Mindfully Moody | Highest Self, Manifestation, Dating Advice & Feminine Energy

142: Is Your Spiritual Practice Actually Enough?

• Hannah Andersen and Sara Swanson • Season 3 • Episode 41

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Feeling unspiritual because you missed your morning meditation? You're not alone. Join us on Mindfully Moody as Sara opens up about her own struggles with guilt and disconnection when her spiritual practices fall by the wayside. Together, we challenge the notion that spirituality must be tied to rigid routines. Just like health, our spiritual well-being should not be defined by stringent rules and self-imposed goals. Instead, we emphasize the power of intention and the importance of a compassionate, flexible approach to nurturing our spiritual selves.

In this episode, we celebrate the significance of the small, everyday acts that contribute to our spiritual growth. From simple acts of kindness to genuine interactions, these moments of self-awareness often go unnoticed but are vital to our journey. We tackle the dangers of comparison and the feelings of inadequacy that arise when we measure ourselves against others' stringent practices. By creating personal guidelines that resonate with our unique needs and lifestyles, we can honor our own spiritual paths. Tune in and embrace a more compassionate view of your spiritual journey, free from guilt and comparison, and extend this perspective to those who might be struggling too.

Wishing you a week full of love, light, and healing, beautiful souls.

xoxo,
Sara & Hannah

00:00 - Introduction: Overcoming Spiritual Guilt

00:41 - Self-Love Formula Announcement

02:01 - Sara’s Personal Experience with Spiritual Guilt

03:55 - Different Aspects of Life and Perfectionism

05:18 - Spirituality vs. Conditional Practices

08:10 - The Impact of Self-Created Pressure

09:59 - Finding Balance Between Practice and Self-Compassion

10:44 - Early Stages of a Journey vs. Long-Term Integration

13:31 - Embodying Spirituality in Everyday Life

14:53 - Celebrating Small Wins and Natural Spirituality

16:12 - The Influence of Comparison and External Expectations

19:18 - Creating Your Own Guidelines for Success


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Speaker 1:

If you are on your spiritual journey and you feel like you keep coming up against this need to constantly be showing up in practice whether it be meditation, yoga, breath work and when you don't show up in these practices, you start to feel a sense of guilt and you start to feel disconnected from your spirituality and you feel like if you are not doing your practices, therefore you are not spiritual. If this is something that comes up for you often, keep listening, because we are going to dig into this. On this episode of Mindplay Moody.

Speaker 2:

What's up, girly, girlies? It's Hannah and and I'm joined by my bestie and co-host, sarah, and we are so grateful that you decided to join us on another episode of Mindfully Moody. Before we get into this episode, I want to be sure to let you guys know that our self-love formula is out and you can purchase it literally for, I think, $44. It is a 75 page workbook. It's a 15 video course and community.

Speaker 2:

So if you feel like you are stuck in a toxic cycle of escaping emotions binge eating, drinking, dating men who are not up to your standards we give you tools and techniques to understand why you're in those toxic patterns, why this doubt comes up, why these self-sabotaging behaviors continue to arrive in your life, and we give you tangible tools On actually how to clear them, how to heal childhood trauma and how to show up Fully in your brightest light, so those things no longer hold you back. So if you're interested in this drop down in the show notes, the self-love formula is on sale right now and it's not going to last long. So go take a look and let's dive into this episode. I want to know what sparked this interest in this episode, sarah.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So this is some real, real, true, honest, vulnerable moment of my own, moments of my own. This is something that I have been experiencing for years on my spiritual journey, years and years and years. Okay, when I am not in deep practice spiritual practice, this could mean something different to everyone I feel like I go through sometimes these thought patterns or cycles of well, I'm not meditating in the way that I want to or how often as I want to, so I'm distancing myself from my spiritual side, or I'm not showing up in the way that I desire to.

Speaker 1:

And I think a lot of people get into this when they're in the spiritual world and they feel like, oh my gosh, I've learned all these tools and exercises and all of these ways to embody my spirituality. There's all these feminine embodiment techniques and meditation, breath work, yoga, ecstatic dance, sound healing all of these things that we do in the spiritual space. And then, when we don't show up daily, weekly, however, your amount of time you think that you should be showing up is we start to feel guilt, and I think this is bullshit. So that's why I wanted to talk about it, because I think that this is just another aspect of our egos, our perfectionist tendencies, our drive to want to reach goals and achieve that, we actually create spirituality into a sense of a goal where it really couldn't be further from that.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, that's where I'm at.

Speaker 2:

I think people also listening can apply this to anything in life. Because, as you're speaking, it's interesting, because I don't have this with spirituality. Just because I don't meditate doesn't mean that it fit to me. I'm not like, oh, I'm not a spiritual person anymore, I don't have that. But I have that with other aspects of my life, especially with health. It's like if I'm not working out, I feel like I'm not healthy. It's like if I'm not working out, I feel like I'm not healthy. It's like there's these things that we feel like we should do in order to be in an identity of something. But who is creating these rules? Who is creating this pressure? We are creating the pressure for ourselves. When I think about spirituality for myself, it feels like having that just deeper connection with my soul, energy and a higher power, and it's not conditional. It's not like you need to meditate five times a day. You need to journal three times a week, blah, blah, blah, and then you're spiritual. It's like you can just be spiritual just because you have the intention to be spiritual.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I love what you just said. It's not conditional. I love what you just said it's not conditional. It makes me think of being younger and church being such an aspect of people's lives and it's like, oh well, if you don't go to church, you're not religious, and a lot of people would believe that. Right, oh, you aren't showing up in a dedicated practice. Many religions organized religions believe you aren't showing up in a dedicated practice. Many religions organized religions believe you need to show up in a certain way in order to claim yourself to be religious.

Speaker 1:

Right, this is a very, very, very common thing that people put on themselves, and this could definitely be a part of my past with religion, of why this comes up for me as well. I did grow up going to church and it wasn't like stringent, it wasn't super, super strict you need to be doing X, y and Z but it was definitely. You dedicate this amount of your life in order to be in practice of religion or practice of spirituality and shit. I mean I've dedicated a lot of my life into practice of spirituality. There is no doubt about that.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, I just think that it is such an important topic because, to your point, we put conditions on so many things in our lives. We could go like, if you think about the brain right and what it puts us through, you could have a weak of eating. Let's say because I know a lot of people experience this as well where you eat, you know whatever healthy, quote, unquote, I don't. It's like I kind of have a love hate with the word healthy, nutritious with. You know the 80% of your meals, 90% of your meals, and then on Friday night you decide that you're going to go out for pizza with your friends and have two beers and all of a sudden your mind is like you're not healthy.

Speaker 1:

You're not healthy. Why'd you eat that pizza? You're not healthy, right? So it's like I could have been in practice of my spirituality consistently for years, and then I have a week or two where it's like my life gets busy. I'm not in practice of meditation, I'm feeling like I don't really have space to go into my spirituality in the way that I desire, and then the brain's like well, you're failing, you're failing. Hello, you got to get to meditate, you got to do X, y and Z, so it's just that same kind of thing. I'm glad that you compared it to something, because it's so true. It is like you are only going to be succeeding in X area of your life if you are doing these things to contribute to that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it reminds me also of like imagine you have a friend right and like you hang out with that friend and like the condition is like only if you hang out with that friend that means that you're friends, but then one week goes by and you don't hang out with that friend. It's not like that friend is like we're not friends anymore. Yeah, Like no, we're still friends, we're still great friends, Girl.

Speaker 1:

I'm just dizzy, we don't have to do it.

Speaker 2:

Life just happens sometimes. But I think, yeah, this can apply to any area in life, but specifically in spirituality, I think that there probably can be a tendency, like a perfectionism tendency that comes up in different areas of life, that like, okay, I have an idea that this is what a spiritual person looks like, this is what a spiritual person does, and so, like now, I'm anchored to that in my brain and I feel like I should be doing these things so I can show up because I desire to be a spiritual person. But when I'm not, now, I feel guilty. Right Now, I'm not doing it perfectly in the way that I've seen it done. Therefore, I'm not enough.

Speaker 2:

Therefore, I should feel guilty, I should feel shame because I'm not feeling like aligned in the person that I want to be, which is like it's hard, because one like, yeah, there, there should be some structure right. Like being like a little like in integrity with the identity that you desire to be in. But what's too much? You know, like you can't just say like, oh, I'm spiritual, like forever, and just like not look at yourself, not, like you know, look into the things, being self-reflective, like tapping into energy, like there's gotta be some practices right that help you claim to have that identity. So, like what is the balance between doing?

Speaker 2:

things but then also not being too hard on yourself and not creating these hard rules that if I don't do this, then I'm not. That.

Speaker 1:

That's such a great point. It is so interesting because I think in the beginning, when you first embark on something, you first embark on a health journey, you first embark on a spiritual journey, you first embark on an entrepreneurial journey. Whatever the journey is, you have to put in more work. In the beginning, when you're first opening yourself up to spirituality, you are curious. There are things that you know. This is a whole new world for you. It's like for myself.

Speaker 1:

I felt that I'd been living with rose colored glasses and then I took these glasses off and it's like the world was brighter and deeper and I didn't feel like people were as divisive. I felt like I could love people in a more authentic, deeper way than I had before. There were all these things that started shifting for me. So I went deeper into practices in the beginning and I went deeper into questioning. You know my beliefs and all of these things and you know, just like the same, if you're on a health journey like you're learning about, you know what is in food for the first time, what is on an ingredients label, what is considered an inflammatory all of these things that we learned when we're earlier on in a journey, but then it just becomes a part of who we are.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Right, like if I think about myself and my health journey, like I didn't used to ever look at a food label. I had no idea what was like in a bag of Doritos, I didn't know that there were dyes and all this shit in there that was toxic to you. Now I barely even need to look at a food label because I'm just so in alignment with things. You know what I mean. So it's the same with my spirituality. Now I actually embody. When I was earlier in my journey, I couldn't embody these lessons and these experiences because I didn't really have enough experience with them yet. Yeah, so now it's like it shows up in the way that I move through the world, in the way that I treat people, in the way that I have conversation, in the way that I connect with others, you know, in the spaces that I create for people. So it just integrates in a different way people.

Speaker 2:

So it just integrates in a different way and you start living it versus like reading about it. You know, yeah, yeah, don't talk about it, just be about it, like it just becomes part of your identity as a human being. I love what you were saying about that Like, whatever it is spirituality, health. Being a business owner, I'm realizing this is a theme. This is a theme of the podcast. Obviously, we know that this is a theme, but, like, we just constantly talk about spirituality, entrepreneurship, health relationships, relationship, health relationships, um, but when, when you open up the door to something new, right like one of these topics, and you fall in love with that thing, you see how much value that can bring to your life. You want to learn everything about it that you can and then embody it.

Speaker 2:

So it's easy to integrate that into your life, right, like you don't need to do an ice bath, you don't need to do breath work to be a spiritual person. Your energy is spiritual, your essence is spiritual already and I love that. Like, how can I show up more loving and recognize that? I think that's a big thing, right, because so many times our brain is looking for where is the lack? What am I not doing? How can I search and find a way to get myself in trouble and be down on myself. How can I actually look for the things, reframe and say, look at all the spiritual things I'm doing already?

Speaker 2:

right, the way you go to the grocery store and you take a moment with the cashier and say, like, look her in her eyes and like, genuinely ask her how she's doing, like seeing her at a soul level, like how can we celebrate those moments? Or when you notice yourself going in a toxic cycle, like binge eating or whatever, and you pulled yourself out of that moment and slowed down and recognized oh my gosh, I'm having all of these emotional feelings connecting to that slowing. Let me celebrate that, like I feel, so many times we just bypass these things that are so normal. We don't celebrate the things that we've worked so hard to integrate into our life. Right, like morning routines.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh, it's so like second nature now for me just to get up in the morning, brush my teeth, wash my face, go on a morning two mile walk with my dog, eat a healthy breakfast, then drink my coffee. Like that took so much time to even think about. How can I prioritize my breakfast before my coffee so I balance my blood sugar? Now, it's just natural and that's a huge win. I don't even have to think about it. So, yeah, I guess for us to think about. How are we naturally spiritual in our day-to-day lives? Every single day we show up in this podcast every single week and talk about spirituality. That's not dedication to the practice. I don't know what it is.

Speaker 1:

Okay, you got a point there. You got a point there. I love that so much. I think that you are absolutely right that we scan over the things that we do do to literally our brain is looking for okay, well, where could you be doing more and where do you need to show up more? Okay, Well, what about where I'm already showing up? How about that? I created last week a group of actually I'm literally hosting a women's circle tonight online as well.

Speaker 2:

Literally, If you ever would be like I'm feeling guilty for not feeling spiritual. It's like you're literally doing like creating, like so many containers.

Speaker 1:

But I've also started showing up. I feel like, for other people more than myself, sometimes as well which is like another you know experience to work through. But I also want to say that comparison is one of the biggest freaking offenders of this type of guilt. Okay, so I started reading this book and I was posting about it on social media and I actually had to stop reading it and it makes me sad because I love a lot of the things that are in the book. But I started reading this book called the Sacred Woman and I was so excited to read it. It's all about womb healing and the book is amazing. It's all about ancient Egyptian even before it was called Egyptian society and the women there and how they were revered and all the healing that they did and using those kind of practices. And I will continue to explore the book.

Speaker 1:

But one of the main things is that you need to have this extremely rigorous spiritual practice. She says that you should be getting up every single day at 4 am and starting to practice your spirituality between 4 and 6 to 7 am, and there are these extremely specific steps of all of the things that you need to do, the kind of tea you need to drink all the prayers you need to say the way you have to set up your altar, the way that you have to face, like cleansing yourself, like the type of crystals you have to hold, like I mean, it is so specific. You know, and I now know myself and I know what starts to contribute to, like my perfectionism. You know and I'm like okay, this is literally putting me in a place of guilt, this is putting me in a place of I'm not showing up with, as you know, as much dedication to my spirituality because I can't get up at four in the morning. I am never getting up at four in the morning. That is never going to be for me. I don't need to do that. I work very hard, I live a very full life and I'm not saying that people who get up at 4 am don't. I think they live an incredible full life as well. But there are just things that are for you and there are things that are for other people and I think, when you get in this mode of like I'm not doing enough, and why is that? Is it that you aren't doing enough, potentially, in comparison to someone else that you think is better than you that you think is more dedicated to spirituality than you. You know, like that is, I think, a really big factor that gets in the way here.

Speaker 1:

So I just wanted to kind of end with that, because I want to encourage people that you are a sovereign being. We are sovereign beings. We create the rules for our own success. We create the I don't know rules is kind of a hard word. We create the guidelines, the desired actions for our success, and that does not have to align with what someone else defines as their guidelines of success. We get to create that. We did not go through this process of unlearning the shitty beliefs and healing our wounds and all of this to just go and put another set of rules on ourselves. So bam.

Speaker 2:

Period. It's like we spend time relearning our parents' beliefs. We're not going to relearn someone else's beliefs and take them on as our own and then realize that we're not happy in the end. So I love that comparison ending there. Create your own path, what feels best to you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for listening. We love you. Share this episode with someone. If you have had a friend telling you girl, I'm feeling guilt, I'm feeling like I'm not showing up in the way that I need to go send her this episode right now. Okay, and wherever you're listening to this podcast, leave us a review. Follow us on social media. We love you. We'll be back with you next Monday.

People on this episode

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Hannah Andersen

Host
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Sara Swanson

Host