Refreshing Your Home's Energy with Colour and Intention

The painters have been gone for ten days and I've only hung one picture.

There is that vibe about a freshly painted wall, with no knicks or mars that I'm simply appreciating.  That and the fact that I want to hammer the nail only once, so I'm allowing myself the time.

I'm so grateful for the Interior Designer's eye and guidance when it came to choosing the colour for our main floor.  The following pictures below do not do the real life feeling justice.

If I were to look at the bagua just for this room it may appear as though I've not considered Feng Shui at all.  However, as I mentioned in the Refreshing Your Home's Energy with Colour, there is definitely room for interpretation, and in my opinion room for Intention.

The bold Spanish style Red (Fire) , the deep, dark Grey (Water), the contrast neutral Smoky Taupe (Metal) make this space feel warm and inviting.

I'm not afraid of bold colours, and during our initial consultation with the designer I had in my mind's eye a blue where the red now resides.  I wanted to draw from the blue in a picture I had and felt it would be most perfect.  Up until a week before the painters arrived, every time I looked at that wall I saw the blue, I was on the verge of calling and changing colours.

Wood Elements:
Hardwood Floor (literal wood)
Hardwood Floor (striped, linear pattern)
Maple Cabinets
Maple Door
Maple built in shelves
Lots of Plants
Faux logs in Fireplace

Fire Elements:
South Facing Windows
Lighting fixtures
Fireplace
Gas Stove
Artwork depicting the sun

Earth Elements:
Brown fabric Couch
Square Slate back splash
Square slate tiles fireplace surround
Square shaped wall unit
Square design on area rug
Room screen with gold

Metal Elements:
Stainless Steel appliances
White sheers
Circular plant stands

Water Elements:
Sink
Dishwasher
Large Windows
Diffuser
Black book case

The addition of our colours helps to balance out the elements in the space.

The Red wall (fire) helps to control the wood dominance; while the addition of the Grey (water)  helps to nourish Wood energy overall.  To keep everything in balance.

Back to intention.  Red is also the colour of communication, as this is our kitchen and dining room, and I love to entertain I see the red as a support of warm and lively conversations with whomever gathers here.  The Grey light banks above add that water vibeage to keep the communication from getting to "fiery" :)

Intentional Gratitude: The Bounce Back

What do you do if you set your  

pre-gratitude intention and things go

...not as you intended?

Paving the way by feeling grateful in advance for something is not immunity against it turning out differently than intended.  There can be a host of extenuating circumstances at work that can influence and affect the outcome. 

If you were feeling the gratitude vibeage and were focused on everything going right and instead everything went wrong.  I would ask you this:

How did you bounce back when that happened?

Using our thoughts, intentions and feelings for creating goodness in our lives is a powerful force.  When they do not manifest as we had focused on, it can feel anti-climactic and downright crummy!

This is where choice comes in...

You get to choose how you respond to the outcome!

How cool is that?  You get to choose how you respond to a successful intentional gratitude effort as well as to one which was not so successful.

If you have the experience that what you intended with the focus of feeling and being grateful didn't manifest:  Did you handle it with more flexibility?  Did you bounce back easier?  Rather than get mired in the disappointment? 

Let's look at the opposite scenario: 
Have you an experience when you felt that niggling feeling about something, someone, an event or experience that was going to go sideways, and sure enough it did.  

Then in domino tipping fashion that one thing may be followed by another then another.  Further proving your point that you knew that nothing good was going to come from this and your intuition was correct.  You had anticipated and braced yourself in advance to be disappointed, upset or angry.  And you were one, two or all three and then some.

In the event that the niggling feeling did not come to pass, then you may have shrugged it off casually with a semblance of relief, while still possibly waiting for something wrong to happen.

I've certainly have been there done that!

So how did you bounce back when that happened?

Were you prepared for clean up afterwards when things got messy or depending on the circumstances you may have even felt that you were going deeper and deeper into the abyss.  Preparing ourselves for a potential disaster doesn't mean that we are preparing to respond, rather we may be still in a reaction state.  

If your intentional gratitude vibe doesn't manifest I invite you to choose to look at it as: 

1. A way to practice your try try again attitude.
2. A chance to celebrate your ability to bounce back easier
3. A way to increase your gratitude muscle by looking at the bright side of what you did create...a chance to learn!

Think of Gratitude like a muscle, flex it, use it and it strengthens!

Enjoy the process and celebrate the effort!

Intentional Gratitude: Scripting

I wanted to share some scripting ideas to use when thinking, journalling, speaking and above all feeling your Intentional Gratitude.

Setting a pre-gratitude intention is like crafting an affirmation.  Affirmations are declarative statements of something that is true and is a positive statement. 

When choosing your statement it is important to employ 3 things:

1.  Take ownership of the statement.

Begin your intentional gratitude with "I am... or I feel", this makes the affirmation about YOU.  You are the one who is wanting to create the goodness, so you are who the statement is about.

2.  Stay current or present.

Granted this is about being thankful for something in your future, however, you will be best served by using a current timeline such as "I am Grateful NOW for... or I feel so Grateful NOW that...".  

Using words like "will and when" as in "I will be Grateful when....such and such happens"; is wishy washy.  If you are saying you will be grateful, then you are not grateful now; If you are saying when it happens you are not attracting it back in a timely manner.

That verbage puts your thought energy out into the world like playing catch with yourself.  You throw the ball high and long but it lands in the grass so that when you want it to come back you will have to go look for wherever it landed.  Anchoring your intention in the present projects your vibeage out there like a boomerang, as we want it to come back to us.

3.  Feeling the Gratitude.

Language can anchor our thoughts, but feeling it empowers our thoughts and ourselves.

If you are saying this or any affirmation by rote and not believing it, more importantly feeling it, then its simply words.  Dialing in on with the anticipation that your intentional gratitude will come to fruition.

This bears repeating... When you intend to be grateful for something and anticipate how grateful you will be for it and feel it; your energy is conspiring in your favor for you to achieve it!

I'd love to hear your experiences, feel free to share in the comments!

I Am Grateful NOW, for the comments posted on this blog post :)

Intentional Gratitude

Did you participate in the social media Gratitude Challenge?  Whereas as friend tagged you and you were to post 3 things daily which you were grateful for?  I enjoyed reading the posts on my news feed and participated myself.  Then another friend tagged me and I decided to do things a little differently. 

Rather than posting a daily Gratitude Reflection, I decided to post a Pre-Gratitude Intention.

For the first couple days I wrote my Pre-Gratitude in the morning, and posted what I intended to be grateful for that day such as:

• Grateful for mindful drivers and safe travel to my destination.
• Grateful for the ease in accomplishing something.

Fun Fact:   

My success was immediate. Traffic can especially be a nemesis so I was elated that travelling with everyone else on the roads was easy. Plus since I began my day with setting those intentions they were in the forefront of my mind, so my actions followed my thinking.

On the third day I decided to change the format again.  

What if I put my Pre-Gratitude thoughts out there the night before rather than the morning of.  Would that impact or improve how I felt and what transpired?  

Think about this:  If you have ever gone to bed dreading a task or situation set for the next day?  Gone to bed thinking about it, mulling it over, worrying and anticipating the potential level of yuck its going to be?  Potentially having a fitful sleep only to wake up the next morning feeling exhausted and unsettled.  I certainly have.

Suffice to say, setting a Pre-Gratitude Intention before going to bed resulted in my feeling the Opposite of that!  My experience was that it was as effective in results; but I felt a greater connection to the intention.  In my opinion, setting the Gratitude Intention the night before allowed my subconscious mind work out the details.

What can you be Pre-Grateful for tomorrow?  How would it feel to set your intention to be and feel Grateful for something before it even happens?

Feel Free to share in the comments below or on my Facebook page