STP 97 | How to Reduce Stress in Your Work Environment with Feng Shui
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[00:00:00] Mark Ainley: There's an adage that, uh, if you want to change the course of a river, you go as far upstream as you can and you move one rock. And so, sometimes, you know, that little thing in the corner, they may say, Oh yeah, actually, I just remembered that really annoys me every time I see it.
[00:00:15] Mark Ainley: I was like, okay, so what are you doing to yourself every time you see something that annoys you? Two things, like you feel annoyed, and then you try to tune it out. So you're teaching yourself to tune out things, so how are you going to tune in to what it is that you actually need if you're practicing tuning out?
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[00:00:35] Microphone (Yeti Classic) & Logitech BRIO: Are you looking for ways to diversify your income? In January, I'm starting a cohort of therapists to start creating online content, to increase your impact, influence, and income.
[00:00:48] Microphone (Yeti Classic) & Logitech BRIO: Visit course creation, studio.com and look for resources on starting your own online course today. [00:01:00] Hello, and welcome to the Scaling Therapy
[00:01:03] James Marland: Practice. This is your host, James Marland. This is the show where we empower mission driven leaders to launch life changing online courses. for joining us on the show. I'm here with my special guest, Mark Ainley, who writes, teaches, and consults internationally on feng shui. This is something that I am not an expert in. If you ever look at my office or my floor, I actually am probably a disaster. So I'm really happy to have Mark on the show today, where he can talk about ways to make your office and your environment.
[00:01:38] James Marland: more accommodating and less stressful, which I think is going to be very beneficial to therapists. So Mark, welcome to the show.
[00:01:46] Mark Ainley: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:01:50] James Marland: So Mark, what, uh, introduce yourself to the audience. We often don't start out teaching online courses. We often don't start in this [00:02:00] online digital world. You have some experience that you brought that you are bringing to us before. So how did you get started in what you're doing?
[00:02:09] Mark Ainley: Oh, great question. And, you know, like many things in life, and I think, uh, you know, I've been listening to a few of your guests. So many people didn't start off in the field that they're currently in. You know, it's like the, the practice that they're in found them. And that was definitely the case with feng shui.
[00:02:25] Mark Ainley: Uh, I lived in Japan as an English teacher starting in 92 in the pre internet world. Some of us. Are older than Google and remember that and I moved to London. and moved in with a friend of a friend who had a book on Feng Shui. And so I was exposed to Feng Shui and immediately just loved the concept of the fact that. We can engage with what seems to be just physical space and our mindset changes and our experiences change. And I just thought, you know, how malleable is our reality and how [00:03:00] interconnected is our reality in ways that we don't necessarily see I then moving back to Canada, I just, I continued just practicing for myself, uh, for several years and then met a great teacher in Vancouver, Canada, where I now live. And, uh, I was part of her first of the only two training programs that she ever taught.
[00:03:21] Mark Ainley: And, uh, I just. Started doing more and more of it. And I didn't think I was going to get into it professionally, but you know, it was just, I, again, I start helping people, helping out friends, they are starting to see improvements. And I'm like, well, if people are getting better, why wouldn't I want to help people improve their experiences?
[00:03:42] Mark Ainley: So I did my training in 2001. So there was, you know, rudimentary, you know, websites and internet and MSN messenger and email, which we didn't check every day. Do you remember the days when we didn't check email every day? It was like,
[00:03:54] James Marland: It's insidious. It's, uh, it is invasive. Email is invasive.
[00:03:59] Mark Ainley: [00:04:00] it's so different, but that also speaks to the fact that, you know, what we engage with in our daily lives and the physical world has an impact on our mindset and our state of being. So. I was teaching, there certainly wasn't online teaching back then, um, I was teaching in person, and I would put up, you know, flyers in stores or in places, you know, health food stores, and it was like the old way of, you know, people take a tab with a phone number, and I was hosting workshops in my living room, and then people were hosting me and having me go to other towns in British Columbia and Canada and other places, uh, for quite a while, like every two weeks. I was teaching a seminar and you know, these were the days when people had an attention span as well and they would go and they'd make a plan and they go to attend something for their own benefit for two and a half hours. It was like, you know, two and a half hour workshop. Getting anybody to sit still for an hour nowadays seems to be a challenge. And so it was very, very different. And I loved teaching in person. Uh, I [00:05:00] trained in a few different practices and I had very good teachers. And one of the things I learned from one of them was, you know, using a flip chart and using really colorful pens. I've got my Mr. Sketch markers that smell great. And I love the spontaneity. of being able to do something on a flip chart. And, you know, I would have a skeleton outline for what I taught and then, you know, it would be spontaneous and something would come up from one of the participants. And, you know, I loved the interactivity of this, of the teaching situation because of course, Feng Shui is all about that interactivity between you and the environment and how something changes and then there's something new that comes. So my, my seminars were always very spontaneous, but there was a, the primary, you know, structure that I And, you know, then Skype. Came in and I started consulting even before Skype. I had a client in Japan. They mailed me photos And we had the consultation over the phone,
[00:05:54] Mark Ainley: um, and started going to Japan regularly.
[00:05:57] Mark Ainley: So one, two, three times a year [00:06:00] for, you know, from 2003, I started teaching there until, you know, going there until COVID. And then, uh, you know, we've been doing it on zoom ever since. And the challenge for me then was this was the initial challenge leading into online teaching was when you have a room full of a hundred people, you can't just do flip chart. So you need a slide show, you need to set structure. And you use that structure, then you have to anticipate some questions, or you have to anticipate some things that you can't be as spontaneous with. So, that taught my tea that changed my teaching style, or course creation style. And then, when COVID hit, and we were forced to online, As opposed to just occasionally, you know, I'd have clients who couldn't afford to fly me out to Qatar or, you know, Bali. I would love to go to some of these places. We would consult on Skype and then, you know, Zoom took over, uh, when COVID hit. And so then online teaching became [00:07:00] the norm and I resisted it for a while, but of course it was a necessity. And now I absolutely love it. I miss and still love in person presentations.
[00:07:08] Mark Ainley: I still do them. I have some design firms in that will bring me in and the. People were, have just been, you know, in the last couple of years, relishing those in person gatherings, but there's also great benefit to teaching online. Um, especially with my material where people are actually in their homes when they're learning about how to adjust their homes. So in my courses, what I'll do is I'll always work in, okay, you're going to go take a look at your front door that we just talked about for one minute. And you're going to sort of just see what it is that you notice based on what it is you just learned. So it actually becomes their setting and then being at home actually becomes part of the workshop.
[00:07:45] Mark Ainley: And then it becomes more interactive again, because they'll have feedback or they'll have observations and that can lead to another teaching point. So
[00:07:54] Mark Ainley: I've had.
[00:07:55] James Marland: too, right? Like, it's like, you can apply it. I bet, I bet, [00:08:00] I don't know if you stumbled on this or you, you planned it that way, but applying it and using it right away is probably one of the best ways for people to cement it or get it inside them rather than, oh, I go to a conference and I learn, I sit for three hours or whatever, and then I come home, then I might do it or I might not.
[00:08:18] James Marland: But.
[00:08:19] James Marland: Yeah.
[00:08:20] James Marland: if you build it in, that sounds very that sounds brilliant. How did you come up with that?
[00:08:24] Mark Ainley: I mean, it was just kind of the, the realization that, you know, I've often realized that, you know, the map and the territory can be very different. And in feng shui, there's, you know, there's one kind of map that people look at to map out, you know, figure out which area represents what theme of their life. But, you know, when you start looking at things in three dimensions, it's very different than when you're looking at a piece of paper. And I've often realized this, you know, when it was teaching English in Japan, a lot of my students would have really good, their writing would be great. But they couldn't speak at the same level and it's different brain functions and you need to, you want to have some consistency throughout [00:09:00] your capacity to use anything. And so I realized pretty soon, uh, you know, the first zoom seminar that I taught was on home offices, of course, because, you know, everybody was at home working when they weren't used to it.
[00:09:13] Mark Ainley: And I was like, okay, great. Let's just take a minute now and go take a look at This or that, and it was fantastic, and I realized, no, this is a new way of teaching and a great benefit in addition to the sense of community that gets created when I have people in five countries across five time zones in the same room with each other when that wouldn't happen if
[00:09:37] Mark Ainley: we weren't doing it online.
[00:09:40] James Marland: that's great. Um, so you're starting to develop or go in history, you're developing your online course, uh, or delivering your services online. What were some of the challenges for you and lessons learned as you started to engage in that more [00:10:00] often?
[00:10:01] Mark Ainley: well, what I realized is, uh, I mean, you know, three dimensionally, it's very different than 2D, obviously. And. You know, of course I would say, you know, the ideal is to be in person, but to be honest, I can actually see things really clearly online. And I think though, it comes from the tons of experience of doing it in person.
[00:10:27] Mark Ainley: I think if I was starting doing it online, it would be very, very different. I would not have the skill set, you know, and they talk about, you know, the 10, 000 hours thing. I mean, I definitely have more than 10, 000 hours in terms of consulting and teaching and the like, right over 23 years. And plus my amateur explorations, you know, for 5 years before I trained. So I started, you know, what happens online is, you know, people will pan the camera and they have what they want me to see. And I'm very respectful. You know, this is the thing that's really, [00:11:00] really a judgment free zone. But I can tell sometimes just by how the camera moves, or I can see like a little dead spot, like they might think, Oh, that corner is not important, or whatever, you know, we're looking at the counters in the kitchen, and not this corner, I'll just can you just move the camera back a little more slowly and just go to the sink over there.
[00:11:16] Mark Ainley: And I just want to What's happening over there on the side and the corner next to the sink. And, you know, my eye will be drawn and that's something that I think really just comes from experience. Uh, and so I've come to realize that. Yeah, we sometimes need to slow down, of course. I mean, that's kind of the main thing in our culture, uh, where I think everybody needs to slow down, but also all of the details are important.
[00:11:43] Mark Ainley: And sometimes details got glossed over and the details make the big picture and the detail basically change one detail, you know, There's an adage that, uh, if you want to change the course of a river, you go as far upstream as you can and you move one rock. [00:12:00] And so, sometimes, you know, that little thing in the corner, they may say, Oh yeah, actually, I just remembered that really annoys me every time I see it.
[00:12:08] Mark Ainley: I was like, okay, so what are you doing to yourself every time you see something that annoys you? Two things, like you feel annoyed, and then you try to tune it out. So you're teaching yourself to tune out things, so how are you going to tune in to what it is that you actually need if you're practicing tuning out? Um,
[00:12:29] James Marland: excuse, or you justify, or you're like, oh, I'll get to that later,
[00:12:34] Mark Ainley: yeah, I
[00:12:35] James Marland: it's not that big of a deal.
[00:12:37] Mark Ainley: that's right, and the thing is, Um, I mean, our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness, I think. And that's our adaptability because we can adapt in order to survive as we should, and we can get by, you know, bypassing, we don't have the time to deal with this or, you know, uh, the reality of, you know, I mean, I, you know, my mother grew up in the war in Hungary, uh, [00:13:00] you know, you change things, things are changing and you need to adapt, but then, um, In less dire circumstances, like at home, you've adapted to, you know, that sticky door, that door squeaking all the time and it annoys you, but it becomes more background because, you know, hedonic adaptation kicks in, which is that whole same old, same old aspect of the brain where you just get used to things and you then tune it out, but it's still annoying you in the background.
[00:13:26] Mark Ainley: And it's still something in your home, which is a space where you actually have authority and control and command. In a way that you don't in the outside world, and you're not stepping up to the plate and taking care of yourself by taking care of your space, then what happens in the outside world, but what happens to that attitude of overlooking necessary details?
[00:13:51] Mark Ainley: Yes, that annoys me, but I'll ignore it. Well, how many annoyances are you then going to keep ignoring? So, uh, as he looks around [00:14:00] his office, as I say this,
[00:14:02] Mark Ainley: right? It's it's.
[00:14:03] James Marland: already confessed to you. I already confessed to you. I'm not super proud of my
[00:14:08] Mark Ainley: Yeah,
[00:14:08] James Marland: It's, it's, uh, there are a few things that are, that I overlook for sure.
[00:14:15] Mark Ainley: yeah. And we all do. And the thing is to not judge though, right?
[00:14:19] Mark Ainley: And the thing is just like the first step is just recognizing it's the same for everybody. Everybody, I think, you know what, I'm very, I'm pretty easygoing as much as people, as soon as they hear the term Feng Shui, they hear, you know, they hear a rule.
[00:14:32] Mark Ainley: And I talk, I like to talk about principles rather than rules, because I think it really changes the, okay. Uh, changes the reality, you know, perfection is an illusion. It's not about perfect. Uh, I see this stuff on Instagram with all these hyper perfect kitchens that are just clinical and everything's in plastic containers.
[00:14:50] Mark Ainley: And I'm just like, yeah, chaos is going to come into your life in some way and you won't be prepared for it. Uh, I think that [00:15:00] hyper vigilance in the physical world is not what this is about. This is about really creating ease. It's about consciousness of relationship. Uh, it's like any of the, you know, that you, I know you host a lot of therapists on your program, right?
[00:15:12] Mark Ainley: You don't make changes overnight. Things take time. You start to get awareness of patterns. And then you start to implement changes. But if you don't know the consequences, or if it's just something, say, Oh, I never thought about that before. I haven't paid attention to it. It's a lot harder to make the change.
[00:15:29] Mark Ainley: So the first step is just knowing it. And then if you can say, Hey, you know what? I actually don't really like this. Well, that's the first step to then making a change.
[00:15:38] James Marland: I'm going to ask you more about that in a second, but as you were talking, as we were talking, I was imagining a day or a time when I had. I had as many things as I had, could in order. And I wasn't annoyed by the can of spray air up there. It was put away in its place, you know, [00:16:00] or the books, the books that I was reading are on the shelf instead of like, I'm walking over them to get my desk.
[00:16:07] James Marland: They're not big annoyances. But can you imagine a time when, when things were not perfect, but they were as perfect as they were going to be where you were not constantly annoyed and overlooking the little things that were annoying you and just how calm and peaceful would your work environment, let's talk about work environment, I guess, cause this is my work environment.
[00:16:30] James Marland: How, how much more creative or better would I be if I wasn't dealing with some of the buzzy, you know, the buzzy negative things in my head. Is that sort of one of the goals or a simplified version of feng shui?
[00:16:47] Mark Ainley: Um, you know, it's opening your eyes when, when, when you reduce the background noise, I mean, you tune into the signal more, right. And you can always pay attention to the signal, but you imagine, you know, if you, if there's a program you really want to watch or a [00:17:00] radio you want to listen to, you know, the old days you'd listen on shortwave or something, you know, you'd hear some static or you'd hear some noise, but you could still hear the signal and you could still tune in and you adapt though.
[00:17:10] Mark Ainley: And your ears adapt, uh, you know, in my musical, uh, I actually am, I'm a curator of historical recordings, so I actually am, you know, I'm an expert on that. I write for International Piano Magazine, uh, you know, and I know how to listen through the scratch and the noise of old recordings to hear the signal. And yet, If you don't have to, why not?
[00:17:33] Mark Ainley: Why not? Why not get rid of that? And the fact is, if right now you have to, because the reality is, you know, you're taking care of an elderly parent or you're super busy, or you really have this schedule, then that's fine. I also like to say that, you know, if you've got things on your desk, cause you're using them right now, that's actually not clutter.
[00:17:50] Mark Ainley: That's stuff that's in use. So I think we need to really define our terms. Are you really using this right now? Are they there for a day, for a week, for a month? I [00:18:00] think it's. As long as things aren't settling, it's different. I like to define clutter. I think people misunderstand, uh, clutter. I've got three, uh, cat sort of three qualities that I think lead to clutter is, uh, things are not being used. Things are not in the right place, or you don't actually have space for them. You know, so if your
[00:18:24] Mark Ainley: bookcases are full, then the books are going to be on the, on the floor, on the tables and all of that, because you actually don't have a shelf that they will fit in, uh, and, but then if, you know, if the bookcase is full of books that you're not using, then that's going to also lead to the fact that, well, then those ones are going to be displaced, the ones that you are using. And so it's a matter of just, as I say, of conscious relationship. With feng shui, what we start to do is we look at the symbolism of the physical items, because everything in the physical world relates to your mindset. So what do you get from books? You get knowledge and wisdom. [00:19:00] So what's your relationship with your knowledge and wisdom in your life? And how are you integrating that into your life is how you are integrating those into your physical space. So if your books are all over the place, you might have a lot of knowledge, but have you created a structure in your life where you're maximizing the use and the expression of? Your knowledge and wisdom. I know. So,
[00:19:30] Mark Ainley: so this is, this is, kind of the fun stuff. This is where Feng Shui is really not just about, you know, hang some wind chimes and, you know, put a lucky bamboo over somewhere. And those can be great. You know, I, I call myself a contemporary feng shui consultant because I'm really working with the, you know, the principles which have been universal for thousands of years, but the expression, how you apply those can be very, very different and very individual.
[00:19:55] Mark Ainley: You know, you don't have to have a home decorated in the way that you don't want. It's your home. [00:20:00] You don't have to please me. Your home only has to really please you. And of course, whoever else you're sharing the space with. So, yeah, it's kind of wild to think, you know, there, there's. I think one of the issues for all of us when it comes to this is dealing, how do we deal with constraints?
[00:20:18] Mark Ainley: How do we deal with limitation? Because, uh, we only have so much space, like that's a limitation and that's a constraint. And historically all of us since childhood, no, you can't buy it. You know, you can't get that because you've had too much or we don't have enough money or we don't have whatever. All of that sort of is, You know, in the background and gets triggered when we can't do what we want. And the irony is at home, that's the space where generally you can do more of what you want than elsewhere in the outside world. Now, of course, I don't want to, I'm not minimizing, you know, people who live in home situations where, you know, there's
[00:20:54] Mark Ainley: challenging family. The relationship dynamics or, you know, issues where they don't have a chance to exert their [00:21:00] authority, but I'm speaking ideally, relatively, and for them, it might be the office that might be the place where they actually have some more authority and, uh, capacity to exert, you know, their own will and appropriate self care, but.
[00:21:13] James Marland: Let's, talk about that for just a little bit, um, to get some Maybe some practical advice or tips for people who are working in the office.
[00:21:23] James Marland: We'll do this. Um, like, what what does it do for them? And how do they get started? Like, I know you're, you probably could talk about this for hours, but if we could,
[00:21:37] Mark Ainley: have to sort of like, you know, there needs to be a power cut at like, you know, the streaming office headquarters for me to stop talking.
[00:21:44] James Marland: but yeah, like, if somebody's looking at their office right now, what would, what would these principles do for them? And how could they get started?
[00:21:54] Mark Ainley: the first thing is to, uh, one of the things that can really help is take a photo of your workspace because you're going to, [00:22:00] Look at a photo differently. You're going to see it differently. Like, would you Instagram that? Probably not. Okay. So then
[00:22:06] Mark Ainley: that gives you a chance to see it outside of the normal, like how your brain normally interacts with the space. Um, the benefit, I mean, scientific American magazine years ago, at least 10 years ago, possibly more, um, I think had an article on, uh, how employees who have a say. And how their workspace is decorated and is appointed are more productive, and they're more satisfied,
[00:22:36] James Marland: Mm-hmm
[00:22:37] Mark Ainley: right? So there have been studies on this. And of course, this is a study conducted by the Center for really obvious things. I mean, you know, this is like, it's super obvious. I really want to make sure that people, ideally, you have what you need absolutely is there. And it's easy to access. Like if you have to, if there's something you go [00:23:00] for really regularly, but you have to, you know, get bent out of shape physically, then you're going to feel that emotionally and mentally, you know, I have to reach for this thing and it's in an inconvenient location, we'll move it somewhere else. Um, Cables is a really fun thing because cables are super unsightly, uh, they're really tough to manage and really annoying to manage. And when you pay to go to a first class hotel, first class restaurant, lounge, all of those places, a resort, you are not going to see cables. That
[00:23:34] Mark Ainley: is part of what you're paying for in a luxurious environment.
[00:23:37] Mark Ainley: Somebody has minimized the extraneous visual noise. And so, you know, there's a beautiful hotel lounge in Vancouver and I've gone in there and it's, it kind of amazed me that I was looking, they have a lamp, you know, with this beautiful dim lighting at each dining table. And I was like, wow. And I just went up closely to see how they'd wrapped up the K the cord [00:24:00] really tightly and made it invisible and wrapped it to go down behind.
[00:24:04] Mark Ainley: And that's part of that environment.
[00:24:06] James Marland: But it doesn't happen on accident. Right? Like somebody had to think about that
[00:24:10] Mark Ainley: that's exactly it. And so with Feng Shui, what we start doing is we start thinking about the stuff that we just normally bypass or just say, well, that's not important. It is all kinds of important. I think that having at least one item that's colorful and, you know, playful and personal or combination thereof in the space is important.
[00:24:30] Mark Ainley: And I'm not talking about, you know, snarky mugs. That's like, you know, don't talk to me until I've had my third coffee, because I think that actually breeds and, you know,
[00:24:38] Mark Ainley: condones. A snarky mindset at work that you're say sort of confirming that you're not happy to be at work. I'm not into that. I'm
[00:24:47] Mark Ainley: also not necessarily into the beach photos and the sort of I'd rather be here kind of mindset, you know, having your family, you know, family photo.
[00:24:54] Mark Ainley: There is great having something that is calming and it might be a, you know, an image of a forest or [00:25:00] flowers. If you can have real flowers or a plant, I have a plant on my desk. Um, you know, something that's natural would be ideal because we're, you know, You know, our bodies come from nature. We are constantly in a built environment, a human constructed and designed environment that has Few elements, unfortunately far too few elements in common with the environments that we lived in historically, and there's a great expression by the folks who run science in design, who I'm going to be doing some training with that say, you can take the person out of the stone age, and you can't take the stone age out of the person. And, you know, we respond to color. We respond to straight lines, which in nature are always aggressive and a weapon. Uh, you know, you think about porcupine quills, cactus quills, uh, sharp edges of rocks, you know, your nervous system recognizes a lot of these things as threats. So [00:26:00] if you can do one colorful thing, one playful thing that might also be practical and I'll show, you know, for those of us who are watching this, um, I decided, you know, I got a mouse pad, you know, the cosmos and it's colorful and it's round and it's soft. Cause I realized, you know, yeah, my hard desk. is really convenient for writing and is really convenient for storing things, of course. But how about if I bring in a bit of the opposite harmoniously, so it's soft, and then you use a color that doesn't exist elsewhere and has an image that is, you know, that I really
[00:26:33] James Marland: Meaningful. Yeah.
[00:26:34] Mark Ainley: Well, you know, so, uh, Choosing one item and if you can do something practical and make it nicer, you know, like you get a really nice paperclip container, uh, maybe you have really colorful paperclips or they're just golden paperclips, you know, something like this that's just going to feel make it feel upscale.
[00:26:51] Mark Ainley: I think that's really important. And there's, there's a lot. I have a whole. Seminar on, uh, you know, home, uh, you know, working, [00:27:00] uh, you know, the office at home or in the workplace.
[00:27:03] James Marland: Well, yeah, that's probably a good time to talk about.
[00:27:06] James Marland: You know, you have resources and you've been doing this for a while. You have a lot of wealth of information. If somebody is looking to go a little further and do some exploring and learn how to do some of this for themselves so they can experience that calming, you know, the calming piece.
[00:27:23] James Marland: And what did I write down? You were talking about music. And I said, the scratch is so loud, you can't hear the signal.
[00:27:31] Mark Ainley: hmm.
[00:27:31] Mark Ainley: Yeah,
[00:27:32] James Marland: if you're looking, if the scratch in your environment is so loud, you can't concentrate or it's harder for you to concentrate and you're fighting through it. You might need some support to help you get your environment back in line with what is feeling good for you.
[00:27:47] James Marland: So anyways, Mark, where, where can you, what do you offer? What do you do? How do you help people? Can you tell me about that?
[00:27:53] Mark Ainley: Absolutely. So I, uh, the first I started teaching, you know, one hour lunch and learns, you know, [00:28:00] during the COVID period. And I then started offering in a monthly as I call them Wednesday wisdom, or Wisdom Wednesday seminar. So once a month, I would do a 90 minute seminar on a different topic. I've got about 15 ish of those that are sort of, uh, you know, that I've taught a few times. So I'm actually in the process of now setting up my Thinkific page, uh, so that I'll have those prerecorded. So that way it's not, you know, people have to wait a month or people have to wait, whatever people can go. It's there. The wisdom is there and they can start applying things and pause them and you know, not have to do it just in class time.
[00:28:34] Mark Ainley: And it can really make it interactive on their own schedule. Uh, I've got an eight hour or not an eight hour and eight part rather 16 hour program called the story of your stuff that goes into, you know, You know, what we were talking about books being knowledge and wisdom. And there's a whole process you go through to look at your inner relationship with the topic. And then what you start doing, and then there's practical [00:29:00] exercises for what you do in the, with the outside manifestation of those. Uh, so that I, you know, I've, I've taught interactively, uh, several times. I've had several people who took the course two, three, or even four times. You know, committed to that because they just found, you know, now I can do more on this other area, and I just love hearing the information repeated. So that's also going to be, uh, at some point, uh, I'm going to focus on the shorter seminars first, and then I'm going to do the pre recording of, you know, the story of your stuff as a self paced. Online program. So, uh, right now, you know, my website's got some articles. I've been active on Instagram, but I'm a little tired to be honest, of just the, the algorithm stuff. Uh, the fact that you get rewarded for being a graphic designer is just not my strength. It's not what I want to do. I like. creating the spaces in the home. And I think people are more into, you know, what you're doing with the podcast. People enjoy listening. People want to hear, and I think hearing a real voice, hearing a story, hearing an [00:30:00] organic presentation, I think there's again, not taking the stone age out of the person, you know, there's something with how it is that we get information through our senses and through this, you know, The around the, around the campfire storytelling, that there's something with what it is that you and I do with these kinds of presentations.
[00:30:19] Mark Ainley: So a podcast is might by the time this episode airs might already have, uh,
[00:30:25] Mark Ainley: have started.
[00:30:26] James Marland: Yeah. Podcasting's great. I love it. It gives me introduction to people and ideas, um, and relationships because, you know, information is getting a little more easy to access, of course, with Google and,
[00:30:40] James Marland: and AI, but you can't get, you can't get the, the person, like you can't get Mark without Mark, you know, and, and you are invaluable, like you are what you bring to the table.
[00:30:52] James Marland: It can't be reproduced in, um, You know, tell me about Feng Shui.
[00:30:58] Mark Ainley: you know, there is some [00:31:00] of that and there's words, but then there's the teaching and there's the application,
[00:31:03] Mark Ainley: right? And there's knowledge. And then there's the application of that. And how do you apply that? And there's a lot of these gaps that can be in there. And that's, you know, from 20 plus years experience.
[00:31:11] Mark Ainley: Of course, there's lots of great Feng Shui consultants out there and everybody has their own approach and people will gravitate towards whoever's style and approach works for them. I am fortunate enough that I've worked with a wide demographic of, you know, ages, uh, you know, uh, genders, um, you know, nationalities and so on.
[00:31:32] Mark Ainley: So I've, I'm fairly sensitive to all of the individual needs and wants and also, you know, possible obstructions. I like to say that, you know, I've, I've convinced more skeptical husbands whose wives, uh, Whose wives paid for the punctuate consultation. They were sort of, you know, really grumbling and not really wanting to go along with it.
[00:31:50] Mark Ainley: And in 30 seconds, I can get them actually engaged. Do you want to hear what gets them engaged?
[00:31:57] James Marland: Yes.
[00:31:59] Mark Ainley: The cost [00:32:00] of a Superbowl commercial. Do you know how much the airtime is for a Superbowl commercial?
[00:32:05] James Marland: Oh, you, uh, lost track of it, but it's millions,
[00:32:09] Mark Ainley: Yes. So the last two years, it's been 7 million for 30 seconds,
[00:32:14] James Marland: seconds. Yeah.
[00:32:15] Mark Ainley: 233, 000 a second. Uh, so that's because profit motivated companies. are paying for access to your brain through your eyes. And
[00:32:28] Mark Ainley: because they know that what you look at presented in a certain way has a capacity to change how you think and how you're going to behave. So what's the cost and what's the value of what you look at for weeks, months, and years?
[00:32:43] James Marland: It's a lot.
[00:32:44] Mark Ainley: And are you selling yourself short?
[00:32:46] James Marland: You are. Oh, wow. So, uh, that's good. That's good stuff, man, because I'm going to look at my, when I turn this mic, you know, turn the mic off, I'm going to be looking at my office. But, [00:33:00] also, you've given me something to think about, like, I can do stuff. I can do something about it. Like I don't have to, if I put, if I'm done using something and if I have a place where I put it away, if that spot is full, then maybe I should reduce what I have.
[00:33:15] James Marland: You know, like there, there, it's not just, I have to live in this environment of little discomforts that I don't even think about.
[00:33:24] James Marland: I can live in the environment that I want to create.
[00:33:28] Mark Ainley: That's
[00:33:28] James Marland: know, and if I, if I like books and I want to have a lot of books and that makes me feel good, I can have my books.
[00:33:35] Mark Ainley: I mean, it's not about creating it according to somebody else's metric. And I think
[00:33:39] Mark Ainley: this is, it's really important that, you know, and people will criticize all kinds of, you know, minimal, minimalist and organizers and so on and so forth. And I just want to say, you know, there can be lots of great information out there, but you also have to choose what's really going to work for you.
[00:33:52] Mark Ainley: And that doesn't mean, I mean, people can use this to bypass things that actually would be better for them if they changed it, right? So I'll just live in a mess because I'm comfortable with that. [00:34:00] You know, I actually taught my, one of the first. Work at home seminars that I taught. There was a guy who said, no, listen, I work really well.
[00:34:07] Mark Ainley: Even though my desk is messy, even though this and that. So he sat through the whole seminar and a week later, he sent me before and after photos. He's like, nah, I thought about it. And I said, you know, well, why not? When I said, if you're not commuting to work. You know, you're not spending an hour, 30 minutes, even 15 minutes.
[00:34:22] Mark Ainley: What if you spend 15 minutes at the beginning of the day and the end of the day to sort of, that's your commute and you're closing down the office? And he did,
[00:34:31] James Marland: That's a great place to start, isn't it?
[00:34:34] James Marland: Like,
[00:34:35] Mark Ainley: set up
[00:34:35] James Marland: you got,
[00:34:36] Mark Ainley: If you do one minute. If you do one minute. One minute is a whole lot more than zero minutes.
[00:34:42] Mark Ainley: And what you can do in one minute makes a difference. And then you start to realize that all the little things we do, Right. The kind words we say to people, the nice gestures, the holding the door open for somebody, all these little things make a difference in the lives of others.
[00:34:55] Mark Ainley: And they also, we can do that for ourselves. So that kindness to yourself by [00:35:00] taking care of your environment. And again, not to be perfect. That's not the point. But to be able to support yourself in the way that, you know, the chair you're sitting in is supporting you. The floor that you stand on and that your feet are on now is supporting you. You know that your environment supports you whether you know it or not, but if you enhance that level of support, visually, emotionally, and so on, uh, you can feel more supported and then you're in a position to be able to support others much better.
[00:35:29] James Marland: That's a wonderful place on a wonderful thought to end on, uh, Mark, thanks for coming on the show. Where can people find what's your website again?
[00:35:38] Mark Ainley: Senseofspace. com And it's got links to all my social media networks or however active I am on those, uh, for the time being. Um, and, uh, there will be links, there's, uh, a workshops tab and seminars tab. And, uh, you know, once the Thinkific page gets launched, uh, imminently, uh, there'll be links to, uh, to that as [00:36:00] well.
[00:36:00] James Marland: Great. Why, uh, that all those links will be on the show notes. Uh, you can find them in the show notes tab and on, and on my webpage. I really enjoyed this conversation. I do feel like I've learned a lot. Thanks Mark for being on the show.
[00:36:13] Mark Ainley: Thank you so much for having me, James.
[00:36:16] James Marland: And thanks again for listening to, uh, the scaling therapy practice. It's now time to put your mission in motion and maybe spend a minute cleaning up the floor
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