[bio] Christie Rosen is a beautiful young lady, living in Sarasota, Florida, where she has her practice as a health coach, eating psychology coach and yoga instructor. She recently published the book "Empowering the Sensitive Soul," which is an excellent guide for people who want to take better care of their body, learn to accept themselves for who they are, and create a plan to be in the world with confidence.
Accepting What Is A Foundation of Spiritual Practice
Spiritual seekers—we all seek to understand our world, ourselves, and why we are here. Maybe like me and many others, you’ve been drawn to spirituality because of a sense of uneasiness about life, feeling out of control, or perhaps even a feeling of ever-present anxiety. Maybe you are looking for a way out of your problems and into enlightenment or freedom.
We may feel we need to push harder, solve every issue and overcome our challenges before we can be at peace. However, if you have been on the earth long enough, you know that with each problem solved, a new one tends to arise.
We may think we have many problems, but in fact, there really is only one, and it is the resistance to what is. You see, it is not our thoughts, situations or experiences that create problems in our lives; it is simply our resistance to the situation. The key to living a spiritually conscious, empowered life is to let go of any resistance.
While we may want control in our lives, we hardly have any. We cannot even know for sure if we wake up tomorrow morning, but we keep moving forward, each day passing with new twists and turns, and we can either enjoy the ride or hang on for dear life and hate every minute of it. When you look at it this way, I think it is clear that the best choice is to sit back and enjoy the ride. Unfortunately, so many of us choose the opposite. We pick pain and fight over acceptance and ease. The outcome is the same either way, but when we resist, the sense of peace, ease, and lightness that we could otherwise have is lost and cannot be found until we learn to accept what is. The only control we really have is how we decide to look at our life situation.
Learning to add meditation to your daily routine will help significantly with the acceptance of the moment. When you meditate, you are literally training your brain to discard negative thoughts and find the peace that is within you. The more you practice meditation, the easier it is to then bring this attitude of acceptance into your daily life. Underneath the worry and fear, there is peace; you just have to remove the thoughts and barriers around it and let it shine. Practice makes perfect. If you don’t like meditation because you feel you aren’t good at it, you just haven’t practiced enough. I recommend going to a meditation class; learning to meditate in a group has exponential benefits over just trying to practice alone.
Gratitude is also an exceptional way to create more acceptance of the conditions in your daily life. As you build conscious awareness, it is easy to tell when you are out of alignment and resisting the moment. You’ll notice a feeling of unease and ask yourself, what am I currently resisting? Then see if you can find something to appreciate about your situation, something to be grateful for rather than focusing on the negative. Then notice your resistance soften. If you cannot find ease right away, that’s okay; you will just do your best and improve as you practice. And of course, if the situation requires action, and you can take that action, go for it. Releasing resistance does not mean apathy or giving up. It means taking action when possible, but still accepting the moment as you do so.
Lastly, it is vital to keep in mind that acceptance of yourself is also paramount. If you find yourself upset, and then instead of working to release resistance, you judge yourself for it, you are pushing yourself further and further away from peace. Always work to accept yourself first. Find something to appreciate about yourself in any given situation that you are resisting. It will make a tremendous impact on how you feel about yourself, your life, and the world in general for how we feel about ourselves is often a mirror of how we feel about life.
Be well, Christie
7 Steps to Self-Love for the Sensitive Soul https://my.sendinblue.com/users/subscribe/js_id/2l0go/id/2