Care For Your Soul

Did you know that your soul needs ongoing care? Do you know what YOUR soul needs? 

In today’s episode, I am sharing an excerpt from my weekly group coaching program. My summer series, “Fill Your Soul with Sunshine” is focused on taking the time to care for our souls and find practices that align our mental, physical, emotional energy. 

Take a listen as I unpack the power of ongoing soul care, intentional rest, and small action steps so you can Live a Vibrant Life all summer long (and avoid reaching the end of summer feeling depleted). 

Some big questions to consider from this session:

• How does the summer season change your rhythms and energy?
• What actually refuels your soul—and are you making space for those things?
• Are your habits, rhythms, and traditions draining you or energizing you?
• When did you last give yourself permission to rest, play, or say no to something that doesn’t serve you?
• What family patterns and thoughts from childhood around rest, work, and play are you carrying forward? Do you want to keep them?  

Links 

• Join Kelly's Group Coaching Program

Let's connect.

I am cheering for you!

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:09

Welcome to the Live A Vibrant Life podcast. I'm life coach Kelly Titz, and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self-awareness and invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self-awareness changes everything. Let's get started. Welcome to Fill Your Soul with Sunshine. We are going to spend the next few weeks of summer taking the time we need to notice how we're doing, make decisions, and create the small action steps that move us in the direction that we want to go in. I'm giving you the phrase, fill your soul with sunshine. Your work is to come up with your phrase. How would you describe your aligned soul? So the first few sessions, we're gong to talk about your soul and how it actually needs care. So we have mental, physical, emotional, spiritual energy. How are you refueling your own soul? Next we're gong to talk a little bit about where you're going to allocate your energy, and then we'll talk about both rest and work and rest and play. And then finally, we'll end this series with a very practical toolbox so that you know how to fill your own soul on repeat. So we have a few questions to think through, and then we're gong to do a little activity together. So the first thing you want to notice is what's different for you when you are in the season of summer than when you were in other seasons? So my early career was as a teacher, and summer just meant I had a different job and then I'd go back to teaching in the fall. Then my children were little and we were very busy. They were always at some kind of camp. Now that my children are older, I'm really enjoying the longer days. My husband and I feel like it's almost an extra block of time at the end of the day. What are you noticing that's different for you about summer than any other season? Fall, holiday, winter. The next question we're asking is what do you notice when you think about your soul? I've realized that what my unique special gift as a coach is, is I can help people grow in self-awareness and create a self-aware spirituality. Why do you think and feel and do life the way you do, the action steps that you take on repeat? Are they fueling you and helping you live with aligned energy, or are you accidentally on repeat doing actions that are draining you? To the point that you're feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, depleted. So what do you think about your soul being filled with sunshine? The fact that what is inside of you is what is rippling out into the world. Do you think it's worth your time and energy to refuel? Do you think you're worth 30 minutes? That was one of my power thoughts that transform my life. I'm worth 30 minutes. So what do you think about refueling and filling your own soul with sunshine? If you think it's important, do you know what fills your soul? Could you write down three to five things right now that you know if you took the time, set the time apart, went and did this action, you could fill your own soul with sunshine. Maybe it's reading, maybe it's going for a walk. Maybe it's having a friend over. I love that for my children, it is putting on some good music and cooking a meal. I wish that was true for me, but it's not. So it's good for me to know that. What fills your soul? Can you write some things down? And then how would you like to care for your soul? Maybe you're noticing, I would like to give myself 30 minutes a week of something really intentional and I'm not currently doing it, or. I would like to do this thing at least twice a month, and I am doing it. How do you care for your soul or how would you like to care for your soul? For a long time, my only understanding caring for my soul was going to church, and it was a really good way to fill my soul with sunshine. I would hear a message and I would sing, and I love to sing, and I would see people and I love talking to people. When I was in my younger years as a mom, I took a job at a church, and because of that, the practice that served me was no longer available to me. Everybody else that was an adult was upstairs worshiping, and I was downstairs with the children no longer singing, listening to the message, connecting with people. And so that meant I had to find a whole new way to care for my soul, and I wish I had had this tool back then. That would've been so helpful. So, how do you care for your soul, or how would you like to care for your soul? One of my favorite sayings from scripture is from Matthew chapter 11, verse 28. It says, come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. So if you're feeling weary, overwhelmed, tired, exhausted, depleted, is there a way for your soul to connect with Christ and receive the rest? Mental rest, emotional rest, physical, spiritual? Are there any actions that we can take? So those are your first few questions and now we're gong to think about why we think, feel, and do life the way we do. What were the words that were spoken over us? What were the actions that we saw the people around us taking? So when you were growing up, what did Soul Care look like? I am so thankful. I first heard about Pete Scalero's Emotionally Healthy Spirituality in 2003. My youngest daughter was three when I began to do this work of setting apart. Time each week. It eventually grew to a whole day where it was just about doing whatever would refuel me. It was rest. Some days I would nap a couple times'cause I was so tired. I would say no to things that I didn't want to do because that was not the day for them. And my children saw that example and I'm so thankful for that. They saw me sit down and read in the middle of the day. They saw me put off tasks to a different day because this was my day of rest. But that was not something I learned growing up. I learned that much later in life. What did you think about rest as you were growing up? I can just remember my mom and she was so past capacity. I feel bad for her, but she would come in every Saturday morning and want all of us up by 8:00 AM to clean the house like she was not somebody who knew how to rest. Work felt more. Wholly more necessary than rest and play. I don't know if it's because I'm the firstborn daughter. I don't have very much Enneagram seven energy in me play. When I was very little, something I enjoyed. I was very creative, but it began to feel like something I shouldn't do. The things that brought me joy and things that were enjoyable were last on my list. So by the time I found a coach, overwhelmed, exhausted, depleted, frustrated, resentful, all of that energy was kind of running in my life. Vacations. I am a heart-centered, other focused type of person. So vacation to me was always about the other. I love that having done this work for about 10 years now. My vacation starts with what would I like to do and I can say my no thank yous to things that I don't want to do. And everyone enjoys me more because I'm not resentful and I'm not judging everybody. I think I'm setting a good example for my children. You don't have to do every single thing together. When I was much younger, I remember loving summer vacation. As I got older. I had a part-time job, summer meant more work. So what are you noticing about soul care? Rest, work, play, vacation, summer. Maybe one of those is rising to the top. So you had some thoughts when you were growing up and you have some thoughts now you might be noticing. I never changed the thought. The thought I had when I was five or six when my mom came into the room at eight o'clock on the Saturday is the thought I kept, you know, good people get up and work. They don't sit around being lazy, I don't think I want to keep that thought. I think I want to keep rest and then joy and then do my purpose-filled work. So what are you noticing about those big ideas and what you want to think on repeat? Now, in order to fill our soul with sunshine, we need to stay in aligned energy, and part of that is knowing what refills our soul. And part of it is noticing what drains us. Can you think of anything right now that's draining you? It could be work for pay, it could be volunteer work, it could be a relationship, it could be something physical, mental, emotional. Is anything coming to mind? This is actually draining me. See if you can notice it. Sometimes by noticing it, you can decide, I'm gong to defer doing that. I don't have the energy for it. You might decide I'm gong to delegate that and let somebody else who does get energy do that, and you might just decide, I'm going to do it and get it over with because it's important and I want the energy that will return instead of my mental energy running around in circles, thinking about it, but not doing anything about it. Have you ever felt like you needed a vacation after your vacation? This big idea is what created this whole program. I have heard so many people say this, that they take their best energy and they save it all year long for this vacation, and either they spend the first half of it exhausted and not really enjoying it. Or they plan too many things for that small amount of time, and then the vacation comes to an end and they feel like, oh, wish I had a vacation after my vacation. Our hope with this whole series of Align your energy is that we can create small practice steps so that we don't wait all year to rest. We do it on repeat, small little action steps that refuel us. And then the final thing we're gong to ask is what are your typical summer traditions, rhythms, and vacations. Sometimes we keep doing things on repeat because we just don't take the time to notice. I love doing this. I like doing that. I don't want to do this anymore. Is there anything coming to mind, either something you want to do more of this summer, something you want to do less of this summer? Is there a decision you want to make? An action to think about is for the rest of the summer, the next two months, what would it look like if you gifted yourself three minutes a day to align your energy?

Speaker 4: 10:26

Thank you for joining the Live A Vibrant Life podcast. I hope our time together encourage you and we'll equip you with the tools you need to move into the vibrant life you desire. I'm here to help you live a brave, creative. Purpose-filled life. And if you'd like to learn more, you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook, Kelly tibbits life coach, or visit my website kelly tibbits.com. I look forward to connecting

Speaker 5: 10:50

again soon.