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Is It Nourishing Your Soul?

Is It Nourishing Your Soul?

Last updated on: May 22, 2015 at 12:41 pm by Kristy Robinett

Is It Nourishing Your Soul? 2015-05-22T12:41:29-06:00 Kristy Robinett

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Last month I went through a detox with Renee Heigel’s program – Love Yourself Naked. Unfortunately I ended up having some health issues and couldn’t finish the food part of it, but I was proud of the changes that I made and didn’t beat myself up with what I couldn’t do. I was reminded through the program that detox wasn’t just food, but if you were going to detox, it involved everything in one’s daily life – detoxing yourself from people who don’t bring you happiness and detoxing yourself from stuff that doesn’t bring you happiness. It challenged me to look at the foods that I was eating and if it was making my body happy and in return to stop eating the foods that made me feel blah. We so often self-sabotage ourselves and then beat ourselves up for that.

“Why did I eat that donut? I know that it makes me sick and then I feel horrible!”

“Why do I continue a relationship with such and such when what he/she says and does isn’t aligned with my own ethics and my own journey?”

Through the 18 day process I began to ask myself “Is this making me happy?” with everything I did. I made conscious choices with what I put in my body, what clothes I put on, etc. and I made conscious choices with what events I agreed to do. I slowly began to unfriend people on Facebook that wasn’t aligned to my purpose and instead of perusing Facebook in my downtime, I would clean out my email box, especially paying attention to delete the hate emails or those critical emails as it wasn’t leaving room for happy and positive emails. And over the last month Chuck and I have been purging the garage and our home.I can’t tell you that it was easy. It wasn’t. And today I sat on the floor of my bedroom and wept. Renee shared with the group a book by Marie Kondo called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. Some of the information seemed silly to me (I admit that I didn’t do the whole talking to my clothes and telling my house that I was home), and a lot of it was common sense:

Get rid of all the extra stuff in your house. Now go back and REALLY get rid of all the junk you don’t need. It will feel great.
Put stuff back where it goes when you are done using it. (Something my mom taught me from the beginning of time).
Treat your clothing and items respectfully. Fold clothes neatly and put them in your drawer in an orderly fashion. You will be able to do this because you won’t have a bunch of extra stuff jamming up your drawers.

With clothes in particular, the book suggests taking every piece of clothing and piling it up and then looking every single piece of your clothing and asking if it brings you joy. And so as I lay out all of my clothes, pajamas, bras, underwear and even socks, then I came to a pair of pajamas. It’s a tradition for my mom and dad to gift us pajamas on Christmas Eve (something that has continued). They were the last pair of my pajamas my mom gifted me. She gifted me, my sister and my sister-in-law the same kind and none of us were in love with them and my sister-in-law wanted to return them but didn’t want to upset my mom so she asked me if I could get the receipt. By this time my mom was back in the hospital and we knew she was dying, and of all the things she was upset with was that I wanted to return the pajamas (although I didn’t, my sister in law did).

“Kristy, I don’t know where the receipt is. You don’t like them?” she asked me, pitifully.

I don’t remember how I responded, but I know that my mom was hurt and upset with me. I can’t even remember if it came out that it wasn’t me that wanted to return them, but my sister-in-law, yet I remember my mom’s sadness every time I look at those pajamas and would feel hurt and upset. And so I sat with the pajamas, now 10 years old, in my lap while I cried.

“What’s wrong?” Chuck, my husband, asked me, as I sobbed into the blue and white striped pajama bottoms.

I reminded of him of the story.

“You should keep them. They are the last pair your mom gave you,” he gently suggested.

“But they don’t make me happy. They don’t bring me joy. They make me upset and they make me mad,” I sniffled.

And then I took the pajamas and stuffed them into the garbage bag labeled DONATE.

I would love to tell you that I felt wonderful after, but I didn’t. I felt a sense of a mourning, but not enough to pull them back out. Don’t we do this with so much in our life? Don’t we hold on to what isn’t healthy for us and then go back to it over and over and wonder why we are upset? I know that the mourning will fade. It’s just pajamas, after all, right?

My point is that although the thorn has been in your foot for so long that you’ve gotten used to it; it doesn’t mean that it’s healthy. You deserve to have a nourished and fulfilled soul. So…what makes you happy? Now write down what you are doing every single day. And compare. It is then that you find the right way to nourish your soul.

Believe,

Kristy
www.kristyrobinett.com

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