Dear Reader,
What makes your spirit happy? What fills you with a sense of joy, and rightness, and contentment? What makes you feel fully alive?
Your spirit knows.
Your spirit is that deep core of your being, the individual spark that unites you with all of life. Your spirit is pure love, ready and available for you to express in your own, unique way. When you are following your spirit, you know it.
Why is it so important to nurture your spirit?
Because when you do, you see and experience the world differently. You act from deep inspiration. And when you do, it is often true that other people notice and are inspired too. When you are inspired, you make inspired choices. Think about that for a second.
If you have a choice to make about your career, wouldn’t you rather choose from a place of inspiration, rather than obligation?
When you nurture your spirit, you are building that connection with inspiration, and growing more familiar with how it feels when your spirit is happy. You get more skilled at making inspired choices, and the whole trajectory of your life changes. Chances are, the lives of people around you start to change as well.
Deep down, you probably know what makes your spirit happy, but you may not recognize it right away. Ask. Practice. Above all, listen to your spirit.
What makes your spirit happy?
My wife Louise and I like to take walks together during the day, often as a break from our work. We live in the woods of Maine, surrounded by great beauty, so sometimes just getting out and walking makes our spirits happy.
But lately, we have been walking to a large stand of evergreen trees. Why? Simply because we love the smell! A local planted these trees originally with the intent of starting a Christmas tree farm. For some reason, that never happened, but the trees are still there, densely planted, and now they tower over us.
Most of the time, they don’t have a strong scent, but a few times during the year, including certain days in late Autumn, we can smell a beautiful evergreen perfume as soon as we get close. The scent fills us as we stop and silently rejoice, in awe of such beauty. And our spirits are happy.
Those moments shift our whole day.
One time, those moments can change your life, if you seek them out and allow them in. It is especially important to nurture your spirit when you are down, or overwhelmed, or surrounded by chaos. Nurturing your spirit reminds you who you really are, makes everything a little lighter, and helps you keep moving forward.
It’s ironic that sometimes, when you most need to nurture your spirit – you don’t. You might think that it’s a luxury, or that you can’t take the time and you have to deal with the chaos first, or that it’s too difficult, or that it’s selfish. Yet it is actually the very thing that you need to do most, not just for yourself, but for others in your life as well.
Think of how much more present you can be, and how much more you have to offer, when you engage your spirit, and act from inspiration.
Even when you know how important it is when you nurture your spirit, and when you have experienced the benefit in the past, it can be so easy to forget, to backslide. You must remind yourself, and build those moments into your life as non-negotiable.
And if anybody questions your actions (which they will), just smile and say “It makes my spirit happy.”
What makes your spirit happy, dear reader? Music? Dancing? Baking fresh, delightful smelling bread? Teaching a child to read? Sitting in silence? Make a list, and resolve to expand your repertoire, starting now.
Your spirit will thank you.
I honor your loving heart,
John
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