Daily Practice - Keep it Simple
KISS - Your Daily Practice - Keeping it Straightforwardly Simple
If you want to lead a better, healthier, more holistic life, then it’s
worthwhile checking in each day that you are attending to the
five key areas of you and your life – physical, mental, spiritual,
emotional, and soul.
If you have goals in each area you have something to aim for and therefore
a way of reflecting periodically on progress and success. Daily practice is the
act of improving yourself 1% each day in those five key areas of your life,
though you could refine each further into mini-goals, intentions, and
actions.
The Radical Healer’s KISS approach to daily practice is as simple as a kiss, once you have summoned the courage or spontaneity to kiss,
Keep It Straightforwardly Simple
The five areas
The following are possible considerations in each area; use them as a simple check list to give you ideas, reminders, or highlight those that you are neglecting, not important, or need attention.
Some people, eg Buddhists, do not believe in a soul as in the commonly understood idea of "soul" as an unchanging personal principle that continues in time infinitely. This is the concept of "soul" usually implicit when one begins with the assumptions of a theistic, sacred, holy, heavenly religion. Do not get bogged down in spiritual or religious concepts or definitions. Take the items below as you choose and allow them to intuitively inform you wherever possible.
Put aside all assumptions. Put aside assumptions about Christianity, Buddhism, and then any assumptions about any religion, or spirituality, about the nature of the self, of reality, of existence.
Keep yourself open to new understanding. Whatever beliefs you hold, hold in an open hand and not a tight fist. Just be open to answers and idea and wonderment, and see where it takes you.
If you pray you may simply want to pray as from A Course In Miracles asking the God of your understanding to reveal Its plan to you:-
Ask very specifically:
Beloved, what would You have me do?
Where would You have me go?
What would You have me say, and to whom?
Sometimes I change it slightly to:-
Good morning Beloved – how are you today?
Where shall we go today, What shall we do today, whom would you have us meet and together, how shall we serve?
Working with the five areas
Physical – What will you do today to:-
Keep in shape physically
Maintain your physical health
Doing some form of exercise or movement
Eating wisely and well
Create and maintain good physical health
Balance the many important parts of your life, so that you don't feel pulled in different directions
Work out which situations, people, activities and environments damage or nurture your health; cut out the negative, accentuate the positive
Protect tend, and grow your physical assets – your wealth, your income, your career, your possessions, your properties and goods, your grounds and gardens
Mental – What will you do today to :-
Support and maintain your mental health?
Ensuring thinking is positive and constructive
Ensuring your brain is given tasks, that you think widely and wisely
Exercising your brain
Meditating, paying, reflecting
Realise and honour your abilities, especially mental ones
Grow your ability to manage stress in your life
Ensure you work productively and fruitfully
Make a beneficial contribution to you, your family, your community, the wider world
Spiritual – What will you do today to :-
Honour that you are a spiritual being having a physical existence
Engage in spiritual or loving practices which help you grow as a person in all ways
Accept your spirit as the energy, the spark, lit by the Divine – as you understand a power or force greater than your self
Integrate your spirituality into all aspects of your life so that it is not just for special moments or days
Consciously direct the power or energy that comes from your will for the greater good of all
Forgive
Be grateful
Be compassionate in mind, heart, and deed
Meditate
Pray
If needed, seek spiritual counselling, spiritual direction
Emotional – What will you do today to :-
Honour, protect, and nurture your emotional health?
Honour and express the full range of your emotions (eg sadness, happiness, anger, fear, joy)
Accept responsibility - not blaming your emotional experiences on the actions of others; how YOU feel is about YOUR feelings based on what and how you think about your life’s experiences
Acknowledge that your emotions and feelings arise spontaneously and are acknowledged without judgment or blame
Experience your emotions without holding on to them – emotions are energy, they come, they go. You do not have to sit and ruminate over them for days.
Address any mental health issues you may have?
Talk about them with supportive others
Seek help from a voluntary agency
Seek medical help
Use your emotions and feelings to guide your actions. EG, instead of becoming angry and reacting by lashing out or sulking, you uncover what lies below your anger, the real cause, and deal with it
Be around people you love and who love you
Build your social network with genuine people who love, support and challenge you
Cut out of your life those who are a drain on you?
Bring closer to you those who support and uplift you?
Support the mental health of others
Soul Some people, eg Buddhists, do not believe in a soul as in the commonly understood idea of "soul" as an unchanging personal principle that continues in time infinitely. This is the concept of "soul" usually implicit when one begins with the assumptions of a theistic, sacred, holy, heavenly religion.
What or how will you do or be today to :-
Honour, care for, and nourish your soul - the deepest dimension of your existence
Be the presence of the Divine, God as you understand it, open to the flow of energy in our lives which brings peace of mind and understanding
Allow your soul to integrate all your separate functions into a single, organic, whole being
Allow your soul to govern your search for harmony and integration and connectedness
Live before and as the God of your understanding in a way that the word “self” does not
Live more from the Divine heart and less from the ego
Trust, a quality of the soul – rather than control, remembering that our ego, perceiving itself to be vulnerable and insecure, uses control in an effort to protect
Love – rather than fear, which is at the root of our need to control, fear of the unknown, of not coping, of loss. Or possibly even fear of looking stupid.
Acknowledge that physical, mental, spiritual, emotional and soul health are quintuplets; they might look, sound and act differently, but they are all inextricably linked. EG, most of us understand or feel comfortable with one of them more than the other. How many of us abuse our bodies, hold and act on toxic thoughts, regurgitate negative feelings, or easily reject our spirits and souls yet wonder why we get ill?
Part of maturing and growing holistically is getting to know and appreciate that at any given time one of the quintuplets may be easier to ignore, more difficult or in need of our care than the others, more in need of attention and healing. The idea is to have them balanced, whole and as complete as can be.
NOW - Exercise
Keep a diary
Write down your actions in each of the five areas each day
Be wary of taking on too much
Ask yourself, ask God, “If I had to work on only three areas today, what would they be?”
