What do you do to sustain your inner, spiritual life to avoid burnout from stress?
Our everyday life creates numerous challenges to overcome and become stronger. However, very often, it becomes very difficult to cope with problems, anxiety, and stress in a short period. To improve the situation, the ideas about spiritual life, the possibility of “having a relationship with God…” that is “down deep in us, at the heart of things” (Vonderen, Ryan D, & Ryan J, 2008) become rather helpful. To sustain my inner spiritual life and avoid burnout from stress, I use my possibility to communicate with God any time I need. I know that He is not able to answer all my questions at once, but still, his hints fruiting the whole day impress me and encourage taking one more step. Sometimes, I turn on a CD with spiritual music or teachings about God that make me forget about the current affairs and all those problems around.
What spiritual exercises or rituals do you regularly include in your daily schedule?
My daily schedule is not rich enough because I am always so pressed for time. However, I never forget to thank God for one more chance to enjoy this life and spend one more day healthy. One more thing that makes my day complete is a smile. I never stop smiling at people around. All I want to do is to be kind to people and believe that these people will be also kind to me. Though our world is not perfect, spiritual hope is one more chance to improve something in our life. On weekends, I prefer to visit a church and think about my actions, thoughts, and relations with people. I get a good chance to evaluate all my life and discover how to improve it. Truth and forgiveness are somewhere high above, and a church helps mortals achieve these peaks from time to time.
What other resources or traditions have been helpful to you? Do the strategies offered by Patricia Brown and Roberta Fish on the video seem helpful?
There are many traditions, which become helpful to improve my spiritual life, and one of such traditions is reading. I find it rather effective to learn something new about spirituality from books. Reading a holy book needs to be the usual tradition of any person. The ideas of Patricia Brown and Roberta Fish seem rather helpful as well. The ideas of these people show that our life is full of innovations and challenges, which aim to check people’s attitudes to different things. If there is a chance to arrange a meeting and gather people to discuss the ideas of spiritual life and people’s place in this world, this chance should be used. I also believe that everyone should treat people around just the same way he/she wants to be treated. Everything has its habit to be back, this is why we should realize that our actions and words have many sides both positive and negative.
What spiritual disciplines would you like to try? What would you avoid?
Spiritual disciplines aim to help people to connect to God and develop this intimacy day by day. However, any discipline cannot start this relationship because people have no rights. Only God can take this step. These disciplines are powerful tools to achieve spirituality on the necessary level. I would like to take almost all disciplines and get a chance to be closer to God and his teachings: celebration (to evaluate my position), fasting (to learn personal inadequacies), meditation (to listen to God’s hints), prayer (to feel God’s heartbeat), etc. However, I try to avoid such discipline like sacrificing, because I have no right to take someone’s life even if God asks me to do this. All people are equal before God, and it is necessary, God does everything by himself.
Reference List
Vonderen, J.V., Ryan, D., & Ryan, J. (2008). Soul Repair: Rebuilding Your Spiritual Life. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press.