COVID help us in questioning the way our health priorities are. All over the world, we start considering sanitizing our hands and taking care of hygiene seriously. What about soul then? When we start considering it seriously. Do we need COVID for our soul too? Or do we realize that we already have so much wrong going on around us from which our soul want some space?
In this article, I am going to give you 10 ways to sanitize your soul. Through each of these method, you can claim back your soul from unnecessary day-to-day emergencies and anxieties. Let’s start claiming it now:
1: Figuring out the Purpose
Healthy souls have purpose to pursue. Sick souls have no idea why they are doing what they are doing. You can start figuring out the purpose of your life by having philosophy for your life. Have a life based on philosophy. Philosophy doesn’t means you have to become superficial or someone who always live in a poetic state but it means you must have set of standards and rules for yourself to live by. What is your philosophy? What specific set of principles you are taking stand for?
Once you decide on your personal philosophy now try to explore your potential. We feel happy when we realize that we are giving our best. If you want to sanitize your soul and find your purpose in life, start considering these questions: Am I giving my best? Am I performing at fullest of my potential or am I holding back? Am I living to my top standards or just passing by days?
Finding a purpose and sanitizing your soul is not an activity to do in hustle or in one sitting. You need to set up free, calm, and silent time for yourself everyday to reflect on your purpose. Give yourself space from others and let’s reflect on your wishes, wants, fears and aspirations.
2: Check your Ego Status
Most of times, we stand in our own way. How is that possible? It is possible when you keep on talking but make no progress on your goal. When you keep on thinking but take no action. That is what your ego do to you. You need to keep taking action to sanitize your soul. Checking your ego status means questioning your words to action ratio. How many times you walk your talk. It is about being critical about your own life.
Why we talk more and work less? Because our culture is rewarding the talks and urgency. No one has time to stop and take action and wait for results. Everybody want breaking news. You need to stop constantly searching for or being part of breaking news. Breaking news is breaking you. It will suck the energy out of your soul. It is just all about feeding your own ego. Stop staying too much updated on current affairs and start getting updated on crucial affairs. Stop checking the news feed and participating in it just because it makes you feel part of something big. Stop this endless cycle now and carve some space for deeper work.
Deeper work require more focus and energy. But worth it. Instead of pursuing million things at once and giving nothing to them, start pursuing one thing with all of your energy.
To check your ego status, you need to accept the fact that you cannot control everything. Stop being too much worried about what will happen in future and stop being too much anxious about next day. Just be present. Just stay in your own zone. Keep taking action. You will feel much better.
3: Question your Calendar
Your soul will never be healthy if you don’t spend most of your time on what you love to do. You need to question your current calendar. Are you repeating things or commitments just because it works in the past or are you preferring it because of results it will deliver to you today? Avoid falling in tendency of doing things because it works in the past but not giving any results now.
Make a space on your calendar. Eliminate every unnecessary commitment or activity you are doing currently. Figure out what is not making you feel good and remove it from your calendar. Creating space on current calendar is the first step towards creating a new one.
Ask, How much time you are spending on your job and how much you are allocating to your passion? You need to raise this question regularly. Working on your passion is the ultimate recipe for having a healthy soul. Put more activities related to your passion on your calendar.
4: Scrutinize your Relationships
You need to scrutinize relationships you are in. Mostly we have one or two people in our contact list we don’t want to talk or interact with because they take away all the energy from us with pessimism and selfish behavior. Try to identify those and remove them or at least minimize the level of contact.
You must figure out the reason for being in a relationship. Finding the reason doesn’t means that you are selfish and you are in a relationship for taking advantage but it means that you have specific purpose in mind related to relationship. Don’t be in relationships without specific purpose or reason. Relationships are not to pass time but to make time special.
Figure out which relationship is helping you to grow and which relationship is pulling you back. You need more relationships that can help you in growing beyond your current limitations. Having healthy soul require strong relationships that can help you in being better person.
5: Update your Career Plans
Before moving towards making a new strategy for your career, layout your current one. Figure out what specific things you are doing and why. If you don’t have strategy, write about why you don’t have and what motivates you to pick a career without strategy? This exercise is crucial specially in now days scenarios where pandemic is making things tough for so many people’s career.
While creating a new career layout remember that we all have tendency to keep on repeating what works in the past. But we must remember past is not equal to future. We have to create a layout that can help us in future. Research future trends. Research your industry and skills demands considering future changes.
Out of your new layout, pick up few projects for yourself. A soul with no purpose die with burden. A purpose without practical projects is just a waste of time. You can sanitize your soul by doing high quality work in your career. Trust me, there is nothing as satisfactory as doing the work worth doing.
6: Ask for Help
We are facing tough times. We are tense, anxious, and overwhelmed. This is a time to stop being too egoistic and too selfish. You need to bring in new perspective. Ask others for help if you needed any. And if anyone ask you for help, help him or at-least make sure to connect him with the person who can.
We need to unmask our ears. We need to start listening other people seriously. We need to give attention to others. Listening will give other person chance to share their story and pain and concerns. Now days, we are too much into speaking that we forget to give someone real attention. Give it. Your soul will feel better.
You need to ask for help. You need to offer help. For that, you have to come out of your social media life and to be present in your real world society. Go outside. Talk to people. Tell them your concerns. Be vulnerable. Listen them. Give them emotional support. Do some real stuff. It will give you real happiness.
7: Simplify
To have a happy soul, you need to simplify. We try to make ourselves happy by adding more but it is opposite that will work. Start from clearing the past clutter. Clear your wardrobe, filing cabinet and stores. Get rid of everything that is not serving you but taking up a space. You need to create space for new things before you wish for new things.
To have happy soul, you have to stop wishing all the time. You need to become a person of service and ethics instead of the one who is greedy and always looking after getting something out of life. Simplify. Get satisfy on what you have. Yes, you have to work to get more but with true intention of doing good for others during the process.
In order to have a good life, you don’t have to do heroic acts daily. You must do basic stuff of life well. You have to attend daily affairs with enthusiasm, you have to perform your work better than yesterday, you have to respect, love and care relationship like it is a day one of relationship, and you have to enjoy life’s simple offering. That is what makes you happy.
8: Deal with Past
One of the biggest burden on any soul is having inner regret about not getting complete benefits of opportunities or missing the opportunities. Dealing with that burden help to lighten up the soul immensely. Being living in past and always dwelling on whats you missed is not going to help. This even will take away opportunities you have right now. Come out of that past mode. Take advantage of whats in front of you.
Do you have any regrets related to your past? Is there anything holding you back? Is revisiting your regrets again and again going to help you and make things better? It will not. You need to deal with past stuff to gain focus in present and to make your future amazing. Today is the day to reclaim yourself from regrets.
What are the small things or unfinished tasks or unsettled commitments or distractions or unnecessary demands disturbing you? All of these are called mild stresses. These can disturb peace of your mind and soul more than big stresses. Today, list them down. Just attend them. Capture them. Finish them one by one. Free your mental space for future work.
9: Forgive yourself and others
Yes. It is over. That bad moment, failed relationship, missed opportunity, moment of extreme anger, poor judgement, awful behavior, insulting comment, sin – its over. Stop being too harsh on yourself by repeating those bad memories again and again in your mind. Stop blaming yourself. Forgive yourself and move on. Happy souls are the ones which are forgiving souls.
We are living in a culture where hustle is taken as a badge of honor. We all want more and to have more we need to hustle more. Stop this chase race. Take it easy. Think things in long-run. You will get tired if you kept on pushing yourself into harsh hustle. Forgive yourself for mistakes and momentarily laziness. Breathe. Nothing is a matter of life and death.
Best way to have a healthy soul is to cherish what you accomplish. Be grateful. Appreciating the efforts you made during your lifetime for things you want to have in life is the best form of forgiveness. Stop. Look around. You have now what once a dream for you. Stop judging and measuring yourself always on future scale. Enjoy the moment.
10: Make Room for New
Happy souls are the ones which prefer creativity over fear. Try something different this week. Change routine. Eat something new. Start creating. Bring in the color of creativity to your life. Life is not meant to live in a same way years after years. Get back to your child like spirit and try something different and new to dust off your soul.
Feeling stuck in life? Trying to solve problem? Having issues to make your days perfect? Bring in the new insights this week. Listen podcast. Watch videos of experts you never know before. Bring new ways of seeing things. Bring in the fresh voice. Start seeing things from perspective of people. It will create a space in your life to spot the opportunities you were ignoring before.
Remember, you are amazing, lovable, and significant and you don’t need any certificate of approval from anyone to prove it. You deserve better. Sanitize your soul. Keep taking action. Do good deeds. Stay happy. Keep sharing the passion and unique voice you have.
Muhammad Zeeshan Iqbal
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