Feng Shui and the Power of Visual Affirmations

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. 

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 influence 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 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. 

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 do 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! 

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.