This article is for people like me who get caught up in the excitement of spiritual and personal development. One week, we are obsessing over podcasts and committing to a new ritual that we learned from someone online. Next week, we start journaling, and it will also become part of our routine. And before we know it, our life feels like a growing list of tools, rituals, and practices we are supposed to do daily! So what started as excitement slowly turns into overwhelm.
I want to talk about how to navigate both the excitement and the overwhelm, and how to manage yourself through this journey.
#1 – Separate Goals from Hobbies
There is a difference between goals and passions or hobbies. A goal is something you commit to seeing through, even on hard days. This is because a goal comes with delayed gratification, whereas a hobby or passion is the gratification itself!
So, for example, if your goal is to learn one new thing about neuroscience every day to improve your mental health over the next 6 months, this goal has priority over how you feel on any given day. However, if learning about neuroscience is exciting, then you may be pursuing the excitement and novelty of this new subject, or if the feeling you get when you learn something cool. Do you see the difference?
Many spiritual tools fall into the second category. Every time you listen to a new podcast or read a new book, you might learn a tool or practice (random example, so as not to offend any actual rituals, like hold you breath for 5 seconds before drinking water). These things can be interesting and exciting, but they do not always have to become lifelong commitments. Not everything you try needs to be carried forward for the next twenty years.
Bottom line: allow yourself to enjoy your hobbies and passions, without trying to treat everything as a goal.
#2 – Intention First, Tools Come Second
One helpful framework to ground yourself when you’re feeling too scattered in trying to keep up with all the different tools is to become more intentional about your life.
Here’s one of my favourite tools to help clients with this. We categorize your life into 5-7 main broad pillars. Examples:
- Relationships.
- Career.
- Financial well-being.
- Physical health.
- Mental & emotional health.
- Spiritual development.
From there, we define the main intention per category. Maybe it is excelling in your career. And creating more authentic relationships in personal life. These are intentions. I don’t call these goals just yet because we don’t want to try to do all the things, all at once! That’s also setting ourselves up for failure.
Next, you write down 1-2 goals per pillar that would help you feel like you’ve made this intention a reality. For example, excelling in a career would look like… a promotion or at least a raise in pay. More authenticity in relationships would look like… being able to set boundaries without guilt or at least be able to voice them without letting resentment build.
Now, you think of 1-2 actionable steps per goal to help you make it a reality.
NOW comes the fun part – you try to overlap the actionable items. For instance, going for a run with a friend helps you strengthen your health and relationship. Of course, this may not always be possible, in which case you become more strategic about which goals to prioritize now, and what you can focus on in maybe 3-6 months. Versus adding 6 different meditations and rituals to improve your spiritual health, and then feeling like you don’t have time left to study for your career or spend time with your loved ones.
Bottom line: defining the goal and committing to the action will help you achieve it faster than jumping from one tool to the next.
#3 – Tools Are Meant to Serve Goals
We talked about passion versus goal. And now, let’s address this: the tool is not the goal, the goal is the goal.
If you decide to read two books about relationships in the next thirty days, the book is the tool. Finishing the book matters, but it is not the goal. The goal is to improve your relationships. So if you don’t finish the book but end up having a few useful tools that actually help your relationships, it’s a win! There’s no point shaming yourself for not reading the book from cover to cover.
When you feel excited about adding a new tool, it helps to pause and ask why. Is this tool helping me move toward a specific goal? Or am I chasing the adrenaline rush of something new (like we touched on in the first paragraph)?
Bottom line: If the tool aligns with your goal, use it. If it is simply something you are curious about, try it once or try it for a week. Let it be light. And then do not shame yourself if you don’t continue.
#4 – Resistance Is Feedback, Not Failure
Another important piece is noticing what happens after you start.
Sometimes you feel a clear benefit, and that naturally keeps you going. Sometimes the benefit fades. Or even if it feels beneficial, sometimes, the unconscious mind gets in the way. Let me elaborate with a personal example.
When I first started meditating, I felt incredible. Later, meditation began to feel eerie and unsettling. I wrote an entire article about that experience here, as a sidenote, if you’re struggling with this too. For a long time, those reactions pulled me away from the practice. In moments like this, resistance is not failure. It is information.
If the excitement around meditation fades, but you still sit down because it feels natural and supportive, that is feedback that your system has integrated the practice. If there is resistance, it is worth naming it and trying to learn from it. You do not have to analyze it immediately. You also do not have to force yourself through it.
Another example, you might notice that meditation feels isolating, boring, or overly serious. You might realize that what your system actually wants is rest, ease, or even watching TV because it feels simple and regulating. None of this is wrong. It is all feedback.
Bottom line: Our behaviour is feedback. Our emotions are feedback. Let’s use our response to situations as a means to unlock our deeper needs, versus thinking there’s something wrong with us for not seeing this through.
#5 – There IS such a thing as too much self-help
Growth and progress are not linear. And ironically, quantity rarely equals success. For example, you will probably make more progress reading 1 book and applying its tools versus a year of trying to flip through 52 books! (points to self)
Sometimes people become so focused on self-development that they become disconnected from living. Healing work feels like running on a hamster wheel.
So, I often say this: if you are tired of being spiritual, go be more human.
Give yourself fewer tools and less homework. Whatever you do, make sure it really serves you at this stage of your journey. And most importantly, give yourself a break from all the tracking, monitoring, and self-criticism in the name of self-improvement.
The soul is expansive. It does not thrive when boxed into rigid routines and constant self-improvement. Most people benefit from some form of structure, but that structure has to keep evolving with us. It cannot be set in stone till the end of time.
Bottom line: The work is finding a rhythm that supports growth without making you feel trapped.
Concluding Thoughts
What would change if you could take the pressure off yourself from learning new information or practicing certain tools? I’d love to hear in the comments below, and also if there’s anything from this article that spoke to you 🙂
Vasundhra is the Founder & Writer of My Spiritual Shenanigans. After seeing 11:11 on the clock one fateful night, her life turned around. Ever since, she has been blending modern psychology and ancient spirituality, to help herself and people around the world elevate the quality of their lives.
Ready to take your healing deeper? Sign up for her self-paced classes bundle and/or for personalized 1:1 coaching.
Leave a Reply