Is Your Soul Craving Refreshment?

I sit in the coffee shop, I walk through the park, I show up at a concert, and the people all look the same. I don’t mean our outfits, our hairstyles, or the color of our eyes. I mean America looks tired! The young and the old — exhausted!

We overwork, overthink, overfix, overbuy, overgo. We show up and overdo!

Where does all this comes from, I’m not sure but it’s time to find out. For me, I have over accomplished as long as I can remember. I experienced constant fears as a child attempting to do everything perfectly, then the same efforts showed up as an honor student, taking extra classes, graduating a year early from college, always volunteering at church, participating in events and special programs. Then I took on the responsibilities of taking care of others, playing the peacekeeper in my family and later living a life as both Mom and Dad to a precious child, providing the only income source for our family year after year. Somehow I found myself stuffing in exercise, board meetings and social events. Somehow I thought it was working. It was not! Many of these activities are necessary and bring pleasure and joy, but all of them together yield depletion.

Make it All Good

I want to make it “all good” in a world that is not all good. We can look for reason and meaning to this chaos and justify our behavior, but how does that bring us to the world of deep satisfaction? You gain nothing but a free ticket on the same train of self-destruction, yielding exhaustion, lacking peace and fulfillment in your soul.

We all have reasonable responsibilities in our world that justifies the need to help others — and some of us have a need to fix and fill in the voids. Yet in some cases, there are “holes” created by emotional thieves that may be no responsibility of our own, yet we as “fixers” have this unmanageable desire to over offer our efforts. We plant beautiful flowers to disguise the disruption, the neglect, the ugliness, and the invasion of the chaos. We find ourselves anxious and exhausted filing the voids that rob us of the intended peace and security we deserve.

We can’t always control the situations that come into our lives, either the joyful ones or those attached to immeasurable heartache, but we can adjust how we react to them or eventually, with broken hearts, have willingness towards recovery.

We are determined to be involved with uncomfortable schedules because that is how it has been for years; we work more than the project requires, and we work more because it is a culture of expectations. I am certainly not suggesting laziness or lack of efficiency. It is easier said than done, but stop! Slow down.

Refresh your mind and determine what would give you peace. You may have no idea — you may have never thought about it before because you have just accepted it as it is. You’re too busy to think!

Skip the Blame Game

And don’t play the blame game, “Oh, if I had a different spouse”, “…if my children would only”, “…but the mortgage”, or “I could never change jobs.” If you like it as it is, keep it as it is, if you don’t, it is time to make some changes. You alone cannot fix dysfunctional marriages or change the way your corporation works. Set that aside a bit as we all work towards finding fulfillment. You can’t control others, but you can make changes in your own life.

Where will you find rest, peace, and fulfillment of your soul? Here is the secret! Stop “doing”! Start feeling! Be available to be truly engaged and connected.

Find Peace & Fulfillment

Take a still moment and write down where you find peace and fulfillment of your soul. For me, where I find peace and fulfillment of soul is in making time to:

Pray.
Read to be inspired.
Time with those that encourage and fulfill me.
Eat well.
Exercise.
Enjoy nature.
Create.

Each person’s list is different, but until you stop and clear your schedule from the busyness, clean your heart, and make room in your soul for refreshment and something new, nothing will change.

In this series of posts, we will go through the process to finding refreshment. The desire is to find peace on this journey of busyness and life’s overwhelming demands.

Upcoming posts will highlight how your true priorities should be reflected in your schedule. What really matters if you don’t have the energy to enjoy? Have you convinced yourself you are needed? What do we do to feel loved? What is causing you to be less attached to your fulfillment, your soul, your ability to love and be loved?

Fulfill Your Purpose

As we travel through this series, the goal is to grant you the freedom to undergo a metamorphosis as you fulfill your purpose that fully fills your soul with joy and completeness. The first step is to slow down in your mind and heart so you can think and feel.

Metamorphosis: to become a butterfly, a caterpillar first digests itself. But certain groups of cells survive, turning the soup into eyes, wings, antenna, and other adult structures.