Starting your spiritual practice
The thing I struggled with most when starting my spiritual practice was keeping it consistent.
It was so easy to start off with these big ambitions. I was going to meditate 30 minutes every morning and journal every night before bed, especially when I was in a tough place and needed to shift my energy.
Then, as soon as my energy started shifting, I’d find myself becoming lazier and lazier about my spiritual practices. Then when things would get crap again, I’d pick them up. Anyone else relate?
Having been on this journey for almost a decade, and now running a business where I teach women to realign with their own sacred wisdom, I’ve learned to prioritise my spiritual practice as a non-negotiable.
Whether I’m at home, on holiday, sleeping over at my boyfriend’s, waking up from a late night or have an early morning meeting.
The trick with starting and maintaining a spiritual practice is to start small. If you’re like me, and you’re not a morning person, don’t set yourself a lofty goal to wake up at 5am.
It won’t happen, you’ll feel like you’re letting yourself down when you hit snooze for the fifth time, and you’ll undo the work that you intended.
Trust me. I’ve been there.
So here are my three easy tips to start your spiritual practice.
Identity when you’ll most likely stick to your practice
If you’ve got more time in the evening than in the mornings, that’s fine, make sure that you carve out this time and make it a non-negotiable. If you’re living with a partner or if you have children, make sure that this time is in the diary and they know that you can’t be disturbed for the next 15 minutes unless someone is dying or the house is on fire.
At first it will be hard. Just when we set our timer to do our practice, suddenly the entire household needs our immediate attention. But I’ll tell you what. Unless we are committed and dedicated to putting this time aside for ourselves, the Universe will keep sending us little nudges that we aren’t fully aligned with our intention.
So that takes me to the next step.
Be non-negotiable about your sacred time
We make excuses that we don’t have time.
Warning: some tough love coming up.
You have exactly the same amount of time as Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey and Jacinda Ardern.
Let’s be honest and reframe that to: it’s not a priority.
When something is really important to us, we will make the time. Imagine if you got sick, and suddenly eating healthy became not just a nice-to-do, but a have to do. We have the same amount of time, and yet ensuring we’re cooking healthy, whole-food meals is a priority.
And we need to be unmovable in ensuring that this time is uninterrupted.
Some of my clients start off with excuses about the kids and their partners.
My response to this is: if we can’t show our kids what setting healthy-boundaries and self-care looks like, how are we ever going to teach them to set these from themselves?
How are we ever going to teach them the resilience they need to thrive in a society that expects us to run ourselves into the ground and wear busy-ness and burn out as a badge of honour?
Start small
This is arguably one of the most important steps.
Start small.
I can’t stress this enough. If we don’t already meditate, or don’t meditate consistently, setting ourselves a goal to meditate for 30 minutes every day is a sure fire way to failure.
The goal will feel too out of reach, and when we don’t consistently do it, we feel dejected and give up. So start small. Set yourself a goal that’s achievable.
The psychology behind this is, when we’re able to consistently meet this goal, every day for a week, then that week turns into two weeks, we start to feel more motivated. We build momentum.
We start seeing the difference the five-minute meditation or journaling practice gives us. We keep doing it consistently, and before we know it, it’s a habit.
And when it’s established as a habit, it’s easier to build on this.
Think of it like running. When we first start running, we don’t just jump off the couch and run a full 5kms straight without stopping. We build up our running time versus our walking time, until we’re able to keep a consistent running pace for the full 5kms.
Your spiritual practice is a little like this.
Want more support with your spiritual practice?
My Goddess Activation Package is a 12-week container for the high-end client who is tired of playing small and ready to embrace the fullness of her power and purpose. Each individual package is specifically tailored to you and your unique needs, no two containers are alike.
