photo by Erin Peterson

The path to Soulful Living is lit by truth. Understanding that our ability to be our best selves and live our best lives is tethered to our ability to speak, accept, and respond to truth.  

It is as simple as understanding that the way we go to bed dictates the way we wake up. Most of us crave a good night’s rest. I believe it is safe to say that most of our days are filled with deadlines, projects, and little fires everywhere. 

On nights when we have had a particularly rough day, falling asleep can feel like an insurmountable mountain. Our nightly wind down starts with our minds racing and replaying the things that happened or did not happen that day.

We process all that may have worried or challenged us that day. Doing so requires us to bring those thoughts, experiences, and the feelings that accompany them back to the forefront of our minds in a playback sequence. 

After going over the things that may have been distressing about our day, we then do our best to go to bed and have a decent night’s sleep—often in hopes of a better day tomorrow. 

Most of the time, like clockwork, we wake up either exhausted or to the frequent reality that we’ve somehow had a rough night’s sleep after having had a rough day. It is not until we understand that by choosing to replay all the stressors of the day, we invite a night full of those same feelings we experienced during the day, and that is the cause for our rough night. 

To change a behavior, we first must accept in truth the why behind our restless night. Our lack of rest had nothing to do with the things that happened in our day but instead, had everything to do with how we chose to process and replay the feelings associated with our day right before trying to rest. 

Getting to that understanding can take a while because we must first accept and acknowledge that we cannot place the blame for our lack of restful sleep on anything external—not even having had a rough day. The truth is, the culprit responsible for us not getting a good night’s rest is the developed bad habit of replaying our issues in our minds before trying to sleep. 

When we understand a new truth about ourselves, we then have a choice as to how we will respond. When we respond to truth in truth, we can make better and different choices. Soulful Living is the reward for choosing to do differently because we know differently. 

Soulfully Yours,

Kiantha