From Chaos to Balance: Achieving Spiritual Wellness
What is Spiritual Health and Why Does It Matter?
Spiritual health is an important aspect of overall well-being that is often overlooked. It can involve having a sense of purpose, feeling connected to something greater than yourself, and being able to handle life’s challenges with resilience. Having a healthy spiritual life can help you cope with stress, make better decisions, and lead a more meaningful life. I equate my spiritual health to even having a shield - when I feel connected, grounded, and in my groove, I can take on the world, feeling like it’s far harder to knock me down with my shield! Spiritual health and wellness is also linked to better physical health outcomes such as lower levels of depression and anxiety, less stress, increased resilience, and better overall health.
In this article, we’ll discuss three ways in which to overcome challenges relating to focusing on your spiritual health, as well as how to incorporate it into our everyday lives. Let’s create balance and love in our lives, together!
Overcoming Challenges to Achieving Spiritual Health & Wellbeing with 3 steps
Achieving spiritual health and wellbeing is a journey that requires dedication and commitment. I feel strongly that the journey to spiritual health and wellbeing can unfortunately be over glamorized. It’s popular to be ‘spiritual’ and read energy. As I sit here typing, I can’t pretend that it’s all beautiful, or that you’ll want to do it everyday. I can’t even pretend that I want to work at it everyday. But what I can promise you is - you’ll never regret making it a huge focus of your life.
We have a thousand things competing for our attention these days. Work demands a large chunk of our time, even after hours now is becoming more frequent (what is ‘logging off’ in the tech world?) There’s social media and news articles, fighting for your attention with each attention-grabbing caption they push out. TV, social outings, kids, errands, house cleaning…. It all takes time.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit that sometimes I try to push off my prayer and ritual by cleaning. “Once my entire house is clean, the dishwasher is empty, and I’ve swiffered the paw prints off of my floor, I will then make time to connect!” Oops!
My point is, I get it. It can be difficult to stay focused on our spiritual goals and make progress when we are surrounded by all of these influences, or other goals (family, social, money, fitness, etc) competing for our time. And unfortunately, most of these things competing for our attention may take away a great deal of our peace. Take a moment to think about the last TV show that you watched (or do this next time!) - Did your body tense up? What about when you watch someone’s story on social media - did you feel relaxed? What was going through your mind? Was there any negative reaction to the posts? Have you ever decided to skip the meditation because the gym took priority? Or thought, ‘what would 5 minutes even do!’
If any of this resonates with you, there are a few steps we can take to change this:
Bring Awareness.
The first step is bringing awareness. You cannot bring change without bringing awareness to what’s going on and where your attention is going to. And yes, this also means admitting and accepting some things about yourself as well! Some of us have stories in our heads “Oh gosh, I am so good about relaxing” and then come to realize that wait, maybe that isn’t actually true since their bodies aren’t relaxed! Some of my clients have had profound healing just by bringing awareness to their actions and realizing that they were ready to make some changes.
But once we have created awareness around it, a little bit of light has been shown. And that little bit of light can’t be shut back off. We cannot pretend like we are just no longer aware of something that is harming our spiritual health, something that we could improve on. In fact I bet you that the more you try and shut it off again, the worse it will get and bigger it will appear to you.
Accept What Is
The second piece that I would be remiss without mentioning is acceptance. Let’s say that you use busyness as a way to ignore your inner self, your feelings, and what your heart needs. Between work, happy hours, or what your kids need, you simply don’t have the time to sit down! However, deep down you know there is something brewing. Something feels heavy, you can feel it in your heart and spirit. They’re trying to speak to you, but instead, you allow the chaos to consume you. When you’re already aware of this, the next step is to just accept it without excuses. To accept what it might be doing to your body, your emotions, your mental state, your spiritual state, is what we are aiming to look at here. Accept that there may be behavior or thought patterns that need to change. Or, accepting that practicing self love needs most of your attention right now before you implode!
Without acceptance, of what is getting in our way - no matter how ‘necessary’ it may feel - will just keep you in denial and making excuses. The truth is, there is always something else that you could be doing. When we decide to accept what is keeping us from our spiritual health, our excuses, our bad habits, our actions done far from the way of self love… we can keep moving forward.
Leave Judgement at the Door
The third step is to leave judgment at the door. We are human. We waste time, we make mistakes, we get stuck in a wormhole of our mind, we forget about our spiritual health for a couple of weeks, we place work and the gym before it. There is no judgment around what is in the past, or even when you slip up in the future.
We cannot make ourselves the victim. We (well, most of us) were not taught meditation, true prayer connection, connection to higher selves, how to simply be without doing. How to practice self love. It may be a journey, and that’s okay! But we cannot blame and judge others (society, marketing, TV, social media, our friends, parents, work, etc) or ourselves for ignoring our spiritual health. Only you can decide, right here and right now, to make better choices towards your own spiritual connection. And one month you may feel like you took ten steps back. But again, we are learning resilience and self patience, self love. We just try again and keep going. The same as that light never turning off once it’s on…. Similarly, while it may feel like you’re backtracking, you will never backtrack as far as to where you started. You’ll keep moving forward!
What’s Next? How do we incorporate this into our everyday lives?
So now that we are aware and accept what is keeping us from it without judgment…. What next? Next is figuring out what spirituality looks like to YOU. Not your neighbor, not Deepak Chopra, not Oprah, not your Reiki teacher. What does spirituality look like to you? And how do you do this?
Set aside time to dedicate to your spiritual practice.
I know that meditation teachers say this over and over…. And over. Start with 5 minutes! But the thing is - it’s true. You don’t have to become a mystic that’s going to write a book about spirituality next month. But get in the habit of setting aside time - the same time each day (as much as possible) - and doing something for YOU that connects you with yourself, God, nature, your body. Uninterrupted time (meaning, away from a duty - this is again, why we are saying start with five minutes!)
This time alone, while thoughts may flow in and out, it brings awareness to your body, to your connection with yourself, to how you are feeling. When was the last time you allowed how you were really feeling to shine through? To just sit with it? To hold it? When was the last time you felt your body tingle, you allowed your intuition to run wild without fear? It feels good to let it out and let it be!
Start learning what FEELS good to you during this time- and do it!
That, right there, is your spiritual practice. Your spiritual practice may evolve and change as well each day, each week, or over the years. But again - do what feels good to you. Do what allows yourself to feel love, to feel held by you, to feel wild. If that is sitting in utter and complete silence - do that. If that means walking along a river - do that. If that means sitting on the ground and smiling up at the sun - do that! Dance, laugh, read passages, lay on the ground, give yourself reiki, meditate, do a combination - just do it.
Lead with Intention
As long as your intention is to connect, to love, perhaps to connect with inner peace, to God, whatever that loving intention is - you cannot go wrong. Even if one day it feels like you have a monkey mind, that’s okay. Sit with your intention - and give it to God. We are surrounded by the infinite wisdom of nature, God, our angels, so much outside of our realm that we stress over. So just give it to God.
Note: If you’re not sure where to start, start with a centering prayer. This can be saying ‘Om’ or ‘Love’ over and over. If you are dealing with a monkey mind, this can help you to calm it down a bit. You can do this while walking along a river, sitting outside, or even in a stadium full of people. Try it!
Creating Balance and Love in Our Lives
Regardless though of what you choose- choose it for you. If you only do what others tell you to, you’ll never enjoy your spiritual practice!
By understanding our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, by allowing ourselves to sit with it, to enjoy this practice as part of our spiritual health, as well as how we interact with our environment, we can learn to better manage stressors and create balance in our lives. I know that I feel stressed and hectic and busy if I haven’t made time for my spiritual practice and health. My conversations feel less grounded and loving, and quirky things irritate me. It’s just not as fun!
We can also seek out supportive relationships with others who share similar values and beliefs, practice positive self-talk, find ways to express gratitude for what we have in life, develop healthy coping skills for managing difficult emotions, and cultivate mindfulness of the present moment. Each of these are phenomenal ways to maintain our spiritual health, which is really the umbrella that encompasses so much of our daily life, and how we move through it.
From meditation and mindfulness to journaling and self-reflection, there are many tools that can help you cultivate a deeper connection with your inner self. By deepening this connection, you will be able to gain clarity on what matters most to you and how best to live out your life's purpose.