Take a moment to consider all the time you spend in your office; if you’re happy at work, you are spending a good part of your life happy. When you think of your job not just as a means to make money, but as a large part of your journey through life, then naturally you will want to work in inspiring surroundings. After all, some people spend almost as much time at work as they do at home, so why not create an office that’s just as appealing as your home.

A great way to enhance your work environment is to apply Feng Shui principles. In fact, many successful companies and professionals use Feng Shui to increase profits and efficiency including Coca Cola and Steve Wynn. A clean, well-organized, healthy, attractive workspace will make not only you, but your fellow employees, happier and more productive.

Of course we understand that you can’t always control all aspects of your work environment. Unless you’re the boss or you work from home, your ability to redecorate or move furniture around the office may be limited, but we’ve listed a few tips that almost everyone should be able to apply.

Ten Tips To Feng Shui Your Office

- Place Your Furniture in the Command Position: In Feng Shui, the Command Position, also known as the Power Position, is used to describe the place in a room where a person will feel the most protected and empowered. The Command Position is where you have a view of the door (without being directly in front of the door) and, ideally, a solid wall behind your back. Placing desk chairs in the Command Position will allow you to feel more in control. Powerful offices are usually arranged so the person sitting at the desk has the most commanding view of the room—just think of the Oval Office. Sitting in the Command Position in your office is also beneficial for two other reasons. First, it allows you to concentrate and focus more fully without being distracted by what is happening behind you, and, second, this position symbolizes facing your opportunities. For more about the Command Position read our blog: Support Yourself at Home and in the Office

- Enhance the Career and Wealth & Prosperity Corners of your office. Just as in acupuncture different parts of your body correspond to different organs, in Feng Shui different parts of your home affect different areas of your life. In Feng Shui there are nine main areas in your home that correspond to areas of your life, including a Career and Wealth & Prosperity area. Using the Easy Feng Shui With Augmented Reality App, locate these areas in your office and enhance them with objects you love. Place healthy, growing plants or a water fountain in your Wealth and Prosperity Corner and place a list of career affirmations in your Career area (more suggestions are in the app). Ideally, enhance all the areas, as all the areas are connected. For more about Feng Shui areas and enhancements read our blog: Feng Shui and the Power of Visual Affirmations.

- Anchor your purpose in your office. You will feel much more focused and your outlook will be more positive if your purpose at work is clear. If you love your job, create a mission statement or have objects, artwork, or reminders of your successes at work as well as future goals. If your job is not your “lifework” then place reminders of how your job still serves a higher purpose—for example a picture of your family reminding you that it helps support your family.

- Replace fluorescent light bulbs with Full-spectrum light bulbs. Full-spectrum bulbs emulate natural sunlight and create a more relaxing atmosphere. If you can’t change overhead fluorescent bulbs in your office, consider turning them off and using lamps instead. Proper lighting will reduce strain on your eyes and make you and your employees more comfortable.

- De-clutter your office. Clutter not only looks unprofessional, but In Feng Shui, it drains our time and energy, weighs on our minds, takes up space, and blocks new things and opportunities from coming into our lives. To save space and avoid overflowing file cabinets, try to scan as many documents as possible so you can store them online rather than in file cabinets. Also be sure to remove any old or broken computers and electronics. In Feng Shui, broken items or unused electronics, can negatively affect the energy in a room. If you need to find a recycle center that will take your old computers and electronics visit earth911.com.

- Switch to all natural cleaning products. Conventional cleaning products contain harsh chemicals including ammonia and phenol, which can irritate your skin and lungs, and cause headaches. These products are also one of the leading causes of indoor air pollution. So instead of cleaning your home, you’re actually polluting the air you breathe! Most natural cleaning products are biodegradable, nontoxic, chlorine-free, and petroleum-free – all good for the planet, but better for your body. To avoid exposing yourself and your employees or co-workers to these hazardous pollutants, switch your cleaning supplies for non-toxic, environmentally safe cleaning products. For more about cleaning products read our blog: The Joy of All Natural Cleaning Products.

- Choose an ergonomic office chair that supports your back and encourages good posture. Make sure your desk and keyboard are at comfortable heights to support your back as well.

- Enhance your front entrance. The front entrance to your office is where first impressions are made and the location where visitors are welcomed. In Feng Shui it also believed that your front door is where all the energy that circulates through your space enters bringing abundance, new opportunities and vitality. It is therefore important to make your front entrance as appealing and inviting as possible (particularly if you own a store and attracting customers walking by is important to you). Make sure the path to your front entrance is clear of obstacles such as fallen tree limbs and overgrown bushes and the sidewalk in good repair. You do not want your customers or vital energy to encounter any obstructions when trying to reach your front door. Brighten your front entrance with lights. Make sure your door is well marked so your street or suite number visible from the street and people do not have to search to find the entrance. By clearly marking your front entrance, you are not only helping people find your office, you are signaling to the world that you welcome new opportunities and abundance into your office and into your life. Finally, create an inviting welcome area for visitors and, ideally, make sure visitors are greeted by a person. For about front entrances read our blog: Enhance Your Life by Enhancing Your Front Entrance.

- Create a view. If you don’t have a view, create one with artwork or photos. Select peaceful, relaxing artwork such as a sea or landscape. Or place inspiring pictures on your desk, like photos from your last vacation. To learn more about creating a view read our blog: Change Your View.

- Open windows. A study by the EPA found that pollution inside a home could be two to five times higher than outside the home, even in large, industrialized cities. Opening windows creates a way for unhealthy fumes released from cleaning products, office equipment, carpets etc… to exit and fresh air to enter.

Most importantly, enjoy your work! Happy people are great Feng Shui. To learn more about how to find joy at your current job, or find a job more in line with your dreams, read our blog Finding Your Life Work.

To celebrate the release of our new app Feng Shui for Love with Augmented Reality, and our eGuide Love at Home: The Single Girl’s Guide to Feng Shui and Life Design we wanted to offer a few tips about how to change your home to find love.

Did you know that many men and women unknowingly make choices about how to decorate their homes that contribute to their single status? What we have in our homes, what we choose to surround ourselves with, and how we decorate impact our lives on a daily basis… As we like to say, the objects in our homes are “alive” and “speaking” to us because of our feelings about them or the memories we associate with them. Even the most mundane objects can elicit an emotional response and influence how we feel. When you look at the contents of your home from this point of view, you see why it is essential to live with things that support and reflect your goals—including the goal to be in a loving relationship.

In addition, our homes are in expression of who we are… so when we invite someone to our home, we’re actually telling them a lot about ourselves. You want to ensure that the message your home is sending to your dates is aligned with who you are and what you want.

Top Ten Most Common Decorating Do’s and Don’ts for Singles Looking for Love

- Don’t fill your home with pictures, letters, and belongings from an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend. Letting go of photographs, letters, and mementos from past relationships can present a challenge for many people. If that’s the case, you may want to consider why. Spending time with intimate memories from your past can sometimes be a healing and empowering experience. However, if looking at these photographs and letters is not healing or empowering, or if they’re keeping you tied to someone who is no longer in your life, then it is time to let them go.  Instead, surround yourself with things that reinforce who you are now and who you want to be. Looking for a new relationship is a time of looking forward to your future, not being bogged down in your past!

- Don’t live in a bachelor pad or little girl’s room. Rooms that look like they are designed for girls and boys rather than men and women are a real turn-off. If you’re a man, avoid the “college frat room look” or the “bachelor pad” (i.e. mattress on the floor, futons, high school trophies, dirty dishes in the sink, clutter everywhere, etc…). Women won’t think you’re looking for something serious if you live like you’re in college. If you’re a woman, avoid a room or apartment that resembles your room at your childhood home (i.e. doll collections, stuffed animals on the bed, too much lace or pink, sorority signs, baskets of dried flowers, furniture that looks like it is meant for teenagers rather than adults). Men want to be with a woman, not take care of a little girl.

- Don’t have excessive pictures of friends, family, and other people’s children, as well as too many pictures from one particular time in the past, such as college. Too many pictures of other people’s lives and a particular time in your life can divert focus away from your own life in the present moment. Create space for new people in your life and a new “best time of your life” by creating room for new photos. In addition, too many pictures of family, friends and even children in the bedroom, do not help set the stage for romance. You don’t need to be thinking of friends and family while trying to be romantic. Establish privacy by removing photos from the bedroom.

- Don’t have a television in the bedroom. Ideally, the bedroom should serve only two purposes: rest and romance. Unfortunately, due to laptops, televisions, and phones, bedrooms are often more like media rooms than sensual and peaceful retreats. Don’t let a television or laptop replace a partner in your life!

- Don’t have lots of “Single Women Art.” Time and time again we find that our single female clients have an abundance of art depicting a single woman, often looking pensive or depressed! Laura had no less than six in a one-bedroom apartment when she was single. Your home is a reflection of your state of mind, so surround yourself with images that reflect your goals (such as pictures of romantic places, happy couples or things in two’s) and evoke positive, uplifting feelings.

- Do live in a home that balances the feminine and masculine. A home that is overly feminine may not invite masculine energy; a home that is too masculine may not support feminine energy. By creating a home that balances the masculine and feminine you are creating an environment that invites and supports a relationship.

- Do set up your home for two people. Often we find single men and women create a home, and in particular, a bedroom for one (i.e., one bedside table, one reading lamp, one pillow or the long side of the bed is pushed up against a wall so only one person can enter the bed comfortably). While it is important to accept and embrace where you are now, it is also important that you make space for a partner. Create a home for two people and you’ll both symbolically and physically be making space for your future partner. Add a second side table, push the bed away from the wall, add another reading lamp, and make sure there are places for two people to eat together or hang out. When you live “as if” you are already in a relationship you’re setting a strong intention.

- Do commit to your home and live full out. Many people wait for a partner before buying or decorating a home, because they want to wait until they have a “real” home (which is frequently associated with getting married, registering for gifts, and buying a house). By surrounding yourself with things you don’t love, that are not in good condition, or things that you feel are second-rate, you’re subconsciously telling yourself that you don’t deserve better. It’s important to invest in yourself now and embrace the present moment. By doing so, you are sending a message that you are worthy and you are surrendering and accepting where you are now, which often leads to change.

- Do decorate with romantic colors. Color has an impact on our emotions. An all white room or a room with little color can “cool off” a relationship. To promote more romance in your life, decorate the bedroom with sensual colors, like skin tones such as beige and chocolate, or use shades of red, the color associated with passion and love, like burgundy and terracotta.  Adding color makes your home more fun, flirty, and sexy. On the other hand, too much of one very strong color can be overwhelming. For example, too much of a powerful , energizing color like red can increase arguments and make it hard to sleep.

- Do live in a clutter-free, organized, beautiful space. Clutter collects dust, stagnates energy and just weighs on our minds. It also keeps us tied to the past and blocks new and better things from coming into our lives. Being disorganized does not make us feel good about ourselves and negatively affects our self-esteem—we often feel behind, unsuccessful, or not “together” when we can’t find things. Let go of the old and make space for the new and better! When your home is set up properly it can nurture, encourage, and inspire you to achieve your goals. You can even think of your home as your new best friend—a positive sounding board that is supportive, but also keeps you in check by constantly reflecting your true state of mind back to you.

We’re very excited to announce that our new Feng Shui for Love with Augmented Reality app is now available in the iTunes store (the Android version is in the works and will be ready soon). In addition to lots of practical Feng Shui tips about improving your love life, the app has an augmented reality feature that allows you to look through the viewfinder and locate the Love and Marriage area of your home (and other areas as well). Didn’t realize your home had different areas? Get the app or check out our blog, Feng Shui and Visual Affirmations.

If you’d like more information about creating a home that will help you find and maintain a loving relationship, read our eGuide Love at Home: The Single Girl’s Guide to Feng Shui and Life Design!

Still reading? You can also check out our mention in the New York Times article “It’s Not You, It’s Your Apartment” or watch us consult, by playing this video.

If you read our blog regularly you know that Feng Shui is one of the many tools we use in our overall approach to creating a home, which we call Life Design. For those who aren’t familiar with Feng Shui, it’s the 4,000 year old Chinese art of arranging your home to enhance your life. We’re very excited to announce that our new iPhone app Easy Feng Shui with Augmented Reality is now available in the iTunes store (the Android version is in the works and will be ready soon). In addition to lots of practical Feng Shui tips, the app has an augmented reality feature that allows you to look through the viewfinder and locate the Wealth, Career, and Love and Marriage Areas (and other areas as well) of your home. Didn’t realize your home had different areas? Read on!

At the heart of Feng Shui is the idea that our homes are connected to all aspects of our wellbeing. What we put in our homes, how we decorate, and what we surround ourselves with affect us on a daily basis and influences all aspects of our lives. If you want to make a positive change in your life, you can begin by making a positive change in your home.

We always say that with Feng Shui, you can create a dream home. But when we say dream home we don’t necessarily mean what the house looks like, where it is, or how big it is—we mean a home that both reflects your dreams and supports you in reaching those dreams. A dream home should not only contain everything you want in a space, but also everything you want in your life.

Now if Feng Shui were a toolbox, one of the tools in that box would be something called the Bagua (pronounced Bah-gwa). The Bagua is an energetic map of your home and has been used in China for thousands of years to determine how the energy flow in your home affects different areas of your life. Just as in acupuncture different parts of your body correspond to different organs, in Feng Shui different parts of your home affect different areas of your life. In Feng Shui there are nine main areas that represent your life: Helpful People, Children and Creativity, Love and Relationships, Fame and Reputation, Wealth and Prosperity, Family, Health, Knowledge and Self-Cultivation, and Career. According to the Bagua map, each of these areas of your life directly corresponds to different areas of energy in your home. The Bagua identifies where these areas are located in your home. When you make positive changes in in the specific areas of your home according to the Bagua Map, you can produce positive changes in that area of your life—positive changes can include clutter clearing, cleaning, or using Feng Shui enhancements. The Bagua Map is therefore a vehicle through which you may set your intentions and manifest your dreams. The Easy Feng Shui App’s augmented reality technology lays the Bagua Map for you and identifies the nine areas as well gives you suggestions about what enhancements to use in each area. If you don’t have a phone that supports apps, we also offer phone consultations to help you locate the Bagua areas and recommend enhancements.

Once you’ve located the Bagua areas, we recommend creating “visual affirmations” for each area of your life and then placing them in the corresponding area. A visual affirmation is a tangible expression of your dreams in your home. It’s similar to writing affirmations or doing visualizations—only in your home you have the chance to take it a step further by creating a physical expression of your desires that you see and interact with on a daily basis—from your mind into your environment. For example, if you want to make a career change, place reminders of the career you desire in the Career Area, such as books about this new profession, pictures that represent the new job, or an object. If you want to be a chef, you could display cookbooks that inspire you, or if you want to write a novel lay out books by authors you admire, or if you want to be a dancer perhaps display a sculpture of a dancer. Or if you desire a romantic relationship, you could place visual reminders of your ideal relationship in the Love and Marriage Area of your home. This could be a work of art that symbolizes love, or it could be letters, photographs, or objects that represent the relationship of your dreams. Visual affirmations are often very personal and can be one object or many grouped together—as long as the object/s remind you of your dream and inspire you, it’s a visual affirmation. When you place visual affirmations in the corresponding Bagua area, something powerful happens—we’ve seen it time and time again! For stories from our clients who used the Bagua check out the Praise section of our site.

Even if you don’t use the Bagua Map, you can create visual affirmations and place them in the areas of your home that feel right to you and they will still have an effect. For example, you may want to place visual affirmations about your relationship in the bedroom, the room we most associate with romance. Or if you’d like to improve your career, place enhancements in your home office, or if you’d like to improve your relationship with your family place visual affirmations near the kitchen table where you eat dinner, etc…

You can also create visual affirmations in any part of your home by living “as if” your dream has already come true or create an area in your home that supports you in making a change. To go back to our previous examples, if you want to be a chef, make sure your kitchen is clean, clutter-free and has great cooking utensils. If you want to be a writer, make sure you have a desk or space in your home where you can write quietly and be uninterrupted. If you are looking for love, create a home that makes space for your future partner by placing two bedside tables by your bed, making sure there are two comfy seats to hang out and watch TV, a place to have a romantic dinner, etc… Living “as if” sets a strong intention and places your focus on your dreams.

Once you’re focused on your dreams and goals and are feeling good about yourself, you’re more apt to attract positive people and opportunities. It goes back to the universal principle that what you put out into the world comes back to you—or in other words, “like attracts like.” When you begin to think, feel, act, and live a certain way—you’re more apt to be that way. You create a home that reflects back to you not only who you are now, but who you want to be. These simple changes in your home can produce positive changes in your life.

Our app, Easy Feng Shui with Augmented Reality, is available in the Apple iTunes store now.

For more Feng Shui tips you can also check out our blog, Five Simple Feng Shui Practices to Change Your Life or some of our favorite Feng Shui books in our Amazon Store.

Finally, we’d like to thank our brilliant partners at Spirit Quest World who helped us develop our apps and figured out a technically challenging part of this particular app—the Augmented Reality. Although it’s easy to use, the programming behind it was complicated and we’re simply not that tech savvy! Thanks for being such wonderful partners!