Day Five Feng Shui Life Make-Over

by Deborah Redfern, Feng Shui Studies

There is a world of difference between believing ‘the cup is half empty’ and the ‘cup is half full’. Some people habitually see the world as ‘half empty’ which is to say they focus on what is wrong, what is missing or what is lacking. To look at it the other way — that the ‘cup is half full’  — would feel unrealistic or inauthentic, as if they are denying what clearly is wrong, right before them.

I know because I struggle with a half empty cup world view. In this world view, whatever I do and accomplish is never quite enough. There is always something more I could have done, or have done better, or smarter. Of the unsupportive habits I would like to change personally, this is at the top of the list. I am well aware that thinking and action focused around lack or finding fault, attracts more of the same energy. It becomes an exhausting cycle.

Possibly, this attitude could also have negative effects on physical health. If you are familiar with the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto, thoughts and words effect Water (or the intent and emotion of the words), changing their appearance when in a crystalline form. Words such as love and gratitude produce beautiful symmetrical frozen water crystals, while words that are negative or hateful produce distorted, discordant water cyrstals.  Our body is three-quarters water — do our bodies respond to the intent and vibration of positive messages and images? If it does, then continuing in half empty thinking might be the mental equivalent of a junk food diet.

So how can we turn the cycle around and begin to celebrate successes and accomplishments, and invite more of it in our lives? It can be quite easy. Begin to focus on what you are grateful for. This becomes a cycle too, but a much more positive one: When you are focused on gratitude there begins to be more in your life to be grateful for.

Day Five Exercise

When you begin (for the first time, or in trying this exercise again) it works best to make it a daily practice. Get a notebook and each night before going to sleep, review your day and write down everything that you are grateful for. But actually since being grateful applies in all directions of time (past, present and future) you can really do this exercise anytime of the day. The most important thing is to do it consistently, day after day.

If you are severely half empty cup stuck this will feel uncomfortable, because the critical part of your mind will be looking for the flaws, problems and general lack. It will feel artificial. Would it help to know that it feels the same way to lots of people when they first begin?

There are other ways you can practice making gratitude a habit: A woman I met in a workshop told me she bought one of those click counters and each time she saw something that she felt grateful for, she clicked the counter. At first the clicks were few and far between — maybe a half a dozen a day, but the more she did it, the more she found to be grateful for, and within weeks she was finding hundreds of opportunities to click every day.

What are you grateful for, right now?  Your list can be as long or as short as you like, but keep writing it everyday until at least the end of this feng shui life make-over course. 

What I am grateful for, right now in this minute:

1. Having learned how to touch type when I was 17.
2. That even though I’ve been complaining about getting too many colds lately, this body of mine functions as amazingly well as it does. 

© Deborah Redfern 2010. All rights reserved.