7 Tips for Soulful Living

What makes your life meaningful? What brings you joy?

And conversely, what things leave you stressed, or feeling empty and angry?

Recently I wrote a post about how to find greater contentment and joy in life, and in today’s post I’m going to share with you seven ideas to bring more “soul” into your life.

Soulful living means “full” living—meaningFULL living, and joyFULL living.

By focusing on the people, ideas, activities, and environments that bring more meaning and joy into your life (and moving away from those that suck you dry and make life feel like a chore), you can bring additional healing into your life and improve your mental and emotional wellness.

 Try out these ideas:

1. Take a small step toward a big dream. Want to publish a novel? Start writing the first page this week. Want to lose fifty pounds? Make a plan to lose one in the next ten days.

Want to make a million dollars? Find a creative way to make an extra fifty.

Want to find really big joy? Start by finding a tiny piece of happiness today, and then tomorrow, and then the next day. Make that a habit that builds upon itself.

Make a plan, this week, to take a small step toward a big dream. You won’t be disappointed.

2. Help others in some way, be it great or small. Bake for someone, write a letter to someone, or invite someone for a drink.

Offer advice to someone who is going through a challenge that you have already traversed. Just listen to someone.

Don’t judge someone. Tell someone that their ideas and goals sound awesome. It isn’t always easy to live for others in such a way when we are wrapped up in our own problems, but that is kind of the point here. Unwrap yourself from yourself for a minute!

Look outside of yourself. It’s easier to see joy that way, and find meaning in life.

3. Daydream. Dream about anything, about everything.

If you are broke, dream about a windfall. If you are sick, dream about being healthy. If you are alone, dream about finding friendship and love.

If you are feeling trapped, dream about liberation. Dream about career success, and dream about making a mark on the world.

Dream about whatever sort of joy you want. Just don’t worry that dreaming somehow isn’t for you, because it can be done at any age and from any location. And it’s free.

(And then, remember to follow-through on number 1 above and take a small step toward one of your dreams!)

4. Cook for yourself and your loved ones. There really is something spiritual about this. There is something soulful and joyful about planning a meal and buying the ingredients and trying to show affection to yourself and others in a culinary manner.

Getting lost in the rhythms of cooking (the chopping, measuring, mixing, boiling, stirring, flipping,) can be a bit like getting lost in the rhythms of a good run. You can give yourself over to the consuming Zen of the activity, which acts as a sort of meditation.

Living out of Kraft boxes and restaurants is okay in moderation, but too much of it can hurt our stomachs and make us feel disconnected from our minds and bodies. Good food positively affects how you feel and think, and so can the act of preparing it. And if you’re out of practice when it comes to cooking, just start with something simple.

5. Turn off the news. Turn off the news. Turn off the news.  

 The news will in no way enlighten you or empower you, and in fact it is designed to make you feel anxious, powerless, angry (and addicted). Turn it off—on the TV, computer, and phone. (Unless it’s sports news … that’s okay in moderation).

6. Step away from joyless environments and people (even if it is only emotionally). Is your workplace wearing you down with its negativity? Is a friend or relative consistently dragging you to a weatherworn state of gloom and doom? Is someone you know—someone you love, even—always playing the contrarian to your every thought, sentence, and dream. Then step away for a bit. Find a way to take breaks, or move to a better environment altogether. Find more positive people and places. Send a message to the world that you won’t have your happiness compromised in such a way.

7. Limit your social media use. We can’t really escape Facebook and Instagram and the like in this day and age, but we can limit our exposure to these things instead of allowing them to create a new reality for us. If we don’t do this, we can get lost in a constant quest to secure meaningless gestures of “approval” (things such as likes and retweets and blah, blah, blah), and we can get lost in a constant game of comparing ourselves to others, too.

We can begin to feel as if we are giving away our privacy and the moments that used to be special precisely because they were private (there is a fine line to walk, I know, and each person must find a level of tightrope walking that feels comfortable for them).

Social media often leaves people dopamine depleted, addicted, and with no attention span. Don’t let it rob you of your sanity or the ability to be present in your life. Don’t lose too much of your identity or your mind or your time to social media. Even Tim Cook (the CEO of Apple) said that he won’t let his nephew use Facebook, and even Chamath Palihapitiya, who previously served as Facebook's vice president for user growth, recently urged people to take a "hard break" from social media.

Find a “light to moderate” level of social media that works for you, and if that isn’t working, maybe it’s time to take a break altogether.

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Life is supposed to be special. It is supposed to be inspiring, interesting, meaningful, and yes joyful. It is supposed to be soulful. I hope that one or more of the above ideas help you to bring more “soul” into your life as you move forward.

Until next time,

Michael