I’ve been in the field of education, personal development and positive psychology for over 10 years now and there is so much about there about how to be happier and how to have more success especially when it comes to your career or business.
I’ve noticed recently though that people are searching for more - searching for more than the happiness and success that solely comes with money or status or fame.
They’re looking for something deeper, something more meaningful - something that goes beyond satisfying our bodily desires and rises higher to satisfy our souls.
By inspiring our souls, I believe we can have the opportunity to cultivate hope, strength, and the dream of a better future for the generations to come. We all know the world has so much suffering and perhaps it’s because we’ve lost touch of this crucial aspect of our well being which is all about how to inspire our souls and feed our hearts.
When it comes to inspiring our soul, I believe this is important and possible for anyone from any faith, background, or tradition so my message is intended for people from all walks of life, because I have enjoyed having and meeting amazing friends and colleagues from all different backgrounds and I see again and again, when we inspire our souls and feed our hearts, we can truly live a life that is aligned with our purpose and the vision we want for our lives.
So I’d like to share a quote from one of my favourite poets, Rumi (Jalaluldin Al-Rumi), who was a Muslim philosopher and scholar. He says “When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy”
And I love this quote because it’s getting at that core issue of doing things with your soul because this is what will bring you joy and fulfillment.
And while I understand that many people will find different ways of inspiring their soul whether it is through music or art or other forms, my particular focus here is going to be on inspiring our soul through having faith in a Higher Power, in A Loving Creator, in God.
So, again in my particular case, I am going to call the Higher Power I believe in God, while understanding that some or many may have other beliefs which I understand.
Here is the first step you can take to start inspiring your soul:
Recognize all of the divine blessings and gifts we have been endowed with
This requires us to contemplate and be mindful how Divine Grace and Love and Mercy works so amazingly in our lives - to know that we have a Creator and Sustainer Who has a Divine Plan for us that will unfold keeping our best interest in mind, even when we don’t understand why we may be going through or have gone through certain challenges, losses, and adversities.
Another way of framing this is to have more gratitude. Recent research cites that keeping a gratitude journal where you write down three things you’re grateful for everyday can increase your happiness levels substantially. This modern research doesn’t come as a surprise to me because again there are many spiritual traditions that teach us the importance of gratitude. In Islam for example, the Quran cites God saying: “If you are thankful, I shall increase you forever more”
So for example if we can be grateful for:
Our heatlh - our sight and hearing and ability to walk and talk and feel - these are immense blessings that thousands may be missing.
Our family and friends - the support and love they provide us with.
For me personally, my faith and my spirituality and my ability to feel connected and inspired by God, a Higher Power, in my life, gives me a tremendous sense of gratitude.
You find now in our ever competing society for more, more money, more gadgets, more clothes, more stuff in general that we forget the power of gratitude for the simplest yet most valuable blessings we are endowed with.
We seem to focus on our energy what we don’t have and develop what’s called a scarcity mindset and many personal development experts and business mentors will tell you as well that this is not healthy because we tend to attract what we focus on.
So by practicing gratitude we can develop an abundance mindset instead and focus on abundance which in turn attracts more abundance to us.
So a practical way you can implement this step is to write down three things that you’re grateful for each day.
