MAY 2007
Spring has SPRUNG!

I absolutely LOVE spring! The change of seasons just makes me smile. The soft rain, the bright green popping up everywhere…that feeling of hope and a second chance…that is spring to me. I love to see the days getting longer, and it even seems like things get clearer and somehow easier. I feel like I can breathe deeply again.

It amazes me how different one spring can be from another. Some years, you really take notice of those gradual changes, each little bud opening up, each new bit of grass creeping through the brown mud. Other years it is almost as if you go to sleep to the brown haze of winter’s end and wake up to a new green spring…the explosion of newness!

Our lives are like that. There are times when we slowly gradually change and shift, and then there are other periods when we need an explosion to rock our world and bring about new opportunities and blessings. This month I want to talk about the explosion!

Have you ever watched that television show, “Designed to Sell”? I enjoy it very much! They take people who have been trying to sell their houses for a long time without success, and confront them with video of a bunch of people walking through the homes pointing out all of the reasons they would never buy it. It is absolutely hysterical!

What strikes me as so funny is that the potential sellers are so completely shocked and amazed at the view of their home through the potential buyers’ eyes. They can’t believe that anyone could be turned off by their ‘stuff’.

My husband and kids won’t even watch the show with me because they say they can’t hear what is going on over my personal commentary! It isn’t the sellers’ lack of decorating ability that gets me going at all, (I mean really, we all like different things!), it is more their complete amazement that there are other possibilities and alternative ways of looking at a space or a life.

Usually about three quarters of the way through the show the sellers will start saying things like, “I never really liked that wallpaper at all”, or “I just never got around to fixing that”, or the saddest of all, “I just never would have thought of that”.

They use every manner of excuse to justify their own apathy towards their homes and lives, that habit of settling for less than our best that we all slide into from time to time.
They have no vision of how amazing their homes could be, and the sad reality is that most humans don’t have a vision about how phenomenal their lives were meant to be.

Aren’t we all like that sometimes? There are so many times in my own life when I have just settled into the status quo of winter, hunkered down into survival mode, or put my head down and forgot to look around at the possibility that life could look different. I got into what I call “automatic living”, you know, going through the motions without really “LIVING” at all. It is very hard to hold onto a vision if your head is down.

Then, the sellers get to work, (with help, of course), and make some pretty dramatic changes to the house. They paint, and scrub and plant, it is wild! And, the reality is, things can’t ever change unless we put in a little bit of effort!

At the end, potential sellers walk through during an Open House, and the comments are great! The house is then usually sold very quickly. The part that I like the most though, is hearing how the seller’s feel about the changes. They are usually so pleased, and often say things like, “I can’t believe we lived with that ___ for so long, what were we thinking!” <Grin> Gotta love it!

Spring has long been associated with cleaning and new beginnings, a fresh start, a clean slate…that is wonderful! Dust off the cobwebs, open the windows and really see your life and home the way that others do. If you are feeling stuck this is the time to get things moving again, if you are feeling tired, it is time for refreshment. Breathe it in.

This month, I’d like to challenge you to look at your life with the new eyes of spring.

Open your eyes and look around you, spring has sprung. Consider this newsletter to be your explosion, the wake-up call…that thing that stirs you up and pushes you to see possibilities and potential.

Is there something in your life that just isn’t working that could be attacked from a new angle? Perhaps you need to reach out to others to draw in their resources and energy to help you overcome a challenge. You may even need to call in the reinforcements, a pro (whether a coach, a feng shui consultant, a mentor, etc.), to get you looking at your life and space through objective eyes. Whatever you need, the Universe has already provided, all you need to do is look up, reach out, and claim it.

This month may you see a blossoming of spirit and a renewed sense of joy.

Richest Blessings,
Lori

www.EmpressFengShui.com