Do your Habits Promote Growth and Support your Purpose?

While setting big goals and moving through life with energy is one approach to thriving, it is our daily habits that have the most influence on our ability to adapt to change, face challenges, and pursue opportunities. Our days are a series of conscious and subconscious habits that are the products of our life circumstances, goals and dreams, personality, time availability, and our mental, emotional, and physical capacities. What is most important is to understand that we choose these habits and rhythms, whatever they may be. 

While our practices should help us better connect with others, they should also allow space for personal rest and reflection. Here, we can examine our lives—our purpose, our emotional bodies, our values—and create, or continue in, practices that align with who we are and what we value. Traditional practices of rest during sabbath provide space to hear gentle prodings. 

A growing body of psychological science has begun to reveal the power of spiritual practices and how they shape our minds, emotions, and relationships. Allowing space for practices that elevate us and give us opportunity to feel joyful or rest peacefully in times of reflection is an important part of spiritual health. 

While the term self-care is commonly used by people experiencing difficult work cultures and burn-out, the practices and rhythms we suggest are more than a temporary break from the grind. They are shifts in how we live our lives. We aren’t suggesting seismic shifts, (although you might make some big changes, depending upon your circumstances) but beginning to tend to your needs, incorporating moments for meditation and intentionally connecting with people. We are suggesting practices that create time for reflection and that help cultivate attention.  Research shows that connecting to beauty is really good for the brain, so find something beautiful to enjoy now – whether that be a piece of music, a stroll through a museum, or watching a sunset from the roof of your building.  It’s better for you than a bubble bath!