10 Essential Tips for Office Feng Shui
What exactly is feng shui? It originated in China, and it’s basically the idea that whatever’s happening in the space that we occupy is what’s happening inside of us. When your environment is aligned, you’ll be aligned also.
Since you spend a lot of time in your office, it only makes sense that you’d want to get your office feng shui in harmony. Feng means wind, and shui means water. Here’s how to get that wind and water flowing in your office.
10 Things You Can Do To Create Office Feng Shui
When you interact with a clean, well-organized environment, you’re influenced to feel more at ease as well. Maximize your productivity when you invite feng shui into your workplace.
Watch Your Back
The feng shui way of thinking says that we should place our desks so that we’re in charge of the room. Biologically, we feel safer when our backs aren’t facing a door or where a potential threat could lie.
Your coworkers bringing you some paperwork to do might be the biggest threat you face in your office, but it’s the best feng shui practice to position your desk so your back is against a solid wall. Literally and figuratively, then, it’s more difficult for something to happen behind your back.
Get Rid of Clutter
One of the simplest ways to create office feng shui is to declutter your working area. When you’re overwhelmed with clutter, you can’t have the flow that your productivity is counting on. This even includes the all the junk in your desk that you can’t see.
When you clean out your workspace and gid rid of everything but the essentials, you’ll notice that the physical clearing of space has also helped to clear your mind. Take it one step further and clean out all the old files on your computer that you don’t use anymore.
Light it Up
Office lighting can have a huge effect on your productivity. If the lighting in your office is yellow or fluorescent, it could be making people feel down.
The best lighting you can get is the sun, so if you’ve got a window, crack that open instead. If that’s not an option, LED lights are a nice alternative to fluorescent ones.
Add Some Color
In feng shui, there are five elements represented by several colors.
If you’ve got all white walls, you might want to consider adding a coat of paint to liven them up and work with a theme you’re going for. You can choose wood, fire, earth, metal, or water.
Work them into a better lighting scheme as well, and your productivity is guaranteed to increase.
Get Some Fresh Air
If you’re sitting in stale office air for extended periods of time, you’re not putting the feng in feng shui. A fan can work wonders to make the area seem more clear and less dull.
Adding plants to the office can also breathe life into the air. In feng shui, wealth-symbolic plants include bamboo, succulents, and jade. Consider adding them to your office to invite a healthier environment, and breathe more deeply.
Take a Little Break
You’ve probably got a break room – it’s important to use it to the fullness of its ability, as a place to go when you need to recharge. Maybe your break room could use some sprucing up. Don’t neglect it when it comes to creating a sense of feng shui.
Adding a beanbag or even a sofa can really help promote a sense of rest, and allow you to recharge for getting back to work.
Use Your Nose
If your coworkers don’t mind, using a diffuser to spread some essential oils in the air can help liven up your workspace.
Lavender essential oil helps promote a sense of calm, or orange essential oil gets the area feeling more vibrant. Aromatherapy goes a long way in changing the mood of the room, so be sure not to skip this seemingly small step.
Get Artistic
Surround yourself with art that helps keep you energized and inspired. Boring white walls won’t help you here – add art to your workspace that symbolizes what you want to get done. When your environment speaks artistically with what you want, it will align with what you actually produce.
Add Stress Relief
If music helps you relax, play it in your office. If you need a fidget spinner, set it on your desk. Add a fountain for relaxing ambient sounds, or get a white noise machine.
Essentially, whatever your way of removing stressors from the environment, adding those helps increase feng shui. Furniture with rounded corners instead of sharp edges can also be conducive to a more calm environment.
Balance Your Numinosity
Every item in your office influences you in one way or another. Carl Jung calls this principle numinosity.
That means that no matter what pieces you choose to adorn your office with, those pieces are having an effect on you. Take a moment to look at each thing that’s taking up space in your workplace.
If whatever item you’re considering doesn’t keep a positive vibe going, ditch it for something that adds more harmony to your environment. When everything works together, you’ll feel more balanced.
Feng Shui Everywhere
Now that you’ve got your office feng shui nailed down, it’s time to take it to other important environments in your life, too.
Having a clean and happy environment in your home is just as important, if not more important, than having it in your office.
You can click here for more information on how to start making your home as harmonious as possible. Mid-Atlantic works hand in hand with bathroom remodelers, kitchen remodelers, flooring designers – anyone that you would need to make sure that your room is doing everything you need to make it the most comfortable possible place for you.
You can work to design your space from the bottom up, whether it be a kitchen or a room or your whole house, to be the most feng shui friendly it can be.
