Move Your Stuff, Change Your Business
If you’ve been around for a while, you that I am a woman who’s all about the numbers. Buuuuuut I am a little about the wacky too. I’m a student of yoga and meditation. I really believe that we have to do the right things and that we have to have the right intention and energy around them. One without the other rarely seems to work out.
So I was delighted when, last year, a friend introduced me to Karen Rauch Carter. Karen is a feng shui consultant(!!). Being that I’m an admirer of interior design and a believer in the energy of things, I was ecstatic to meet her.
As soon as I arrived home from our evening of cocktails and lovely chatting, I ordered her book Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life. One week later I had the bagua of our home sketched out. And a week after that, I had objects in our house moved, secret notes stashed about, and our prosperity corner up to code.
I was hooked.
Karen was on my mind this spring, while I was trying to make our home feel a little fresher and lighter for the new season. I called her up and asked if she’d be game for an interview. With many of us trying to get an edge on our business and work lives, I figured that this would be a fun (and free!) way to get that edge.
Here’s what she had to say…
Karen! I can’t wait to learn from you today. I’ve made some major changes in our house since reading your book, and I’m excited to think about how to ellevate my business with feng shui.
In your book you define feng shui as “purposefully arranging the stuff around you to gain positive results.”
That seems rather harmless. Why wouldn’t someone partake in simple actions that will yield positive results?
As with anything, the field is riddled with misconceptions. Someone hears the phrase feng shui, and I get reactions like, “That’s where you move your furniture around, right?”… “Is that the thing where you paint your front door red?”
They’re missing the greater theme: “What’s going on in your house is going on in your life.” Feng shui is about the entirety of one’s environment: air, water, electricity, thoughts, and beliefs… it’s all the seen and unseen stuff in your space.
And if those are the objections or misconceptions, how do you break through? When and why do people hire you?
Most often, they hire me when they’re facing a roadblock that they just can’t break through. Like… they cannot seem to land the job they want or can’t make the amount of money they desire.
When you go into a client’s home for a consult, what’s your process?
Before going into anything specific, I gather information about the home and the people living in it. I want to know:
- How long have you lived here?
- What happened in your lives during the first six months of owning the home?
- If you could wave a magic wand and change three things about your life, what would those be?
Most people don’t connect the physical space in their homes to changes in their lives.
I do wonder… how much of the positive effect is from where things are physically located, versus feeling differently about the things? Does moving the stuff really help?
Truly, most of the effect lies in the principle: you get what you expect. Sixty to seventy percent of the effect comes from intention, and 30-40% comes from the low-vibrating matter (the physical objects), themselves. Language and thought patterns are a huge part of this. So if re-arranging the stuff gives someone a mental jog of his / her intention, that is where the changing energy starts to stir.
Let’s go back to money. How can you help someone make more of it with feng shui?
As with any consult, I start with lots of questions. When someone’s frustrated that (s)he’s not making the money desired, we need to drill down into the specifics. That person may say, “I want to make more money,” but that’s too broad. We need to know: “How much do you want to make per month? Per week? Per day?”
Also, there’s a difference not being able to acquire money and not being able to hang onto money. So we must diagnose exactly what the issue is. If money is simply not coming into your house, there’s likely a blockage between the street and your front door.
If money is coming in and then you don’t know where it’s going – you’re burning through it – there could be something going on with your fireplace or some fire element in your home.
How can we apply this to our business? Many of us rely less and less on physical offices these days. We’re digital nomads, coffee-shop-hoppers, or desk sharing at co-working spaces. How do we set ourselves up for feng shui financial freedom, when we don’t have a space to call home?
The difficulty with this working style is that there’s not a place to hold the money you make. When you’re constantly on the move, money doesn’t know where or how to find you. So here are three tips to help money find you:
- Carry around a box, file, or envelope that is your dedicated money holder. Infuse it with intention: “This is where money comes to me.” It’s a similar idea that the great golfer Arnold Palmer used: he always kept an empty space on his shelf for his next trophy.
- Whenever you choose a seat to work, select the command position. Face the door without being directly in line with it.
- Spend at least 2/3 of your time in an “empowered” position. This can be a combination of your working and sleeping time. Have your back against a solid wall, and if you’re sitting, make it in a chair with a tall, solid back.
Whether your work is mobile or not, what you have around creates circumstances for the type of clients and work and you attract. These are micro-adjustments in your business, that you can control. Why would you not?
Speaking of business, what’s been your best professional moment so far?
Becoming a national best selling author, without today’s algorithm-y things. It changed my entire trajectory.
What’s your mantra?
Right now, it’s “Get ‘er done.”
Clients don’t usually dream big enough. If you can conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it.
Thank you, Karen! If you are interested in having Karen to your office or home for a consult, she’s currently on a global tour! Check out where she’ll be and when, and schedule your time with her!
