In today’s fast-paced, hurry-up, rush-rush-rush world, it’s easy to neglect your spiritual side and its importance to your life. In our modern age, haven’t we evolved beyond the need for such things?
What’s interesting is that the more we learn, the more we discover how important the spiritual aspect of our lives is. When you’re interested in bettering yourself and manifesting your personal potential, you must address your inner self every bit as much as you do the trappings of your outward life.
You discover your fundamental, authentic truths and learn just how much more there is to life when you accept the mystery and awe of knowing there’s something more to life than what you see with your own eyes. In short, you become complete.
How do you manifest this kind of change in your busy life and step into your spirituality?
Start with a Commitment to Change
You will never be able to embrace something so radical, new, and unfamiliar as your spiritual side without first making a firm decision along with a concrete goal regarding this path. Start with something simple, such as learning about spirituality by picking up a book, subscribing to this blog, or taking a self-paced course to help you reach beyond your current level of understanding. Then commit to the task of reading, learning, and spending time thinking about the information you learn and what it means to you personally. Use a journal along the way to help you organize your thoughts and what you’re learning.
Question Things
Your first commitment dovetails nicely with this next one. Become curious. As you learn and get more comfortable with questions you don’t have the answers to, you can create a plan of action and find the answers. Follow rabbit trails, explore new paths. Give yourself the grace of time and space to go wherever your mind takes you and discover things you never knew about yourself before.
Practice Mindfulness
Whether you engage in prayer or meditation isn’t important. What is important is that you intentionally take time to reflect and find your inner peace. This won’t be an overnight project – you’ve got an entire life’s worth of experiences to draw on, and a mind that’s experienced both negative and positive things. Give yourself the time and space to get quiet, employ tools like journaling to help you organize your thoughts and impressions, and you’ll find the process gets easier the more you do it. Consistency is key.
Laugh – Find the Funny
Nothing does the spirit better than laughter. By finding the funny side to things we experience, we can start to relax into who we are and stop taking ourselves so seriously. We engage with the absurd and recognize the universe has a sense of humor. It may only be after a period of time that some of our challenges and struggles become humorous to us – and there is wisdom in the funny.
Take Care of Yourself
You can’t fully engage in a spiritual path if your flesh is weak. Eat right. Exercise. Get enough sleep. Don’t allow physical discomfort, pain, or illness to get in the way of your spiritual journey. Rearrange your schedule if you must so that you have enough time for good sleep. Get to bed earlier, give up some of your late-night television, and be careful of what you put into your body – mentally, spiritually, and physically.
Pay Attention
When you experience coincidence, nudges, roadblocks, or sudden interests that feel like they are guiding your path, allow yourself to follow. Sometimes we’re given more guidance along the way than we realize. Learn to go with the flow and see where these divine nudges take you. Notice the coincidences, the serendipities, the flashes of insight and wisdom that come when you are paying attention and you’re more open to them.
Create a Tribe
Finding people of a like mind to travel with you (or at least who will support your quest) will make your own journey more pleasant. You also will find companionship, mentorship, guidance, and encouragement along the way. We need people around us, and a group of like-minded individuals is a powerful thing to have. Having to continually explain and / or justify our activities to people who simply don’t understand (or don’t want to) can drain your energy and your motivation. Compatible people who support your journey even if they’re not traveling with you are great to have in your life, in addition to those that are on the path and right by your side.
Your spiritual journey doesn’t have to be complicated, especially when you’re starting out. By taking these small steps, you’ll soon discover a world you never knew existed. Enjoy the journey, and the new you that you’re about to discover!
