Do you have days when nothing seems to go right? Perhaps you receive an email and take it the wrong way. Or, while driving down the street someone cuts you off — and they seem angry with you just for being on the same road. It feels like everything you touch falls apart.
Everyone has an occasional day like this or hits an impasse where nothing seems to go as planned. But there is hope; you can make easy-to-apply changes in your life to eliminate the negatives and improve your successes.
There’s a life truism that often explains what happens in various cycles of life: You get exactly what you want or you get what is standing in your way that you need to deal with first. You may ask, “Is it really that simple?” The answer is yes. If things seem to keep falling apart and you don’t know why then it is time to step back, take a bird’s eye view of your life to determine what changes need to take place in your life.
Change is the catalyst leading to mindfulness
Life is truly a myriad of experiences — some great, some neutral and some really awful. You may not be able to control many of these experiences but you can control yourself, your thinking, actions and your surroundings, which directly impact your balance and harmony.
This road begins with a simple mindfulness formula you can use to help you find peace within, leading to personal balance and harmony. Peace within is not only a most noble and desirable goal but also a mandatory requirement for living in a society void of roots and family values. Mindfulness is created through desire first and then accomplished by evaluating three basic areas of your life:
the things you surround yourself with
the people you surround yourself with
the thoughts you create and hold within
Evaluate your surroundings. What do you need to remove? Be mindful of your surroundings and remove the clutter. If you can’t use it, it is broken or doesn’t work, get rid of it. Eliminate those things and surround yourself with only those things you love that will give you positive energy. This may mean a major makeover; or at other times this can mean simply tweaking certain areas that collect clutter.
Once your home is clutter free, energize the center of your home with something that symbolizes family, roots or that in some way provides you to being grounded and centered. Such an item can be a family picture of you with your parents or grandparents, a real or silk tree in a terra cotta pot or a sculpture symbolizing balance.
Evaluate the people in your life. Are there people you need to spend less time with? Be mindful of the people who surround you. Are there negative ones who always zap your energy or are there those you see occasionally but give you lots of peaceful energy? Are there others you are responsible for and must spend time with whether they impart positive or negative energy?
It is important that you regularly evaluate the people you surround yourself with just as you do your material things. You need to un-clutter the people as well as the things in your life. Spend much less time with negative people who zap your energy and much more time with those who are uplifting. The “un-cluttering of people” applies to those in your personal life as well as those in your career.
Evaluate your thoughts. Create mindful thoughts. Un-cluttering your mind is equally important in finding peace within, balance and harmony. It is just as easy to un-clutter your thinking as it is to un-clutter the material things and the people in your life.
What thoughts float through your mind daily – are they are still relevant? Take a close look at your core values and family values to see if they still apply to today’s reality. Are you holding onto thoughts and belief systems that belong to your parents and grandparents? Are you still trying to live by their rules that no longer work for you? On the other side of the equation, are there values and rules your parents and grandparents held that you should reclaim and make part of your thinking?
It is important that your internal thoughts are in complete alignment with your external surroundings in order to find “peace within.” To eliminate or un-clutter your thinking, write down on a piece of paper any thoughts that no longer apply or stand in your way of finding “peace within.” Once you have accomplished this, tear up or shred all of those thoughts. Your mind will mentally do the same. If one of them happens to creep back into your thinking, tell it thank you for the reminder but you no longer need to think that way. This is a constant cleaning out process so you will have to repeat it with some regularity.
Next, add time for daily mindfulness meditation or reflection to seek out ways that will lead to improved balance and harmony. Mindfulness is a form of meditation designed to develop the skill of paying attention to your inner and outer experiences with acceptance, patience and compassion. It is more of a directed form of meditation, one regularly practiced by Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple. It will bring you calm, help you solve problems and create more balance and harmony in your life. A side benefit is things will go your way more often, and with less stress and anxiety.
© Pat Heydlauff, all rights reserved 2016 Pat Heydlauff, a “flow of focus” expert, speaker and consultant designs home and workplace environments that unleash the flow of focus and maximize performance while creating balance and increasing prosperity. She is author of the forthcoming book, Beyond Engagement: Seven Ways Leaders Fuel Tomorrow’s Sustainability and published books, Feng Shui, So Easy a Child Can Do It and Selling Your Home with a Competitive Edge. Contact her at 561-408-270