Five Secret Tips to Satisfying our Spiritual Needs
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When difficult times come, we often turn toward spirituality to carry us through. Spirituality can be defined as an understanding that we are more than what we can physically see. So how can we practice spirituality? Here are five simple suggestions. 1. Gratitude: Gratitude produces feelings of joy and self-acceptance, and is an attitude that anyone can choose. Being grateful for what you have, instead of worrying about what you lack, enables you to let go of negative thoughts and attitudes more easily. One method of cultivating feelings of gratitude is to keep a gratitude journal. Another technique is closing your eyes before bed, and recognizing everything you experienced-and giving thanks for them. One can see vvery experience as an opportunity to learn. By making gratitude a regular part of your daily experience, you set the stage for living connected to spirit. In the process, your life will be transformed into an increasingly joyous adventure. 2. Prayer and Meditation – Prayer is more than a practice of the religious, it is a spiritual tenant important in everybody’s life. Prayer has been proven to assist others in recovery and in a report published in the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences, healthy older adults who participate in prayer, meditation or bible study -- "appear to have a survival advantage over those who do not." San Francisco cardiologist Randolph Byrd, for example, conducted an experiment in which he asked born-again Christians to pray for 192 people hospitalized for heart problems, comparing them with 201 not targeted for prayer. No one knew which group they were in. He reported in 1988 that those who were prayed for needed fewer drugs and less help breathing. William S. Harris of St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., and colleagues published similar results in 1999 from a study involving nearly 1,000 heart patients, about half of whom were prayed for without their knowledge. When praying or meditating, subjects sit quietly, clear their minds and repeatedly utter a silent phrase or prayer. It could be, "May the best possible outcome prevail," or "Peace." Studies show that such meditation can reduce oxygen use, increase blood flow, decrease blood pressure, relax muscles, lower secretion of stress hormones, improve brain functioning and help remedy insomnia. These health benefits often persist for several hours after meditating. 3. Forgiveness: Forgiveness requires what Aristotle called "a great soul" and is captured in a virtue often ignored and not appreciated - magnanimity. The Greek word for forgiveness means release. When you forgive, you release yourself as well as the other person. You allow life to go on, to bypass your exaggerated sense of virtue and your worry about being offended. As long as you sit on your power to forgive, you suppress your joy in life. 4. Practice Compassion - Compassion is an emotion that is a sense of shared suffering, most often combined with a desire to alleviate or reduce the suffering of another; to show special kindness to those who suffer. Compassion essentially arises through empathy, and is often characterized through actions, wherein a person acting with compassion will seek to aid those they feel compassionate for. According to the Dalai Lama, "The key to developing compassion in your life is to make it a daily practice. Meditate upon it in the morning (you can do it while checking email), think about it when you interact with others, and reflect on it at night. In this way, it becomes a part of your life." 5. Keeping Perspective - Perspective is not what we see, but the way we see it. Our mind is a "Thoughts Factory". It can produce either positive or negative thoughts and our thoughts control our life. These automatic thoughts can determine how we feel if we don’t take control over them. For example, if the thoughts that run through your head are mostly negative, your outlook on life is likely pessimistic. If your thoughts are mostly positive, you're likely an optimist. But what if your self-talk is mainly negative? That doesn't mean you're doomed to an unhappy life. Negative self-talk just means that your own misperceptions, lack of information and distorted ideas have overpowered your capacity for logic and reason. Instead of giving in to these kinds of negative self-talk, weed out misconceptions and irrational thinking and then challenge them with rational, positive thoughts. When you do this, your self-talk will gradually become realistic and self-affirming and your perspective on life will shift.
About the Author
Hu Dalconzo is a professional life coach who's philosophies are akin to such notables as Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, the secret movie and other great thinkers of the modern age. Visit their site today for more information on how to become a certified life coach.
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