3 simple steps to boost your creativity with Feng Shui

Over the last few months I’ve been working really hard to create a fresh new website for members of my online school. It’s going to be an inspiring, beautiful, clean, organised online home with a fantastic atmosphere.

But whilst I was working so hard, my real-life home had started to disappear into chaos and clutter. Quite literally, as the shrubs in the front garden were beginning to encroach on the windows and block the light from my studio!

And as the clutter built I began to feel drained and lacking in energy and creativity – not a state I enjoy being in!

But luckily my mum mentioned in passing something to do with Feng Shui and it prompted me to do some research into it – and also take some action!

And I was so glad I did.

I took these 3 actions and straight away experienced a HUGE boost to my creativity and energy levels.

If you’re struggling to get inspired to get your paints out at the moment – or you just want to gain the enthusiasm to take your painting practice to the next level, give these a try this weekend and I am certain it will help:

1) De-Clutter

This was the big one for me at the moment.

According to Tisha Morris in Feng Shui Your Life: The Quick Guide to Decluttering Your Home and Renewing Your Life :

MorrisBook

Clutter is anything that no longer serves a purpose that is in your highest and best interest. In other words, clutter is stagnant energy that blocks the creative feng shui energy flow and instead drains energy from you.

Because clutter takes up both space and on another level, your personal energy, Morris therefore explains that getting rid of clutter is more about making way for the new than it is about clearing out the old stuff.
And clutter very subjective – becoming more of a problem energetically the more loaded it is with negative emotion, as Jessie Sholl observes with an example I’m sure many of us can relate to:

A chaotic corner of art supplies can feel like an inspiring springboard — and a year later, if the supplies haven’t been touched, like a landscape of failure – Jessie Sholl ‘The Emotional Toll of Clutter’ 

This isn’t about needing your painting area, or your home for that matter, to be a sterile, minimalist environment. It’s Ok to have plenty of stuff, and a creative ‘mess’ is also OK when you’re in the middle of a project, but it’s important that things get put away once they’re no longer being used, and are organised to keep the energy flowing.

This is singularly my biggest problem! I always rush on to the next project and don’t make the time to tidy away properly. I thought about posting a pic of my studio ‘before’ at this point but I’m afraid I’m just too embarrassed!

And sometimes we need to go further than just organising – we need a proper clear out.  Morris makes the rule on this quite simple:

“If you don’t use it or love it, then get rid of it!”

This also applies to finished paintings that you keep but don’t look at. Find friends or even a charity shop to donate them to so they can be looked at and enjoyed!

Try giving your whole home this treatment and see how much lighter and full of creative energy you feel.  Then watch the creative ideas and new paintings appear in the space that’s been created.

Or if you’ve not got much time to spare, at least focus on the room where you paint and make that a clutter-free environment.

Tweetable – [bctt tweet=”“Whenever you feel any stagnation in your life, it’s time to clear out your closet.” @TishaLMorris”]

2)  Finish the unfinished

A project takes time. And a detailed painting takes time. So there will necessarily be a stage when the project or the painting is unfinished.

But as Sholl describes, when those projects stay unfinished for too long they start to ‘broadcast troubling messages’.

They start to be ‘accompanied by a sense of failure’ which is often liked to perfectionism. ‘If I can’t get it perfect, I’d rather not finish it.’

So when it comes to unfihsined paintings you’ve had sitting around, take stock and finish the ones you think you can finish quickly and get them hung on the wall of your painting room – as a symbol of your ability to complete paintings.

Those painting you really can’t face finishing should be chucked – to rid yourself of the feeling of failure they bring and to make way for the new!

3) Rearrange your painting room

© Tanyalmera | Dreamstime.com - Office Sketch PhotoThe idea here is that our home mirrors the energy patterns that are within us, so if WE feel creatively (energetically) stagnant then our home contains stagnant energies too. Just as clearing clutter can get the energy of your home AND your creative energy flowing again, so can moving the furniture around in your painting room.

If you really want to order the room where you paint according to Feng Shui principles there’s lots of information here on that.

One key tip for increasing well-being and creativity as you work such as making sure you face the door so that you can see people coming into the room as your work.

A move will disrupt the stagnant energy and get it flowing – especially as it will require you to clean the spaces where the furniture was – underneath the desk etc.

It works!

After reading about these Feng Shui principles, I went on a 2 day mission to clear clutter from in and around my home. I cut the shrubs from around the windows, cleared out my wardrobe, tidied and rearranged my studio, even cleared out the spare room of boxes of junk and got the windows cleaned.  I chucked things away and even burned things! And I finished off a couple of half-finished jobs.  I was unstoppable!

And afterwards I felt so much lighter. And so much more creative and energised.

If all this talk of energies sounds a little ‘woo woo’ to you, I know you’ll still be able to relate to how much you feel better when your home are clean and tidy and ordered.

You may not have thought in terms of needing to clear away the old to make space for the new to enter.  But I’m certain that our creatively does work this way and that making ‘space’ externally will influence you internally and inspire to pick up your brushes.

Give it a try – you’ve got nothing to lose – except clutter!

I’d love to hear from you if you’ve used these principles to help your own creativity? Let us know in the comments below.

Happy de-cluttering!

anna

x

 

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7 Comments

  1. Marge on May 5, 2016 at 5:25 pm

    I was initially leery about Feng Shui until a friend swore things changed after reading Lillian Too’s Living with Good Feng Shui book and applying it into her day-to-day life. Googled it and found a copy from Noon Books (www.noon-books.com). I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, applying it and waiting for positive results. I swear life seems to just “flow” now instead of just “chug along” if you know what I mean. Money comes in from unexpected sources and relationships seem to require no effort. Life just seems happier. I can’t explain it, but it works. I guess at the end of the day that’s what it all boils down to. Super thankful I stumbled upon this and gave it a chance.

  2. Jean McCauley on May 17, 2017 at 10:27 pm

    I’ve ordered the book you told us about. I really need it!!! Thanks for the timely article!

  3. Kath on May 23, 2017 at 4:56 am

    Anna thanks for the reminder of feng shui. I have practiced feng shui for years now after having read much about it, it just seemed like good principles to live by. It is just second nature now …Yearly reassessing & stuff goes and there is a sense of calm with doing that. I have even positioned furniture to keep feng shui flow. You can feel a sense of uncalm when the flow is disrupted… 😉

  4. Manju Jagdush on June 16, 2018 at 8:15 am

    Thank you dooo much for the inspiration

  5. Jo Ann Frommer Rom on May 20, 2021 at 5:44 pm

    I try also to sort through my things to make my space to be nicer. It does make a difference in how one perserves the world on a daily basis. Thanks for sharing

  6. Theresa on May 20, 2021 at 8:28 pm

    Thanks Anna, I’ll check out the book. I could used some uncluttering. I just gathered up all the supplies from when I was using acrylics to sell. I love watercolor so much more now that I’ve learned so much more about watercolor techniques.

  7. Catherine Brown on May 21, 2021 at 12:32 am

    That is all so true, I have to declutter before I can paint and at times I declutter too much.
    I have many unfinished paintings but I don’t see them as failures, I see them as ‘I know I can do better’ and I have learnt something from all of them even if I never finish them.

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