self-esteem
The Spiritual Practice Of Flower Power
Every now and again, I purchase a bouquet of flowers as a gift to myself. Placing a vase of flowers on your home altar or sacred space adds nature-inspired ambiance, brightness, and sensuality to one’s spiritual self-care.
I also love to diffuse the essential oils of flowers, especially when I meditate, but they don’t have the tangibility and energetic beauty of a stunning array of fresh blooms. Analogous to eating whole food versus taking a supplement, fresh flowers represent the wholeness, divine design, and awe-inspiring beauty of Gaia, Mother Nature, our Earth Mother, the Divine Feminine.
Unadulterated, the ‘flower power’ of a beautiful bouquet commands marvelous healing energies, blesses the giver, and inspires bountiful gratitude in the recipient.
The most powerful spiritual practice involving flowers is to plant your own flower garden with perennial varieties, such as tulips, black-eyed susans, and chrysanthemums. With careful planning around the seasonal calendar one can also have different species in bloom at different times throughout the entire year.
Cultivating a thriving garden of flowers is a magnificent form of energy work. It attracts and manifests emotional healing, abundance, and the fulfillment of wishes, especially in aspects of romance, marriage, fertility, and parenthood. By lovingly nurturing and caring for the delicate beauty of living flowers, we invite much love, beauty and abundance into our lives.
You Don’t Have To Be Perfect
Whenever we are focused on a task at hand, whether it is career, business or personal, we tend to focus on our mistakes and worry about what we may be doing wrong. Will it meet expectations? Are we good enough? The loud voice of perfectionism in our ego mind is often saying, “You did not do it right, you did not do enough…you are not enough.”
But constantly striving for perfection and beating ourselves up when we cannot meet those impossible expectations, sabotages the very thing we are trying to achieve. It impacts every part of our lives and also affects people around us, including our friends, coworkers, family and life partners.
Setting unrealistic standards for ourselves and others leaves us constantly feeling disappointed in ourselves and let down by others, over and over again. The perfectionism we are striving for becomes front and center in our in relationships, our careers, our health and our overall well-being. The result is anxiety, low self-esteem, fear of failure, depression, and broken relationships.
Failed perfectionism leads us to constantly measuring our worth against others, and vulnerable to the opinions, criticisms, and judgments of others. Perfectionists are very concerned about what others will think or say.
Striving for perfection is also about a need for control, so that our lives and those we care about will work out perfectly as we had planned. But contrary to popular belief, perfectionism does not lead to lasting success and fulfillment.
The Truth About Ego And Spirit
Having a strong ego may be just as important as having a strong spirit. However, it can become a problem when we are confused or conflicted between the two, and do not realize that one is tied to the other.
Ego is all about our sense of self. It is about our self-worth, self-belief and how we feel we compare to others. Having a healthy sense of self-esteem is vital for our happiness and well-being.
For example, if someone chooses to stay in a toxic relationship due to their low self or sense of self is essential for our mental and emotional well-being. We must not confuse having a healthy ego with an over-inflated one.
People who have healthy egos do not think in terms of bold versus meek, or overbearing versus subdued. It is not about dominance or submission for them. They only view themselves as being worthy and competent, and strive to improve their life and become the best possible version of themselves. Self-love is not self-righteousness. People with a strong ego can confidently navigate whatever life throws their way without losing their sense of self.
However, those with an over-inflated, toxic ego tend to be arrogant, self-important and more concerned with how others are doing instead of their own achievements. They tend to believe they are so much more worthy and successful than everyone else, and constantly judge others for their mistakes and failures. Big egos are not very ‘healthy’ at all!
Also, when we strive for bigger or better things for ourselves, it is not only a case of satisfying our ego. Spirit operates with a similar agenda. Our soul or spirit is in fact strongly connected to our sense of self. This is why we traditionally say someone is in ‘low spirits,’ meaning they are feeling sad or depressed. But when someone is in ‘good spirits,’ they may have had happy news or some good fortune.
Being Your Strongest, Most Authentic Self
Many people tend to think that being vulnerable and open is a bad thing, because it makes them vulnerable to getting hurt in life and especially in relationships.
When someone disappoints or hurts us, whether deliberately or inadvertently, it is usually because they have deep wounds of their own that stems from their past, especially for their childhood. These unresolved traumas are often dormant and unconscious.
One might feel this is still no excuse to treat others poorly, or that they should know better. However, because these people typically have not done much inner work or self-healing to really know how to be in loving, happy, and functional relationships. I’m not condoning their bad behavior, but if they actually do not know any better, then how can one expect it from them?
I find people who are stuck in such patterns of hurting others are usually very much defensive and in denial. If you gently suggest what you may need from them, or bring up an aspect that the two of you could work on together to improve the relationship, they tend to instantly throw what you say back in your face and make it all about you. Suddenly, all of it is your fault.
This defensive behavior is a clear signal that this person has a lot of hurt, and is either fearful or unable to work through it. Therefore, if you bring up something that triggers their pain, they immediately see it as a threat. They feel attacked, or that they are being made a scapegoat.
Take Some Time To Envision A Better Life
The most valuable thing we can do for ourselves is to envision a better life and future for ourselves. We are the creators of our own reality and the masters of our own destiny. If your life is not the way you wish it to be, then you can begin to change it for the better starting today.
The best way to begin is to take honest inventory of your life – focusing on those things that are within your control – to determine what achievements and successes you are proud of. At the same time, also take careful look at what you might want to do differently or accomplish going forward.
If you are unhappy with your life as it currently is, know that your circumstances do not need to remain the same for the rest of your life
If we look at our current lifestyle, prosperity and well-being and do not like what we see, it is usually a sign that our level of self-worth or our sense of feeling deserving has been very low and that we have most likely succumbed to negative thinking and beliefs in recent times.
To transform our lives for the better, we must then change our thinking and visualization habits, in order to start attracting the superior conditions and improved quality of life that we would prefer to have in our lives.
It’s perfectly okay to dream of greater glories, whether that means more money, a new home, a loving partner, or something all-encompassing such as delightful happiness, superior health, and true abundance.
Mistakes Are Necessary For Spiritual Growth
Have you ever felt like you made a wrong choice or bad decision that caused everything to fall apart or steered your life went in the wrong direction. Maybe you knew it was the wrong choice, but you did it anyway? Well, every mistake is an opportunity for growth. There are no mistakes in life, only lessons. Without mistakes, there is very little personal and spiritual growth.
Let’s say you choose to date a guy with a bad reputation. Then, as your gut feeling had warned and your psychic advisor had predicted, he cheats on you, and ultimately dumps you for someone else. Your inner guidance told you it was not a good idea; spirit advised against it. Yet, still you chose to find out the truth the hard way, by experiencing it for yourself.
But then you still do not learn the lesson. You go and do it again. You take him back and trust that he has changed as he has promised. Then he does the same all over again. Do you continue to stay and have him hurt you and take advantage of you? If you do, you still have not learned the lesson.
So, what is the lesson here? Well, the first thing you would have to recognize is that the lesson is not about him. It is about you. It is about establishing your self-worth and building your self-esteem. It is about accepting the fact that you, like anyone else, deserve to be loved and to be happy. And it is about learning to trust your inner guidance and pay attention when spirit guides you.
I have worked with many clients over the years who find all kinds of excuses and justifications for staying in a bad relationship, a toxic workplace, or a dysfunctional family environment.
Only You Can Heal A Recurring Emotional Injury
We are all negatively impacted at times by certain events or people causing us emotional hurt and trauma.
If this is something that is currently weighing on your mind and you feel emotionally injured or overwhelmed today, then the following strategies may help you to overcome the recent setback you suffered.
Not only can these three steps help you to better deal with your current emotional injury, but it can also bring about lasting positive change in your life.
Step 1: Feeling Through
It is vital to process negative emotions. You should never try to suppress or repress unpleasant feelings. It is important that you allow yourself to fully feel your current emotion. Don’t think or rationalize, just feel.
Let the tears of sadness flow, lean into the fear or anxious feelings, or embrace the anger and disappointed. To process and ultimately resolve these feelings, we must first truly feel them.
However, do not spend too much time in this stage of the process. Truly feeling your negative emotions does not mean you must obsess over it or constantly dwell on it. A few hours, or at most a day or two, then let it go! Do not let it drag on for weeks or months, because this will not heal you and will only have a counterproductive effect. After the one-time ‘feeling through’, it is time to move on to the next stage.