How well am I spiritually?

Dear EQuipped Leaders,

This question makes me uncomfortable. It feels like something I’m not allowed to ask or talk about. It feels very private to me. Which is kind of weird because spirituality is all about feeling connected to something bigger than ourselves.

When I took the wellness assessment, I remember being surprised that emotional wellness and spiritual wellness were two different things. I was also bummed to learn that I sucked at both of them.

If you’ve been on this summer ride of wellness with me, you’ll remember that I made the mistake of putting all my eggs in the occupational wellness basket. That left me pretty empty spiritually.

I recently heard a religious speaker emphasize the importance of having your own life purpose that is not dependent on the people in your life. For example, having some sort of faith or belief as your core purpose and then having your most important relationships as your sub purposes.

This was fascinating for me to hear because I used my role as a teacher as an excuse to not cultivate my own spiritual purpose. Whoops.

I looked at all these precious students in front of me with an endless amount of unmet needs. They needed so much from me all of the time. It was easy to put them at the center instead of cultivating a purpose of my own. So instead of having a healthy balanced life where I developed my own values and focused on my spiritual purpose and then the relationships that are most important and THEN work, I just put work at the center and called it a day. I’m a teacher. Automatic good person. Boom. Done. Easy. No self exploration or vulnerability necessary!

The religious speaker who advocated for cultivating your own spiritual purpose gave the example of a woman who built her entire life on being her husband’s wife and her children’s mother. She didn’t cultivate her own spiritual purpose. She made her husband and kids her purpose. When her husband died and her kids grew up, she didn’t just lose her husband or time with her children, she also lost her life’s purpose. It reminds me of the Jung quote:

“The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents.”

While this woman thought she was doing everyone else a favor by sacrificing her own self and purpose for them, she was actually hurting herself and burdening her children with her unlived life.

I see myself in this story. I did this with teaching. I needed my students to fulfill my life’s purpose which was evident by how I spent my summers. Instead of taking a well-deserved vacation from the fact-paced and taxing school year to recover and invest in other areas of my life, I spent every summer teaching at another program all summer long. While this was an amazing experience, I also recognize that it was a necessity for me, not really a choice. I didn’t know who I was or why I existed when I wasn’t pouring myself out for students. I needed them to give value and meaning to my life, so I had to keep working over the summer.

While there was absolutely nothing wrong with me caring about my students and working hard to help them, I was not centered in a healthy way. I didn’t realize until later that I was working out my own emotional and spiritual needs on my classroom, on my students. I wasn’t being a healthy well-rounded adult, who was showing up to work well fed and ready to contribute. I was showing up at work to get fed, to gain the self worth I craved. I was trying to give to students what I had yet to get myself.

Ironically, the more I invested in my own spiritual and emotional wellbeing, the easier it got for me to serve my students well. Instead of trying to force everything all the time and feeling like I carried the responsibility of the world on my shoulders, I found more ease and flow in my classroom. I was being more and I had more to offer my students and to contribute to my school. Just like we teach in our trainings: “The best intervention for a child is a healthy adult.” The healthier I got, the better I could serve students even though (and because) they were no longer the center of my universe.

Where does this land for you today?

What is your core purpose in life?
What is your teaching WHY and how does it integrate with (not replace) your core life purpose?
Who do you admire spiritually? What is their core purpose? What if you asked them?
How do you get your spiritual needs met?

Next week is the last week to take our wellness inventory and free one hour course.

The most loving thing you can do for the people depending on you is learn to love yourself well. :)

The course and wellness inventory are normally $75.99, but if you use the coupon code Summer22, the cost is waived. Enter the coupon code to the right when you create your account. Here’s mine as an example:

Access Course Here

Better EQuipped Together, Elizabeth elizabeth@appliedeqgroup.com

Elizabeth graduated with a B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Central Arkansas. She taught English for a decade and got to read and write alongside kids in 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. The Applied EQ Group played an important role in her own personal EQ Intervention, and she is grateful to be able to spread the love and EQuip, empower, and encourage others. :)

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