The Importance of Faith: Spirituality and Religion
Spirituality, or having a relationship with God/Universe/Mother Earth, etc., is really important. Two years ago, I didn’t have any faith. Slowly but surely, life started pushing me in a direction where it was unavoidable. Gradually since then, I’ve been exploring and building up my own relationship with God. I didn’t feel like anything I saw online or heard from other people resonated with me, so it was hard to start building faith. I just gradually started exploring and learning, and built up something that works for me. I’m still in that process, allowing it to come to me naturally without forcing it.
Shifting Focus Through Healing Chapters
You will often find yourself in different chapters of your healing journey, where you focus on different things. My healing journey started with getting off the pill, then going from being pescetarian to eating meat again, then it was about moving away from a city where I didn’t feel good, then it was about slowing down and getting out of fight or flight mode, then eating more throughout the day, starting targeted supplementation based on testing and symptoms (B-vitamins, liver support, adrenal support, magnesium, digestive support), exploring spirituality, doing less of the things I didn’t enjoy and more of the things I enjoyed as a child, setting boundaries, working on trauma, and now I’m working on gut health and stress management in this new chapter of my life, balancing all my responsibilities. I still work on most of these but to varying extents. Sometimes I focus more on specific things. But the key is to gradually build on each aspect. Trying to do it all at once will not only overwhelm you mentally but also physically. Doing more is not always the answer, and taking it slow will allow you to achieve maximum effect.
Prioritizing Happiness Over Perfection
It’s more important to do things that make you happy and feel good than to do everything perfectly. Eat the cookie, stay up late, go out for drinks, if that’s what makes you happy. But just don’t make a habit out of it. Stressing about doing everything perfectly all the time is more harmful than just doing the thing. Stressing and trying to control everything is not good for your mental health, which in turn affects your physical health.
Balancing Enjoyment and Healthy Habits
Conversely, sometimes you need to be strict with yourself. It might be important not to stay up late, cut out alcohol, avoid processed foods, prioritize eating whole foods, or avoid dairy or eggs for certain periods.
Shifting Perspectives on Long-Term Health
Even when you reach your health goals, the healing journey doesn’t really end. Your goals will shift over time. Eventually, it’s less about healing chronic conditions and more about continuously living a healthy lifestyle.
Do What Works for YOU
The holistic community can sometimes be very black and white. Find what works for you, and focus on that. And if you don’t know what that is, you need to allow time to do its thing; you’ll know soon enough.
Deal With Your Stressors Sooner Rather Than Later
Fight or flight and stress are very common culprits for health issues. This can be caused by so many things: unhealthy relationships, toxic friendships, doing a job you don’t enjoy, having too many things on your plate, not doing enough of the things you actually care about. Something I’ve recently realized is that I have things on my plate that I just need to deal with; pushing them off continues to stress me out, and the sooner I can address them, the faster I can feel better again.
Blessings in Disguise
Your perspective really matters. This is something I thought about last night when I was sitting on the couch feeling super stressed for no apparent reason. That’s when I remembered something I heard about a long time ago but didn’t give much thought to: the way you look at problems determines the magnitude of the problem. The problem itself is just a way to push us further, but how we look at the problem is how we allow it to affect us, and this can be either a positive or negative experience. If you change the way you look at the problem, the problem also changes. For example, I have a lot of things on my plate right now, and it’s all things I really enjoy, but I am very busy and always have a million things to do. It’s been very stressful and draining. But rather than seeing it as a problem that I have to do all these things, I can choose to look at it with gratitude because these are things on my way towards my goals, pushing me, teaching me about important life lessons. It’s like a challenge rather than a problem. And with every challenge I face and overcome, I get to level up internally. It provides me with new tools to deal with future challenges. It pushes me to the next challenge with its own rewards. And of course, I don’t always think this way, but it’s something I try to remind myself of and want to make my default when dealing with these challenges. Or should I say blessings in disguise? The energy you assign to the experience is how the experience will be felt.