“I’m so happy!,” I told my friend over FaceTime after seeing the apartment. “It feels as though it was made just for me, and guess what? The appliances are blue!”

Such an artsy-fartsy feature, right? A new blue fridge and matching stove are undoubtedly inviting an artist-type to move in. Sign me up!

This apartment ticked all the boxes (almost) on the list of my desires I titled “A Home that Supports My Wellbeing,” so I signed my name on the dotted line and moved in this July.

Not so fast, as it turns out.

Since selling my house 7 years ago this summer, I’ve been actively, and sometimes clumsily, doing the visioning and legwork, to find a place I can feel most at home and supported to live, work and do my art. With each new address (I’ve moved over six times since then), I learn, relearn or unlearn something more about myself and what does and doesn’t work in manifesting my desired home.

Are you engaged in manifesting something new in your life?

Whether it’s a dream job, relationship, endeavor or place to live, here are a couple of my ah-ah’s that I hope will be relevant and applicable for you as well.

1. Trusting Intuition AND Instincts

What’s the difference?

Intuition

I experience intuition as a hunch that come from heart wisdom. It might be a person, place, color, image, phrase or idea that comes into my awareness.

The small intuitive voice that whispers to my heart is always there. But when I get over-excited, nervous or on edge, it’s tough to tune in. When calm and at ease, especially when I’m not thinking too much, I get a hunch for a name to contact or a place to go see.

For instance, a few years ago I had about a week left on a house-sitting gig just after closing on my house in 2016, and my friend Kim came to mind. We met for breakfast and I asked if she had any ideas to help me find housing, and she offered to connect me to her neighbors with an upstairs apartment. I got to live across the street from Kim for three months! It was great and I am still grateful.

Instincts

Instincts are more of a visceral experience of information coming in via the senses. Getting chills, a gut feeling, a sense of heavy energy or lightness, are examples of what i consider to be instinctual responses.

Their significance of tends to play just outside my awareness. What do I sense, see, hear and feel in my body and what does it mean regarding the choices at hand? Connection to my body wisdom tends to get misinterpreted, interrupted, hijacked by my imagination, blinded by blue-colored lenses (more on that in #3) or flatly dismissed by a mind-habit that is quick to think she can fix most anything. Don’t get me wrong. I love my imagination, positive outlook and knack for creative possibilities to transform a situation or circumstance. However, when this stream of magical optimism drowns out my instincts, I can wind up getting a little banged up. I’m learning to pay better attention to what my body is telling me.

Let me explain by way of example.

When first viewing a townhouse for rent in 2018, my nose picked up on something off. “Oh, that’ll be fine,” I told myself. “I’ll be able to get that out.” More than $5000 in rent payments later for a place I could not sleep or live in due to mold, I got out. Whew! Lesson learned, right? Trust my nose!

Fast-forward to Spring of this year, my instincts spoke up again. “See that Tide bottle. Smell the dryer sheets and thick synthetic fragrance.” Again (you’d think I’d learn) I discounted the warning signs and moved ahead even though I experience ill-effects from such products. I moved in anyway. While I have been able, fortunately, to eliminate the fragrance and collaborate with my neighbors to switch to non-toxic soaps, my nose and eyes missed some other intel.

I was just so hopeful and excited about all the kitchen updates and new fixtures, relieved at the thought that my search would be over. If I had tuned into my instincts and senses further, would I have picked up on more red flags? I’m sorry that I don’t know. Nevertheless, I’ll take the lesson offered again: Trust my nose and open my eyes even more.

The next ah-ah I want to share with you is about the list.

2. Trusting My List

Is my list of desired criteria clear and complete? With each experience, I get to add, tweak and edit so that it aligns most closely with my vision, but overall the essentials have been on it since the start.

The kicker is my relationship with that list.

Where do I give in? Where do I have the debilitating thought that I cannot have it all and must compromise on my well-being? This is the internal pattern I’m currently shaking and breaking up, and it is not about perfectionism. The journey includes learning what I need, being open to receiving it and trusting the process of stepping my path forward.

No more ignoring the red flags of caution generously waved by my instincts!

A few weeks ago, two months after moving into my latest apartment, a bat arrived to help me finally see the basket of red flags in the corner that I’d consciously or other-than-consciously overlooked. Though the uninvited flying visitors are icky and scary, the real problem is the health hazard posed by living in such proximity to their “attic cave.” So, I’m moving out and onward.

I so wanted this to be the good-fit apartment for me. It ticks so many of the boxes on my list! The description at the top of my list “supportive of my wellbeing “is essential, and a safe environment free of toxins has got to be non-negotiable for me.

What’s on your vision list and what are your non-negotiables?

3. Loving the Blue Tint

Before signing the lease, I laughed with my friend when I realized the appliances were only blue to the depth of the thin protective film waiting to be peeled off. Ha! (You probably figured that out, right?) Now I wish I’d asked myself what else I needed to look at more closely and see more in-depth. Or, maybe, as Julia Cameron says in The Artist’s Way, I was just doing the best that I could “with the light that I had to see by.”

Truth is that I don’t really know what this all means, but here’s what I’ve been thinking about “seeing blue.”

Different from the proverbial “rose-colored glasses” that result in a form of delusion or distortion that can lead to a toxic positivity disassociated from seeing and accepting the wholeness of a life situation, the blue tint may serve a different purpose.

Perhaps the blue hue represents the way the my soul sees and points be down a path that will support my personal evolution and mysteriously fit into a divine plan. Even if the lesson is a tough one.

I am where I need to be. I just won’t be staying at this address as long as I’d hoped.

While I’m still seeking a longer-term landing spot , I’ve gained an increased respect for the essentials on my list, my inner magical child in tow, and clearer eyes to recognize and appreciate any future blue tint for what it is.

What’s your experience of manifesting the life you dream of?