(via) This is the zillion dollar question. Is your home attracting what you want? How will you know? If you have everything you want now and you feel great about what’s coming in the future, the answer is yes! And that’s awesome. If you don’t […]
(@alysestudios) Your home can be packed with emotion in the most supportive, peaceful ways. Today’s feng shui’d design is all about that emotional IQ of your home, and how to raise it so that your home helps you to feel deliciously supported every day! We […]
(via) Love. Money. Acknowledgement. A new job. A new responsibility. A new anything… We all have things we want… and sometimes, strangely, we block them energetically or actually in physical space not because we don’t want them but because it might feel too different to […]
I realized years ago that while self-reliance- my default mode and maybe yours too?- is critical and wonderful and that independence is vital and incredible- connection is the most vital energy. My independence was rooted in a love of work, exploration of my passions, feeling […]
If you want to create more of the cool stuff you dream about creating, there’s a bit of simple energy magic that can help you tremendously. In feng shui, it’s the unobstructed, unchallenged, high-frequency flow of energy that we call chi. In life, we call […]
I’ve learned for years that it’s the small things that make all the difference in feng shui and also in a lifestyle.
It’s the extra glass of water, the one simple vitamin, the daily stretch, the great pen… these little things can mean so much to a cumulatively amazing lifestyle.
Sometimes it is the difference in seconds. Apparently, a blog that takes more than 3 seconds to load will lose up to half it’s visiting traffic. It’s an amazingly interesting world we live in. I learned this when my image-heavy blog slowed down to a near stop and is in the process of a massive optimitzation. (…or maybe by the time you read this it is already done, which is so awesomely exciting!)
These things we don’t think about- looking for keys, searching for paperwork, feeling stuck at a desk with no water to drink- these things that may just be a normal, can be switched up in seconds…and the results can be dramatic!
Today, the focus in on optimizing your days in easy ways that are personal, fast-to-do and totally amazing for your feng shui’d abundance! Continue Reading…
Are you afraid of being seen? Heard? Judged? Criticized?
You are not alone.
In fact, it’s becoming more common for me to hear this in the age of unbridaled opinion.
I think that the democratization of media gives us all a voice, and that’s so powerful for our creative lives.
There’s also a whole new opening though: an opening to mass critique and response that isn’t always filled with love.
20 years ago if you wrote an essay and published it in a written journal or newspaper, for example, there may be letters sent to the editors or writers. There could be an uproar over a controversial piece. There could be dissent, which is healthy and great, for all sides of an issue to be expressed.
One or two op-eds would be published. Everyone would have their opinions. Life would go on.
I think all the healthy debate and constructive stuff that happens online now is a great catalyst. It also opens the door to unfiltered (and consequence-free) bashing and hating and lots of other stuff.
With great good comes great responsibility, and so, it’s a different world.
That actually happened not to long ago. A unicorn toast created an uproar. A pretty piece of toast. Was. Hated.
So, why does this matter?
Really it doesn’t. Unless you are attached to the comments.
The thing is, you’re never quite sure as a creator what you’re going to elicit these days!
I mean, artists have always had a thing abut criticism. Even before social media. Now, though, the critique can go much further and can be off the cuff. A letter to an editor took some time to write. A quick-fire comment is a few seconds.
I’ve seen lots of creative people holding on to their ideas so tightly for fear ot criticism, or watering down their genius so as not to shine too bright, because they’re not sure they can handle the voices that aren’t the most awesome.
I found an easy way to deal with these things.
I am fine with all of it.
You’d think that in the most innocuous field of somewhat hippie design (albeit there’s science and there’s lots of art involved) that I would not see much of this. But oh, the x-rated emails and filtered comments on YouTube I find at times, the videos that elicit comments about my being too “x,y,z” in how I look, the dress I am wearing… And, my favorite, always, are the people who say I am stupid. My last piece that ran on a news network that had lots of people calling me stupid. I stopped reading after the first few comments. I laughed, reflected a few minutes on the work I did at Stanford with some of the most game-changing professors in the world and how I dreamed of having the career that I have, and then smiled as friends told me the comments kept pouring in. Lots of good, some constructive questions and commentary, and whoa, loads of haters.
Does it make me not want to create?
That’s what many people asked me.
Nope.
A few years ago it might have stopped me frozen in my tracks.
I mean, if I didn’t believe in my work or in my deep desire to get this work out into the world as much as I do now, it might. But I am so deeply in love with learning and growing, so connected to so many in my audience of readers, my family of clients, my online Camps… I know what this work does to create and support change and I am always ready to learn more and share more. For you. For the thrill of seeing spaces shift and the stories of lives changing. For the art. For the way it expands my life.
If you’re afraid of hater criticism, fall more in love with your creative process.
Constructive criticism is awesome. The rest is… well… it’s there.
What we focus on will grow.
That’s science.
I’m focused on the millions of folks this year who have read, seen, used, and maybe felt inspired by the stuff I’ve shared… even the ones that didn’t like what I had to say, what I was wearing, what my hair looked like, or any of my ideas and practices all. It means that there’s now an interest in environment and creating more healthful, shining environments. I may not be your feng shui master of choice, you may not like anything I say, but I see the change and the reach toward more and more ways to optimize life and I’m thrilled for the change.
I’m well aware that not everyone will love me, but loving myself a whole lot more has make it all fine.
If you’re creatively blocked or feel held-back, try some self-love.
A lot of it. More and more self-care. Indulge in it. Embrace it. Feel stronger and brighter, and keep on making things.
The more personal your work, the more you might fear being criticized because it’s no longer juat your art… it’s you being criticized.
I know.
It’s why so many huge agents and pubishers and artists have asked me to write a very personal story and I have put it on the back burner for years.
By letting my own decisions be dictated by fear, I felt strange and disconnected.
And now… it’s on the the front burner.
And, I feel so alive!
Personal connection brings life to life! I’m reminded of the Buddhist truth that when you are slandered, it helps to eliminate your negative karma. So, the random haters can be a big boost to your positive fortune! No need to read it all. I send them love and thank them all.
There are so many gifts and talents you have to share with the world. Embracing more love and connection can move you past the fear and into the awesomeness.
I’m willing to bet that you’ll never really regreat following your heart, making your art and living life in ways that allow you to be who you are in vibrant, amazing ways.
xoxo!!!
Dana
P.S.: I welcome constructive feedback, and your thoughts and your questions… my door is always open to serve you better and grow much more. I’m in this creative process with you, not on a perch as someone who has it all figured out. xoxo!!!
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Welcome to Creating Genius!
I spent the last year creating this e-guide to balancing and unblocking life by pulling together the best of a decade of space-changing and life-shifting feng shui! It’s 50 days and 50 ways to use feng shui to shift your space and your routines to move from “stuck” to creatively inspired and alive.
HERE is where things begin: sanctuary. A place where you feel safe, grounded and cared for.
Today, though, it’s not the sanctuary-making of fluffy pillows and shag carpets that we are talking about.
It’s deeper: making a sanctuary in your home that is energetically supportive.
There are a few ways to do this, and having just recieved so many messages from the universe about all of these things, I am excited to share some ways to make your home more of a stress-free, energetically stable space!!! Continue Reading…
Luxury is something that is prized in some parts of the world as the goal. Aspirational. Gittery. Deeply expensive. And deeply unique, lush and exceptional. Luxury brands of everything from tea to clothes, diamond phone cases to 24k gold toilets… I have seen and experienced it all.
But, all of it is not really a luxury.
Don’t get me wrong, I love money and I love lovely things, but a luxurious lifestyle is only about 10% about amazing things and 90% about amazing energy. Energy like… safety, love, harmony, freedom, flow.
This is luxury. It’s what my extremely-wealthiest of clients and friends find themselves moving toward, divesting themselves of labels and looking for philanthropic causes, buying the sensibly nice car and trading a fancy watch for a trip around the world.
“With this workaholic lifestyle, though, comes quite a bit of prestige, a perk that the researcher Silvia Bellezza, a professor of marketing at Columbia Business School, has found Americans to be all too aware of. Bellezza is the author, along with Georgetown’s Neeru Paharia and Harvard’s Anat Keinan, of a recent paper in the Journal of Consumer Research about the prominence of an unusual status symbol: seeming busy.”
Like my friend who worries about his art, managing the care of multiple homes, fretting over the markets, living on the edge of a crisis… yet already with so much abundance and zero time to . The many people I know who are so busy chasing a lifestyle of things that they don’t live a life of experiences.
It’s not luxury. And it happens on a small scale and a large scale.
Workaholics are not more productive. There’s a certain point where you’re not in your genius zome and you’re just idly spending time and not really making, creating or working… and so, that time spent “at work” is somehow just wasted. Relationships, friendships, wellness and many other dreams and plans often get lost in a workaholic drive.
If you work too much (and you know if you do) dare yourself to make more space in your life.
Fill that space with nothing but fun or simply nothing but laying around on the lawn or doing things that are purely restorative. This is a luxury.
People are more important than stuff. Nothing matters more. I would give every last penny for another day with the people who have left the planet. Would you? I bet you would. It’s not a dark perspective- it’s a real perspective. Holding on to things that are problems masked as luxuries – like too much stuff just in case you might need it one day, too many responsibilities for the sake of prestige rather than passion, too much striving to get x,y,z “object” that is lovely but not really as awesome as seeing the world or making dreams come true.
It’s safer somtimes to focus on things. It is more certain than an adventure, or a dream that may not fully come true, you know? But it’s a luxury to focus on these things, and if you put your resources and your energy into the people and experiences you love, you’ll always come out on top in fulfillment, ad this is big science!
Efficiency creates freedom. It really does. When you scale down on stuff, you see you really don’t need that much. It’s the greatness of minimalism. What would happen if you scaled back your needs to the essentials that you really loved? It’s like being subscribed to every online paid channel- hulu, netflix, amazon, etc… but you only have time to watch one. We do this with media, with technology (I bet you could delete 10 apps and feel no difference!) with appointments and even email subscriptions. We are loaded with stuff and messages and mandates to use so much stuff, or that we need so much stuff to be healthy or informed, or in style or culturally relevant. Chop it down to what you truly need and see what happens to your time and your lifstyle!
Living smaller is living larger. In every way.
How much passion do you have in your life? This is the metric I am most interested in. Being full of passion. Feeling rested enough to deeply enjoy seeing my loved ones, my friends and meeting new people. Having things on my schedule that are so thrilling (especially the time to work on new passion projects) that I am excited to wake up in the morning every day! Passion isn’t just handed to us- we are all the creators of this space and time and energy, and it’s a deep luxury to have this space and time!
How much free time do you have? No matter how much you need to hustle right now- and I have done 6-jobs-at-once hustling just to pay the bills in the past every month- free time is where the inspiration and the joy arrives. In the midst of my biggest years of hustling, I found the book The Artists Way and started taking time each week to go on Artist Dates, to do writing, to be at the beach… and these are the days I remember most and how I remember spending most of my time. Free time is luxurious. And you deserve in in mind, body and spirit.
Create yourself a life where you can have the luxuries you want— and a lifestyle where you can enjoy them all. There is nothing wrong with wanting anything material. There’s nothing wrong with the most materially luxuirious things. But, they are not you. They are fun, expressive, exquisite… and as long as you are the most self-expressed, fulfilled and truly peacefully connected to love along the way, it’s quite the extraordinary journey toward anything you are creating.
Live with that deeply luxurious awesomeness. Freedom, creativity, peace, joy, love. You may be surprised how much actual material gifts and abundance arrive in that state of mind and life.
xoxo Dana
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Welcome to Creating Genius!
I spent the last year creating this e-guide to balancing and unblocking life by pulling together the best of a decade of space-changing and life-shifting feng shui! It’s 50 days and 50 ways to use feng shui to shift your space and your routines to move from “stuck” to creatively inspired and alive.
I just spoke yesterday to a group of awesomely bright people in Los Angeles who were looking to detox some negativity from their lives. It was a live version of the Joy Immersion Negativity Detox . I was (nt like me at all) pretty tired when I arrived, and fairly distracted in the space when I got there.
It has been quite the time after moving to a nw home in a fifteen day unexpected whirlwind to dive into major projects like The Love Camp feng shui love immersion, and so many killer clients and projects… and I have absolutely no desire to slow down.
In the past, though, I have had this habit that maybe you have, too?
Rollercoasters of busy then so burned out I lose steam.
Full of opportunities falling out of the sky, then, hustling for opportunities.
Excitement and momentum… then… none.
Who wants that?!
It’s the worst feeling to go up and down- you can never enjoy much of anything anticipating a crisis, you know?
By the time I left that Negativity Detox workshop, I was beaming, awake and aware. I strolled home in the sun with a Moriccan Mint tea and visions of multicolored succulents on my mind! And, I have a renewed desire to not slow down… but to really recalibrate myself and my habits to speed up.
I was reminded in all my talk about energy and flow and life that it takes courage to rest, it is valuable to say NO to distractions, it is vital to create lots of fresh creative inspiration and keep my energy field super-strong.
And today, the feng shui is full of ways I’ve found to do this with far more ease! Continue Reading…
It is very awesome to aim for moe love every day. But, it can be very abstract to say, ” Live in love.” Or, “Let your heart win.” Or, my favorite, “Let love rule.”
These slogans I feel deeply at times, I have fun saying them… yet, when you’re looking for fortification, for some proof that you’re on the right path, these words aren’t often enough to keep you going with confidence, especially through the rough patches.
Or, they haven’t been enough for me.
In fact, without any sort of sense that I was headed in the right direction toward more love, a life that I loved more fully, more love and relationships that filled my life with love, I would tend to retreat back to more isolation. Waiting. Hoping. Wishing. Not connecting. Not risking. Not fully living.
And that just wasn’t going to work. Love is so with it. Fulfillment, passion, glow, dynamic awesomeness— it’s what we all need!!!
If you’re looking for some tangible assurance that you’re on your right path, today’s feng shui is for you! Continue Reading…
Taking a shower to clear your mind is always a great idea. A quick shower can refresh your energy, get your circulation charged up and start the good vibes flowing any time of day.
Of course, I like to empower a shower and fill it with magic! Like, adding a copper pyramid to a bathroom full of pink agate (!) or putting some music on… and so much more!
Here’s my season’s best shower for self-love and optimized energy in your own best ways!
Burn some rosemary. It’s my love & money space clearing wand of awesomeness. Rosemary can be bunched together like sage and smudged to create a smoke of herbal delight. A minute or two of clearing the air in the bathroom = perfection!
& Add Aromatherapy. I drop some in the corners of my shower and enter into an incredible diffuser experience as I step in to shower. What revitalizing greatness! Aromatherapy is also mood-shifting and helps with focus and wellness. A blend of rosemary and eucalyptus really clears my head on every level. Peppermint is great for energy, awakeness and focus. Use what you love. It’s quite the charged-up experience!
Salt. I like to sprinkle a bit on the floor away from where I stand in the shower. I imagine it ionizing the air more in the steam, creating more purification!
Your visualization. Like the above! Visualize your energy being cleared in the shower stream!
Eucalyptus. I put bunches everywhere- tied up inside the shower, hung on the door, in vases on the vanity. It’s an energy-opening, mind-clearing, breathe-easy dose of high vibration nature for your bathroom…!
And, try to take quick showers to maximize your water consumption and keep yourself feeling energized. Too long a shower can be draining and a drain of our resources. With all this energy, you won’t need a long shower to feel incredibly well-prepared for an amazing day!
Enjoy… and always, layer on the self-love everywhere!!!
xoxo!!!
Dana
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Welcome to Creating Genius!
I spent the last year creating this e-guide to balancing and unblocking life by pulling together the best of a decade of space-changing and life-shifting feng shui! It’s 50 days and 50 ways to use feng shui to shift your space and your routines to move from “stuck” to creatively inspired and alive.
The question of yesterday. Every day it’s a question, but especially yesterday!
I had to record sound bytes for a good two hours yesterday, and other two coming a bit later today, for a TV segment all about taking modern feng shui to the mainstream. It’s only one sentence, but the sentence has to encopass everything!
It’s such an honor to have these opoprtunities and to watch the wishes of my own feng shui (!) unfold in life… a gift… a joy… and…
It’s also not as easy as I thought it would be!
When I’m talking to people who have no idea what feng shui is- aka, most people, still!- it’s not enough to say “when you change your space, you change your life.”
Why? How? What?!?!
That doesn’t compute. And I get it.
While some people are open to the experiential and down for an experiment, to motivate or inspire someone to change their home (even slightly) for the purposes of supporting their dreams is not always a one-sentence situation.
I never try to convince anyone that they should do anything.
I do want everyone possible to know that there is so much potential in your home- potential to love, create and prosper even bigger than you are already.
But, to share the “why, how and what” behind space-changing to improve life is always a challenging thrill.
Your environment shapes your life. This has been proven by so much science that there’s a branch of architecture leaning into the ways that the shape of our space affects our brain. Dr. Bruce Lipton has talked at length about how our environment affects our genetic expression- yes, our genes!!!
Your energy is measurable. The magnetic fields of our organs have been measured. Love wins (!) as your heart has a magnetic field 5000 X stronger than any other organ. Our “auras” have been measured in legitimate labs. Our energy fields are being explored by prestigious quantum physics.
Color is vibration of energy that has an impact on our mood, perception and behavior. Color psychology is a huge field because of it’s power that is harnessed in marketing, street signs, social media, fashion and any and every field you can think of! Locker rooms for opposing athletic teams have been painted pink in the past to calm players to the point of lazy to make them softer on the field. Colors are even used in modalities of healing. Lazers harness colors of light to have different affects on the body.
Art is a tool of healing and self-actualization. For as long as we’ve had art, it has been used to elevate, unite and catalyze change in society. Art therapy is a burgeoning field of psychological and physical healing. The craft market is exploding with coloring books and DIY projects found to calm and focus our modies and minds.
And… on and on…
These are only a few of so so many tools of feng shui.
Plus, there’s the art and practical science of feng shui itself.
Feng shui has been around for 1000’s of years. Chances are, it survived because at least some of it works! But, I wasn’t convinced at first. I had to play around, experiment with myself, friends and hundreds of blog posts… then work for free with strangers for an even longer time, observing the results.
Some of it I can’t explain. No more than we can explain the mysteries of Nature, you know?
Much of it has rational grounding and the science to support it further is starting to expand.
I imagine it’s not easy to get funding for scientific experiments on sage wands or salt lamps quite yet (!!!) so I rely on the sciences of psychology, color theory, biology, engineering, Traditional Chinese Medicine, sociology… and so many more disciplines that have inquired about the nature of Nature, design and our optimized lives.
All that being said, I’ve seen a lot over a decade and thousands of clients, audiences, projects and more…
The biggest observation?
You need to participate in the process of shaping your life – your feng shui, your design, your choices- for it to be most powerful.
I can run through a home all on my own and use “best practice”s to create balance and harmony, clearing and energizing spaces, curating something that looks awesome to me and feels great to me…
But it isn’t about me. It’s about you!
It’s about your loves, your aesthetic, your story, your dreams.
The idea is that you are a super-powerful shaper of space.
If you can start working with that premise right now, not knowing a single thing about feng shui you can change your space, the rhythm of your life and even your lifestyle to expand, to prosper and to find tremendous positive momentum building toward your dreams.
Add in the tools of feng shui, even simply, and you can sharpen the story of your home, dig deeper and find that magic “click” where your home becomes an incredible launchpad, a charging center for your energy field and your most rejuvenating, love-magnetic sanctuary.
So, how do you start with all this feng shui?
Here’s one jumping off point:
Take a minute today and see if you can deliberately create one shift at home to connect more fully to your environment. Your favorite mug making an appearance at the office? A photo your love in your wallet? A scent in your car that makes you feel at home?
From here, you can build and expand, fine tune and grow… and as you go, you’ll have your home as a co-pilot, helping you to make changes that stick and move solidly toward your dreams every day!
xoxo!!!
Dana
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Welcome to Creating Genius!
I spent the last year creating this e-guide to balancing and unblocking life by pulling together the best of a decade of space-changing and life-shifting feng shui! It’s 50 days and 50 ways to use feng shui to shift your space and your routines to move from “stuck” to creatively inspired and alive.
“"Let's put your creativity outside your head." Words from Dana that stay with me, and come to me when in doubt, but also when I want to enjoy and embrace life. — Seika Lee, fashion designer, Sweden”
October 10, 2017 • 0 comments