BY: T. Franklin Murphy | July 2018 (edited April 15, 2022)
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Living is serious business, give yourself a break, providing necessary soul care to rejuvenate and enliven our lives.
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We move through life, bumping and colliding with our own humanity. We lack insight, skill, and resources. We want more but often fail in our efforts. Our failures are an easy target for our critical and judgmental minds, slapping harsh labels of insufficiency on our foreheads. We stumble, hurt and shrink before challenge. Perhaps, we could weather the foolish judgements of others, but the internal whipping gives life to shame. Stop. Attend to your souls, give the care needed. Our growth awaits. Only when we compassionately provide healing soul care can we flourish.
We often fear our existence. Fear, guilt and shame constrict our aliveness. We slowly build protective walls, avoiding openness and losing touch with ourselves and others. Our souls need care—comfort and acceptance. But fearing vulnerability, we hide our tender egos, deceiving ourselves to protect from the world. We must administer soul care before we can allow vulnerability. Protecting and Neglecting our SoulsWe do not need to feign confidence where we are weak. We do not need to appear as if we have no fault. We do not need to over-protect from the realities of imperfection.
We stymie growth when suffering from adverse conditions. Our own nastiness against personal weakness is the harshest environment for our soul. To engage in the courageous journey of change we need a secure base and a resilient soul.
How Do We Nourish Our Soul?There is no precise list of soul care practices. A practice that works for one may not work for the other. Soul care practices attend to both the body and mind. A healthy practice relieves stress, disrupts faulty thinking, and improves physical health.
See Healthy Escapes and Flow State for more on this topic. Our soul need tender care. We hurt, we fear, we avoid. When we stumble over imperfections, we often react in ways that invite more pain rather than heal. We live in incompleteness. We must show compassion to our foibles, flaws and fears. Many areas in our lives need examining, gentle correction, and patient understanding, not cruel judgements and condemnation. With kind attention, we refine our lives. We will never develop beyond the need for gentle and compassionate soul care.
Originally published as Tending to Our Soul
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