Week Three: Spiritual Wellness

Week Three of Seven Disciplines of Intentional Living: Spiritual Wellness

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(transcript from Youtube)

Hello Everyone, and welcome to week 3 of the social media series Seven Disciplines of Intentional Living.  It is my desire to get the 2021 going in the right direction.  I truly believe to have a Get F.I.T. and F.I.T. is an acronym that I made up for my brand, Inspirationally Speaking LLC, it stands for Focused, Intentional, and Thriving Mindset. 

We must challenge ourselves to be balanced in every aspect of our lives.  I believe there are seven major areas: Occupation and Finances, Emotional, Spiritual, Intellectual, Physical, Cultural and Social, and Environmental.  Although each area is independent and equally important, they complement the other areas.  

Think about the spokes on a wheel.  The spokes job is to hold the true shape of the wheel and withstand the tension of put on the bike.  Therefore, it is so important to focus on these seven areas and be balanced.  When you do experience challenges in your life, you can rely on your strengths, supportive resources, and self-care that you have implemented.  This is intentional living.  

I apologize, it’s morning (Jennifer laughs)

If this is your first time joining the series, Seven Disciplines of Intentional Living, in Week 1, I discussed Occupational and Financial Balance.  In Week 2, I covered Emotional Balance.  This Week, I will discuss Spiritual Wellness.  

Spiritual Wellness is the process of understanding beliefs, values, and ethics that help guide your life.  Having a spiritual foundation helps keep you grounded when everything appears to be out of order.  Having faith in a higher power, believing that you are fearfully and wonderfully made, and having a spiritual community to support and uplift you are all great ways to stay balanced.  Overall, it’s about taking care of your soul.  For me, as a Christian, I read the bible, go to church, listen to Christian music, I meditate, journal, self-reflect, I choose to have peace, joy, and love.  In addition, I pray.  

All these self-care practices help to keep me centered, which is important given how uncertain times are now.  By incorporating these self-care practices, it helps build my resilience, integrity, honesty, determination, courage, and commitment.  These are characteristics that I value in myself and others.  

Spiritual balance will help you to forgive and heal from traumatic experiences.  I am being transparent when I tell you this.  When I finally got out of my abusive relationship, I knew it would be important to not stay stuck in just surviving.  I went from victim to survivor.  I discovered a three-phase journey of healing.  This allowed me to find purpose after the pain and move forward.  First, I had to acknowledge what I had experienced.  Then I had to restore my broken soul.  Restoring would like every morning when I would look into the mirror, I would say Jennifer you are fearfully and wonderfully made.  Jennifer you are worthy of love.  Jennifer you are beautiful.  Just saying those things everyday help boost my self-esteem.  And then the hardest part, was to forgive.  I had to put it in my mind and heart to not only forgive myself, but my abuser, and anyone else I held responsible for me not having the tools I needed to navigate this cold and crazy world.  It was helpful I took a bad situation and seized an opportunity for good, I wrote and published my first book, “Tomorrow My Sunshine Will Come: Memoirs of Women Who Survived Domestic Violence.”  

But I must be honest, while I was in that unhealthy relationship and battling low self-esteem, it affected all seven areas that I am covering.  I wasn’t operating with a sense of focus or intentionality.  Therefore, I wasn’t thriving.  I struggled to pass the leadership exams, my finances were out of whack, and I was emotionally depleted.  

What are you willing to do to have the life you deserve?  What is your motivation to change?  What is standing in your way or opportunities you need to make things better.  What strategies can you put in place.  I recommend you doing a SWOT Analysis to determine your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.  If you go to my blog, GUMBO on my website, you will see a pdf attachment of the SWOT Matrix that you can download and use.  

I will leave you with this Golden Nugget.  “Sometimes the person that hurts us the most is the one we see in the mirror.  It’s time to take off the mask and heal.”

Thank you, my name is Jennifer Foxworthy, I am the Founder and CEO of Inspirationally Speaking, LLC.  I hope you will learn something from this week’s information or go back and see previous videos and posts.  Reach out to me if you have any comments, questions, or concerns.  I am here to help you.  We are on this journey together.  I am still cheering you on.  God bless!