In the last couple of issues I??™ve written about outgrowing my office space and deciding to swap my bedroom and office with each other. I love my new office ??“ no.w with yellow walls and lots of space. I even have spaces with nothing in them, and one of my bookcases has empty space on the shelves. What a luxury to start with an empty room and be very conscious about what gets brought back in.  I??™ve lost count of the trips I??™ve made to the recycle bin and the charity shop in the last few weeks. Where does it all come from?

My bedroom is finished too. My friend Peggy helped me with the cheese clothing effect on the walls and I love it. I wake up and look around and want to just stay there enjoying my new environment ??“ beige no more!  But then I remember my new office and I??™m up.  Some of you wrote asking to see photos ??“ so he.re they are:       New Office

So, how can you use Feng Shui to support your abundance and well-being?  It's easy.  Make sure you take advantage of the introductory offer on the Feng Shui Starter Kit. You have until December 15 before the price goes up. Get the kit no.w, and apply it in your own time. You??™ll find more information below.

We grow by recommendation, but only when you find our material of use!  If you enjoyed this issue, we'd love it if you'd spread the word. And as a thank you, when you refer 3 or more of your friends to my site you will receive the fr.ee 8-page ebook ???Essential Feng Shui Tips for Attracting Abundance???. You??™ll find the link at: Tell-a-Friend  My heartfelt thanks are given to you all.

Life is full of Gifts!

(Some of the words have been disguised to avoid sp.am filters)

Everything we experience holds a gift for us.  It's easy to think of the good things as being a gift - but how about the things that don't feel so good?

I've got into the habit of reminding myself to look for the gift, the lesson to be learned, something that will make my discomfort worthwhile.

The Knowledge & Self-Cultivation area of the Bagua is about learning - gaining knowledge and also learning the lessons we're in this world to learn.  This area is diagonally opposite the Love & Relationship area and is therefore intimately connected.  Our own growth and learning and our sense of ourselves directly impacts all our relationships.  Byron Katie says the one we live with is our greatest teacher.  I would include the one we are in relationship with in that category.  And this is not always comfortable.  Our relationships are designed to bring up all our stuff and show us where our edges are.

Whether the relationship continues or ends, there are many gifts to be found when we look.  But it does take making space to be able to embrace them.  If we don't do this, we are destined to repeat them till we do get it.

Tips for maximizing the energy in the Knowledge & Self-Cultivation (K&SC) gua.  See Bagua Map to find out where this area is in your home or workspace.

1.  The Knowledge & Self-Cultivation area relates to learning new skills, gaining knowledge in our work, and also gaining knowledge about who we really are and learning the lessons we need to learn while on this earth.  It's about the wisdom we gain as we go through life.  Clutter in this area will make it difficult to connect with ourselves and learn these lessons, and most likely we will need to attract big.ger and big.ger lessons (and even greater discomfort) till we get it.

2.  This is a great place to meditate, have books that inspire us, have symbols of peace and solitude, pictures to anchor wisdom such as images of Gandhi, Buddha, your grandmother - and anything that reminds you of quiet places.  Other enhancements for this area include healthy plants, water fountains to energize the knowledge of how to access wealth, fame, success and love, and lights or crystals to help you become 'enlightened'.

3.  Feel there's a lesson you're not getting?  Look at what is happening in the K&SC area of your home or office.  Recently, I knew there was a lesson I wasn't getting about something and felt compelled to clean out the cupboards in my bathroom.  There I was at midnight sitting on the floor in my K&SC area dumping everything out of the cupboards and discarding much of it.  This area had been bugging me for some time and this was the time to do it.  Next day, the lesson I needed to learn was very clear to me.

4.  Create space for the new.  Space as in decluttering and also space in your schedule, space in your head.  Give yourself the gift of regular unstructured time so you can hear the whispers.  Listen to your heart.  It's my observation that the more out of alignment we are with ourselves, the more dramatic are those times of transition such as in mid life.  We eventually receive a wake up call we can no longer ignore.

5.  What happens when you hit the edge of your comfort zone - do you grab the chocolate, watch TV, make yourself very busy or all of these?  Often we keep ourselves so busy we ne.ver have to let our hearts be penetrated.  Is there something you are avoiding?  What does your heart yearn for?  What support do you need to take one small step toward what you really want?

6.  Whatever happens, assume there is a gift in it for you.  This is the fastest way I know through to the other side.  The other option is to blame and feel a victim, which has to be the greatest pain of all because there is no way out.

7.  Are you attracting evidence to prove your story true?   Your story about people/men/politicians/the world/love etc.  Is your story really true?  Our stories determine the energy we are putting out and the people and experiences we attract.  See Byron 72571/101493_JudgeYourNeighborWorksheet.pdf YourNeighborWorksheet.pdf">The Work - the quickest way I know to get real about my story.

The Knowledge & Self Cultivation area is my current favorite.  It's impact on our prosperity, well-being and relationships is huge.  Being open to learning the lessons we attract makes the rest of our life flow with abundance.

?©2005 All Rights Reserved - Vicky White - Life Design Strategies

Below: read Jennifer Louden's writing on The Art of Rest

• Is anything in your environment blocking your success?
• Would you like to live with abundance?
• What do Banks, Disney World, Casinos and Donald Trump know that you don't?
• Want a pair of Feng Shui eyes to guide you?

The area of greatest confusion for clients is how to address energy blocks in their homes or workspaces.   Sometimes it's a specific question such as what to do about a bathroom in the Wealth & Prosperity area, or how to balance a missing area on the Bagua but often clients just feel something is blocking their success or impacting their health or relationships and they need someone to use their Feng Shui eyes to suggest how they can create more of what they want in their lives.

The Feng Shui Starter Kit is designed to address your specific quest.ions and to give you action steps to create more of what you do want and less of what you don't want.

You'll receive a Bagua Mapping for your space, a 30 minute ph.one consultation with me to have your quest.ions answered, you'll receive a copy of my Resource Manual and other resources to simplify Feng Shui for you.

And best of all, order your Feng Shui Starter Kit before December 15 and received $26 off the full price.

For more information and to order your kit Go He.re

Early this year I spent four days alone in a rustic cabin on a bluff on the wild Washington coast. I worked on my novel, read, napped, did yoga, ate huge salads, sat in the sunshine, and watched eagles eat crab scavenged from the ocean's edge. It was one of the most truly restful retreats I've ever savored.

It wasn't so long ago, however, that I would have taken this time to rest but instead stayed in a bound-up, edge-of-frantic mood. At the end of my stay, despite my good intentions, I would have driven away feeling cheated, shallow, even more scooped out. Why? Because it's taken me years to realize, in my body and mind, that genuine rest, the kind that recharges us so deeply that the furrows between our eyebrows disappear (well, at least soften), is connected first to wholeheartedness, and then to a silken collage made up of listening, pleasure, and freedom.

You may wonder what rest has to do with living wholeheartedly. Maybe everything. I've begun to think that our epidemic exhaustion and chronic complaints of "I'm too busy to ever really rest" have as much to do with a disconnect from purpose as with the pressures of modern life. Rest is not sincerely recharging if it is always an escape or retreat from engagement or action. I love a chick flick and a tub of buttery popcorn as much as the next gal, but if that's all I ever did for rest, I'd quickly become brittle and burned-out. Genuine rest -- not just vegging out -- requires integrity and commitment to something big.ger than ourselves in daily life if we are to recharge in the deep way that many of us are so fiercely hungry for.

This leads to a scary, exhilarating thought: What if when we can't get the rest we crave, when we can't get to that territory where our minds slow and our shoulders drop away from our ears, it's because we aren't authentically spending our precious gifts, we aren't making noble choices, we aren't living by what we treasure? In Nora Gallagher's beautiful memoir, Practicing Resurrection, she relates how social activist and Episcopal bishop Dan Corrigan, then in his eighties, responded to one of his parishioners when she casually says, "Take care of yourself, Dan." "No, I don't think so," he replies. "I don't take care of myself. I spend myself."

What if to access genuine rest we must be spending ourselves in life, giving the most we are capable of giving -- not in a martyr-like way, but in a way that genuinely fits us? What if genuine living and genuine rest are intimately entwined?

Of course, living a genuine life is far from a straight and clear path. We all feel hounded by our unmet obligations, our false promises to ourselves and others, our struggles to live with purpose. True rest requires us to be in tune with ourselves, but if something is amiss inside, our tendency is to run the other way. In other words, rest is blocked when we get a little out of sync with ourselves -- either because life has been crazy lately or we've done something we aren't proud of or because we are judging ourselves for getting out of balance.

But there's something that can bring us back, time and again, to the place where real rest is accessible, the place where wholeheartedness begins -- that triumvirate of listening, pleasure, and freedom, which is the basis for one style of retreat I defined in The Woman's Retreat Book as "springing from and guided by your inner knowing." When we grant ourselves the time to listen for what would give us pleasure, what we really want right no.w, in this moment -- versus what we think we should do or what we have always done in the past -- and then grant ourselves the freedom to act on what we hear, we strike gold. This combination untangles the twin tyrannies of habit and identity, allowing us to stretch into a more organic, more open sense of ourselves. So one day rest might look like painting and then a bath and then dancing to salsa music, and another day it might look like cleaning your closet and giving clothes to the battered women's shelter, chatting with a friend, then taking a nap between fresh sheets.

By following our inner knowing, we find ourselves naturally reconnecting back to wholeheartedness -- doing what gives us the most joy and allows us to most effectively offer our gifts to the world, and this continues to unfold and expand as we grow and develop. Think about it: When you truly rest, after a certain period of time -- minutes, hours, days, depending on how long you have and how long it has been since you really rested??”that raggedy feeling of need begins to fade away; gradually, tantalizing flashes of ideas about how to extend yourself into the world begin to shimmer by, teasing you, making your mouth water and your heart expand with possibility.

The truth is that the more we are truly living with purpose and integrity, the more rest and self-nurturing and relaxation become a mood we live in more of the time -- a satisfying texture of action and calm, expansion and contraction, giving and replenishing, spirit and matter. Genuine rest becomes part of our lives not because we have to make time for it or force ourselves to do it in some prescribed way, but because we are spending ourselves with verve and integrity, are replenished by that...and know when to cease doing and lie in a hammock. Life, in other words, has become indistinguishable from genuine rest.

Wishing you space to learn your lessons with ease and grace and move more fully into your magnificent self.