The Ghosts Books Under the Bed and Other Undead Energy Stealers

How many times have you heard an author say her first book was banished to the dust bunny kingdom under the bed? Some even admit to having more than a small library of unpublished and unfinished work beneath the place they spend a third of their lives. Yours may be on the top shelf way back in the closet under the stack of parachute pants that may come back any day . . .

I've always been interested in how and why people expend their energy and I'm grateful to those who help us learn to better use our precious energy and get more. They're the unclutterers, energy workers, Feng Shui practitioners and others such as Carolyn Myss, a renown medical intuitive. Myss says that everywhere you send your thought, good or bad, you've an energy attachment or connection there, drawing your attention, your energy to it. If the energy attachment has a stagnant or a negative memory connection, you may feel depleted, rundown, nervous, tired or vaguely unhappy. That is the mind-body connection in action that health researchers and even quantum physicists are now validating. Speaking of quantum physics, if you haven't seen the movie, What the Bleep Do We Know?, out now on DVD, buy it, don't rent, because you'll be watching it again and again as you go farther down the rabbit hole.

Remember when your mother told you to clean your room? It wasn't just for her good and sanity, well, yes it was. But a good cleaning, straightening and discarding of the old, unfinished and no longer useful in your life is good for you in many ways besides making someone else happy. Think how much energy you waste avoiding tasks like cleaning the car, the bathrooms, organizing your files or changing your negative behavior. The chore gets bigger and harder because you're constantly thinking about what needs to be done and how to avoid it. You put off for tomorrow what's better done yesterday and find something more immediately pleasurable to do, though your energy is still draining out to the unfinished task.

I've been researching Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese art of placement, for a book and learned it's considered by millions to be a practical and effective ŇartÓ to bring the various chaotic energies into harmony not only in one's home or place of business, but in personal life, too. Last year I hired a Feng Shui practitioner to come into my home to do some space clearing after a catastrophic event in my neighborhood that rendered me edgy and incessantly rerunning the event in my mind. I had huge amounts of mental energy going out to that event, keeping the horror alive, to the detriment of my health, sense of well being and productivity.

The Feng Shui practitioner had many suggestions for making my living space, in and outside, more harmonious. She actually checked all closets, furniture placement, colors of the walls for each energy section of the house, looking for flow and blocks. When she bent to look under the bed, she warned never store anything under the place where you sleep, because you'll be affected by that stagnant energy and won't rest as well. I'm proud to say there's only carpet and a dust bunny colony under my bed that I'm going to have to relocate to the bagless one day soon. I made several of the changes she suggested and immediately experienced a more calming, secure atmosphere in my home, and my neighborhood soon reflected a new harmony.

Whether people are consciously aware or not, we're affected by our surrounding and other people. You may have locations where you feel comfortable and inspired. Mine is a favorite table at the Highlands Tully's Coffee Shop. There are also places and situations where you feel angry, depressed, or anxious, too, such as suffering a three hour I-5 commute with the gas gauge blinking empty or entering a space where people have had a horrible verbal or physically harmful altercation.

Like negative spaces and locations, there toxic people who drain you emotionally and others who inspire you. Limit your time and access to the drainers or get mentally tough. Even if you moved to a survivor island, as long as you were thinking about the drainers and unfinished or undead projects in your life, you'd still be losing energy in that direction and that would weaken you.

Learn to recognize the energy drainers, the undead tasks in your personal, business and creative life that steal your happiness. Deal with them, change what you can. And if you do nothing else for yourself, at least work at letting go of the hurt, unhappiness and fear and break those energetic connections that are creating and reinforcing what you don't want in your life.

We're advised to live everyday as if it were our last. Have you ever wondered, like I have, if this were your last day of this life, would you be leaving behind an uncluttered, creative, purposeful life for your friends and family to remember you by? Or are you going to wait and deal with whatever in your next life? Ah, now that opens a new world of possibilities, doesn't it? Maybe the ghost books under the bed are really the undead from your past lives, sucking your energy, haunting you to drive a Done! stake through their hearts and set yourself free.