As a gym owner and a health coach, I have had the privilege of interacting with thousands of people throughout my 20+ year career, and although I consider myself to be a one-trick pony, I do have a sneaky super power that enables me to recognize patterns in people individually and collectively.
One of those patterns is the tendency that we human beings have of putting things into boxes.
We love to compartmentalize area’s of our lives, and I am guilty as the next person.
This is super easy to do because it is what our culture teaches us to do. We are taught to stay in the lines, check the boxes and keep things black and white.
Let me give you a simple example that I hope you will resonate with. Think of the different area’s of your life such as:
-Your professional life/career
-Your family life
-Your love life
-Your spiritual life and/or religion
-Your fitness
-Your nutrition (I intentionally did not lump this with fitness)
-Your personal life
-Your hobbies
And the list can go on…
Don’t get me wrong. I think there is an advantage to categorizing certain area’s of our lives, but there is also an unavoidable dark side when we become overly simplistic in our thinking.
Allow me to explain….
Discovering The Illusion Of Separation
As we look at these area’s of “separation” in our lives, we have the tendency to look at each one and say things like, “well I have my finances in order, but my health has taken a hit over the last year or two”, or, “my relationships are doing well, but my nutrition is in need of attention”. What we are trying to do is create a solid wall of separation between each area of our lives so that we can feel good about our “strengths” and crappy about out “weaknesses”
But what if we have gotten this wrong all along?
What is this paradigm of thinking is creating more problems than it solves?
To get to the bottom of this question I want to offer a slightly different paradigm, so hang with me for just a second as I explain. 😉
Regardless of your spiritual or religious beliefs, can we agree that we humans are all made up of energy even down to the level of the atom? We are literal energetic beings that receive more energy from the sun, the food that we eat, the water we drink and the air that we breathe. This is a scientific fact.
So from this perspective I would like to propose a definition of the word “spiritual” that may slightly differ from yours. I would say that that word “spiritual” and “energy” are synonymous. Your “spiritual” side is your energetic side. That is why many religions and spiritual beliefs posit that your soul goes on after you die. Why? Because you are an energetic or spiritual being!
Is this making sense?
So from this new perspective of being an energetic or spiritual being, we can now see that everything in life is CONNECTED! All of those clever little separations that we drew up in our mind for our own convenance are in reality an illusion!
If you are scratching your head at this point let me give you an example. Think of all your different “area’s” of life as composing a giant spider web that represents your life. It is a SINGLE unit of energy although it has different area’s of the web. It may seem separate from one end of the web to the other, but in reality it is all connected.
Take your relationships as an example.
If you have solid personal, intimate, and professional relationships, that area of your “web” is strong right?
Not so fast!
Remember the web is still a SINGLE web connected to all other area’s of your life. So if your nutrition is sub-par and you are subsisting on caffeine and processed food to get you through the day, then you are essentially robbing Peter to feed Paul and your web get’s tugged on and distorted. You are tugging on the nutritional area of your web and it is therefore moving and distorting your “relationship area”.
How disappointing right?
You felt good about the relationship area of your web and you may have felt like it was indestructible, but since your nutrition is poor you are now you are feeling tired, getting sick more often, and your irritability is higher because of the resulting blood sugar spikes from processed food and caffeine.
Any way you look at it, your energetic web is compromised.
So what is the solution here? Is it to be a perfect human being that has life completely figured out?
No. But what if we were able to switch our compartmentalized paradigm to spiritual paradigm that I am suggesting here? What if we could start viewing our selves as finite energetic beings with a limited capacity for energy or spiritual storage?
Life Itself Is a Spiritual Practice!
With this new paradigm, everything becomes a spiritual practice because everything is energy!
The question now shifts to “how will I best maintain and balance my energy?
This is the game changer.
Why?
Because with this new level of thinking we know that EVERY CHOICE WE MAKE IS A SPIRITUAL ONE!
So when we find ourselves wondering if we are going to exercise today or make healthy food choices, we can now come from the perspective that our choices have a DIRECT EFFECT on our energy and spirituality!
The Choice Is Yours!
You now have the choice of viewing life conventionally with all of the illusory walls that give a false sense of safety, or you can choose to view life holistically and energetically.
We get one shot at this life and we have the opportunity to optimize it. When we make healthy choices we build and bolster our energy reserve and can express it more liberally. When we make poor choices we drain our energy and the opposite is true.
Simple yet universally true.
Happy choosing!
L:ife is Good!
P.S. If you would like help with making better choices and thereby enhancing your energy, we can help! Learn more here: http://www.llfit.com
