Your home can be everything that the outside world isn’t.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

By: Jacqueline Gates   – Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.

We are all in Scorpio season and Venus – that epitome of can’t-we-all-just-get-along – is retrograde. That energy is flowing darkly through all things relationship/power/money/death-and-taxes and most of us don’t like a lot of what we see. There’s a shit storm on every major media outlet, most recently in a place of gentle worship.

A lot of us are feeling really scared, really heavy, really sad and somewhat out of control.

Know this – your home can be the antidote you seek. Your home can be everything that the outside world isn’t. Your home can be a literal recharging station when the outside world depletes even your deepest reserves. And in times like this, I can’t think of anything more important.

Here are three remedies for you to try –

When everything feels out of control …
Tidy up.

Pick up the things that are lying around and put some orderliness into your immediate environment.

I’m not advocating minimalism. Your home doesn’t have to be pristine to feel ordered. It simply needs your (literal) touch and your deliberately, mindfully, putting things back where they’re supposed to be, to give you a sense of control in your immediate world.

Empty the dishwasher. Clear your desk. Fold your towels just so. Notice while you putter around, putting things in their designated space, that YOU are the creative force of orderliness in your space.

Within these walls, you are Sovereign and CEO. You have the power to set things to rights.

Own it.

Let that feeling flood the inner spaces where powerlessness lurks. Take that sense with you to work, to school, to the voting booth.

 

If you’re looking for some sense of accomplishment, some sense of completion when the world seems to always be back where we started with the big issues ….
Make your bed.

Seriously.

Smooth the sheets with quiet noticing of the texture beneath your fingertips. Reclaim your attention – just for a moment – from the synagogue and streets and newsfeed – and <feel> through your fingers, rather than your heart.

Give thanks that there is support in your life. Savour the anticipatory certainty of the comfort that awaits you at the end of the day.

Stand there for a breathful minute, admiring the neat corners, the way you’ve set up the pillows, the invitation of a turned back sheet. However, you make your bed – complete it, and celebrate that accomplishment.

Somethings get done, only to be undone and done again, yes?

We make our beds, only to do it again tomorrow. We’ll feed our kids tonight, and will do so again tomorrow. We’ll vote and vote again.

When there’s no end in sight to the task at hand, it’s important to see each step as an accomplishment,
and complete within itself.

 

If you can’t hear yourself think over the clamor of outside voices, be it ‘gurus’ or newsfeed or tv …
clear your bookcase.

I did this recently. Held each book in my hands, feeling how/if I still related to it. We non-virtual book lovers tend to collect and curate volumes of words that speak to us in the moment. We forget that we change. We forget that we can fall out of alignment with the authors of those books.

I recently gave away a whole lot of marketing books that, when I bought them, were madly useful but now make me shudder with their exhortations to hustle and grind and lean on pain points.

I added meat-lovers’ recipe books and innumerable compendiums of shabby chic décor to the pile, plus all the financial advice books that rather than inspiring me, somehow made me feel like I’d already missed the investing/bitcoin/retirement boat.

I was once someone who needed those words.
I am not that anymore.
Dropping those books into the library donation bin felt like the closing of a chapter.

You could do the same with your inbox. Unsubscribe. Unsubscribe to the max – you can always rejoin.

Unsubscribe from the marketing emails from people that you don’t really follow much anymore. Unsubscribe from the shopping emails from even your favorite stores, especially if you’re trying to wrangle control over your budget. Just get rid of the temptation. The FOMO will abate, I promise.

******

I know how crazy this sounds, but here’s the thing… If we keep noticing what’s unaccomplished, all the work we still have to do, whether inside or outside our own realm, then that’s where our attention gets hooked. Energy flows where attention goes.

If you can shift that default even a minuscule bit – by deeply focusing your attention on that made bed, on that cleared counter, on an inbox that has a fewer emails in it – you can’t help but remember how much power you have in the here and now.

YOUR here and YOUR now are waiting for you to direct them via your focus. This is quantum physics 101. Shift your attention/focus and the future changes for all of us, not just you. (See butterfly effect)

No, I’m not saying that this is all that needs to be done. We still need to vote. We still need to speak up and out, defend those at risk and wrestle away power from those incapable of wielding it kindly.

I’d never be so hubristic as to assert that Intentional Nesting‘s going to change the world, but it can change your world and from there, anything’s possible, you know?