Habits of Healing
Many of my clients ask their spirit guides for help to overcome negative habits in their life. Most often they are concerned about their eating habits and addictions to junk food or their relationship with caffeine, nicotine, or other substances. Spirit guides have a different perspective when it comes to our reality, and they often point out that there are other more toxic habits that need to be addressed before we concern ourselves with perfectionism when it comes to our diet and perceived vices. Many of us use food or substances as a coping mechanism to manage our stress and anxiety, and while that might not be the healthiest approach, it isn’t always as detrimental as we have been conditioned to believe. Especially in the U.S., diet culture and the fitness industry have convinced us that consuming any amount of sugar or caffeine is egregious. Additionally, our society often praises self-criticism and punishment to encourage us to beat ourselves into submission. These two forces together are dastardly combination that guide us into ruin by distracting us from what’s truly important.
Our spirit guides are trying to gently point us back in the direction of our path and our highest priority spiritually at any given time. Your guides would invite you to see yourself from their point of view, and to put your vices in perspective considering where you are in your journey. A candy bar might not be the best solution to coping with your stress, especially if you’re eating one every hour of the day to keep yourself going, but the occasional sweet treat is not going to hinder your ability to function and grow as a person. We are often encouraged to become more disciplined in all areas of life, and sometimes that concept is conflated into rigidity in our minds. You’re not a prisoner of your routines, and you have the ability to adapt and change continuously until you find the rhythm that works best for you. Allowing yourself to grow as a person and change slowly over time gives you the opportunity to work on modifying your habits incrementally as well.
In a perfect world, you might like to put down those candy bars for good, and that is absolutely an achievable goal. However, it might not be achievable to kick junk food while you’re in the midst of a huge personal transformation or when you’re feeling a high level of stress. Spirit guides often suggest that people work on the mental and emotional habits before working on the physical habits because doing the inner work relieves some of that stress naturally. Think about how your life would feel if you eliminated negative self-talk, people pleasing, perfectionism, self-doubt, self-criticism, and self-punishment. That new version of you would be reaching for the candy bar much less often as a result of lower anxiety and stress levels in your daily life. These are the habits that our guides want us to focus on first because they are the root cause of many of our difficulties in life.
Perfectionism is one of our greatest distractions because it takes so much of our time and energy that could be invested in other things. If we’re consumed by our desire to have a perfect diet so we can be considered healthy, we might not have the energy to address the deeper issues that desperately need our attention. If we do the inner work to heal our emotions and self-image, we will automatically take better care of ourselves over time. This includes how we nurture our physical vessel through diet and exercise. Once you transform your self-criticism into self-love, you naturally make dietary changes from a place of true desire to improve your life rather than coming from a place of desperation to be good enough. Your habits are an indicator, and they’re showing you what parts of yourself need more love and support. These habits aren’t a reflection of your lack of discipline, and being strict with yourself is not the goal of this journey. This authoritarian line of thinking robs you of your power and turns you into your own jailer. You’re not here to paint within the lines or keep yourself in line.
You’re here to defy this false structure that tells you what you must do. Once you break free of that mold, you become who you truly are without these societal restrictions. Stop looking for ways to judge yourself and start looking for ways to help yourself. Give yourself the support you need to thrive, and you’ll be able to take steps in that direction every day. There are no quick fixes on this path. Cutting out sugar is not going to solve your life, but if you find the true and deep solutions to your problems, you might not need the sugar to keep going every day. If you find that you’re stuck when trying to eliminate something from your life, figure out what trigger has you reaching for that thing. Resolve the root cause of that emotional trigger, and you might find that your cravings go away naturally without the need to repeat this cycle of reaching for the vice and slapping your own wrist. Once you decide to stop punishing yourself, you can begin to truly support yourself instead, and that’s where the magic happens.