducing your Waste

To make your Thanksgiving celebration as eco-friendly as possible buy foods that are packaged in recyclable material.  And buy what you’re going to eat – try not to over-buy. Think ahead of how to use the leftovers that you’ll inevitably have.  Instead of buying extraneous Thanksgiving decorations – make your own.  And use cloth napkins that can be washed and used again. Recycle paper, plastic, glass and aluminum containers. If you don’t already have a compost bin, this may be a good time to use your fruit and veggie trimmings to start one. Compost is great for a garden.

Being Grateful

It is Thanksgiving after all!  The Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving after fleeing religious persecution in Europe. They were free and grateful to be alive. Reconnect with the Spirit of the Holiday.  Stay in the each moment of the day and realize that sharing love among your friends, family, and/or pets is more important than getting anxious over an over-cooked turkey or lumpy gravy. 

Enjoy being you.  Enjoy being with people or enjoy being with yourself.  Notice all the small gifts you have in your life.  It is the small things that we often overlook that contain the richness of a well-lived life. Avoid getting caught up in the media touting all the great deals for the official start of the Christmas buying season the next day. Instead, volunteer to help at a homeless shelter to put your life in perspective and give to others. Take a walk in nature.   Whatever unfolds on that day, meet it with acceptance and gratitude.

How the Number 11-11 Helps Us Wake Up to Spirit

Today is 11-11-2009.  A simple way to describe the 11-11 configuration is a portal into the Divine. If you notice 11-11’s you are on track to uncovering a deeper, more profound way of living, which unites you with love and synchronicity.  Noticing 11-11’s will help you detach from dualistic thinking and ego motivated actions – even for just a moment.

When I see 11-11 I believe that I’ve been prompted by a higher consciousness to notice that I am a higher consciousness, a Spirit in a body and not the other way around.

In numerology, 11 represents idealism, intuition, artistic and inventive genius.  Eleven carries psychic vibrations and has an equal balance of masculine and feminine properties. Eleven also contains many gifts such as psychic awareness and sensitivity.  Human DNA, our genetic memory, is encoded to be triggered by digital codes at specific times and frequencies. Those codes awaken the mind to the change and evolution of consciousness. The symbol 11:11 is a pre-encoded trigger placed into our cellular memory banks which, when activated, signifies that the time of completion is near. Completion meaning an end to your current vision of the world and instead an awakening to the unseen, to Spirit.

If you notice 11-11’s or begin noticing them, it may be a signal that you are waking up from the trance of ego.  The appearance of 11:11 is a beneficial act of the Divine telling you that it is time to take a good look around you and see what’s really happening. You are positioned to step into a new way of living for yourself and others.  By stopping and noticing, you can jettison out of ego and fear and into the present moment, into love.  Remind yourself that you are connected to all beings and Divine Consciousness is guiding you.

Pause when you notice the next 11-11.  You may start noticing them on a clock, cash register slips, license plates, or in phone numbers.  As you start noticing them, and you’ll notice them more frequently.  Soon they will be daily wake-up call for you to remember who you really are.

Your Pain Body is not You

Do you wonder why you can be in a terrific frame of mind and then something happens or someone says something and you fall into a feeling of heaviness, hopelessness, and despair?  Or why someone can “push your buttons?” It can happen after something a family member did or said, or when you’re getting ready to celebrate a holiday or birthday.   For me, it’s that feeling of wanting to desperately hide in my bed with the shades drawn.  It can last for minutes, hours, days, or longer.  Some people spend a lot of time there, others only occasionally.  

Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth, the Power of Now) characterizes this uncomfortable and despairing feeling as the pain body.  Everyone has one. It’s the emotional aspect of the ego. It’s a very unhappy entity.  It’s essentially unexpressed pain in the form of energy that your body has been holding onto from the past. 

As Tolle explains, “Any negative emotion that is not fully faced and seen for what it is in the moment it arises does not completely dissolve. The energy field of old but still very much alive emotion that lives in almost every human being is the pain-body.”   It could be the energy you have from childhood after being told by your parents to “stop crying.”  Or the unexpressed grief you carry from the death of a loved one.  Past-life regressionists say it’s negative energy imbedded in our cells that we carry from one life time to the next.

These negative emotions become an energy field.  The energy gives off an unhappy vibration. It doesn’t want to end its unhappiness because an end to its unhappiness is the end to the pain-body.  The pain body actually seeks negative experiences and needs more of them to keep itself energized.  One of the ways it feeds is on negative thinking. 

When I had my last strong experience with my  pain body (after something my partner had said) I retreated to bed all afternoon and watched cable news, gossip shows, and ate cookies.  This is what the pain body wants – more negativity. The best I could do that afternoon was to accept it and to know that things would change.  As Tolle points out, the first step is realizing that there is something in me that seeks unhappiness,that seeks unpleasant experiences, that seeks more negativity because it feeds on those things.

There is a way out. 

If you can become the watcher of the pain body and not identified with it it won’t be able to replenish itself through you. You won’t be generating more negative thoughts for it to gain stregth.  The moment you observe it, feel its energy field within you, and take your attention into it, the identification is broken. A higher dimension of consciousness has come in.  Which Tolle calls presence.

There are modalities to help remove energy blocks like Kundalini yoga, past life regression therapy, and energy-based body work.  And as basic as it may sound, thinking positive thoughts helps bring positive thoughts into your vibrational field.  Negative thoughts feed the pain body and cause a different vibration which then attracts more negativity.

The most direct response when you are overcome by it, is to see it as not you.  See it for what it is. In the present moment, there is no past pain. Take one moment at a time, accept what you are feeling, and find a way to connect to Spirit.  Read something inspirational, contact a friend, pray, or do something fun that connects you to the present moment.  The power of your presence will connect you with joy.

Maintaining Balance in the World of Real Estate.

I obtained a Texas Real Estate license a few years ago because income from my Feng Shui consults wasn’t enough to pay my bills.  Wanting to combine Feng Shui, Staging, and my passion of simply looking at houses, I thought that becoming a Realtor® would offer the best of all worlds.  What I’ve found is that being a Realtor® does enable me to see more homes and do more Feng Shui staging which is terrifically fulfilling.   What I didn’t realize was how much real estate transactions deal with people’s core issues of financial insecurity, control, trust, and greediness.  I’ve seen a transaction bring out the worst in people, and sometimes the worst isn’t very bad, but sometimes it’s absolutely draining and frustrating.  And when I become engaged with a client at the level of their ego it often brings out my own fears and insecurities.

Clients that I’ve started working with that seemed balanced, enlightened, and connected to their spiritual nature will frequently disappear and reappear as ego-driven, frightened and not-very-nice people.  I wasn’t prepared for such a challenge to my spiritual balanced-ness.  And because my ego tells me that every client must be pleased with my services, I’ve found myself in grips of “I can’t do this anymore” situations where I feel unappreciated and taken advantage of.  But that’s my stuff.  And that’s the climate of the real estate business, or maybe every business that’s established in the world of form. 

But I can also say it’s so perfect because it’s allowing me to see how I can step into the ego world, the world of form as Eckhart Tolle eloquently explains.  I then can find my tools to get out of ego and into Spirit and say…oh… it’s not Real(isn’t that ironic that Real Estate isn’t Real)!  What is real is the authentic peace I find in the present moment and in the flow of being.  Being, not doing.  And, I see bits of myself in each client that’s coping with their fear, anxiety, and insecurity.  It’s an unprecedented learning experience I’ve given to myself without knowing I was doing it.

Because people put so much security into their home, both emotionally and financially, it’s very hard to:

• Convince Home Sellers to lower their sales price based on market conditions;
• Work with other Realtors that are determined to “one-up” me;
• Ask clients to create good-will by compromising with the other party;
• Ensure clients that I’m doing everything I can to: sell their home and create the best outcome for them;
• Show clients that I actually know more than their personal on-line research.

My mission with Balanced Living Properties is to bring Balance into a client’s life; to match people with homes; and to create transactions grounded on Good Will; and perhaps the most important, is to stay Balanced myself.