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119 Spiritual Self-Care: How to Build a Daily Practice that Grounds and Reconnects You · Stacked Intent: Your Guide to Authentic, Intentional Living

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, my name is Becca Stackhouse Morton, and I am ready for you to tune in each episode to hear ways to become you.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Looking at ways you can be your authentic and intentional self, you'll finish each episode motivated to live life more authentically.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: I learned how to be truly me through relationships, chronic disease, finances, and taking each journey along the way.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Talk about the real aspects of life?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Relationships, finance, nutrition, hardships, exercise are all topics that we will discuss.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Pull up a seat, drive safely down the road, or get into that workout group to be challenged, motivated, and encouraged to be you.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Stacked Intent podcast.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to another episode of Stacked Intent.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Becca and we are talking about another arc in our self-care.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about self-care actually is, we've gone to the physical care, so your sleep, movement, rest, nourishment.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about the emotional self-care, so the processing inside of suppressing, and today we're gonna talk about what often gets skipped, your spiritual self-care.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: But before I lose anyone here, I want to be clear about what I mean with spiritual care.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not necessarily talking about religion unless that's what's meaningful to you.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not specifically talking about a belief system or practice.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: When I'm talking about that spiritual self-care, I'm talking about the practice of connecting to something deeper than your daily life, your values, your sense of purpose, the part of you that exists beneath the role you play, whether that be the mom, the employee, the partner, the daughter, the son, the quiet, essential you.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: For some people, that connection comes through prayer.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: For others, it might be meditation, being in nature, art, or music.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: The form doesn't really matter.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: What matters is that you have it and that you have some way of coming back to yourself when the noise gets too loud.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Stillness and silence.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with the hardest one for most of us.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Stillness.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: We live in a culture that is pathologically afraid of silence.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: We fill in the gaps in every room, every commute, every moment before sleep with content, whether it be a podcast, music, scrolling, TV, we're never just quiet.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I get that because sometimes silence can feel like the most uncomfortable place to sit.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: But when the noise and the st the start, the worry suffer, the feeling of just underneath the business starts to knock at your door.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: the discomfort is not a sign of stillness, is bad for you.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: It is a sign that you need it.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Stillness creates the conditions of self-awareness for clarity, for hearing what you actually think, feel, and underneath all the input.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot know yourself if you never stop long enough to listen.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is where you've got to love being with your own company some.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And our vanishing guide on stacked and resources looks at this one.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now back into it.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: This doesn't have to mean any form of meditation practice, though it can.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: It can be five minutes of sitting with your coffee before you open your phone.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: It can be driving in silence, which personally is sometimes one of my favorite things to do.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: It can be a walk or a run without those earbuds.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: The practice is simple.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's less noise, more you.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Research consistently shows us that even a brief period of silence can reduce your cortisol levels, improve your focus, and increase that self-awareness.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a waste of time.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's some of the most productive time that you're gonna give yourself.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Your values are the things that matter the most to you at the deepest level.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: These are your big rocks.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: They can be things like family, freedom, creativity, growth, connection, service.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: When you are living in alignment with those values, when you choose your time and your energy that actually matches that, then you're gonna feel a deep okayness, a groundedness, a sense of rightness.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: When you are out of line, I don't know about you, but I feel wacky.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: When you're spending your life in your things that don't reflect your values, that you feel it shows up in low-grade distra dissatisfactions that you may not be able to quite name.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: The feeling that comes off even when something feels fine from the outside.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Spiritual self-care includes regularly asking, are my daily choices aligning with what I say I value?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Am I spending my time in ways that reflect my priorities?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when the answer is no, making the adjustment, even the uncomfortable one.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: One exercise that I love for this is to write down your top five values.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Then look at your calendar from last week.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Where did your time actually go?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: The gap between those two things is information for you to look at.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not judgment, it's a compass.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: The third element is hard to define sometimes, but I think it might be the most universal.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: The experience of ah.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Ah is that feeling that you get when you encounter something bigger than yourself.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: A sunset, a mountain, the ocean.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: My husband sent me a rainbow today.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: A piece of music that moves you to tears.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Piece of art that is exactly what you couldn't.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: A night sky.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Research on awe, and yes, there is actually some research on this that shows that experiences of awe reduce your self-focused thinking, increase feeling of connectedness and meaning, and actually make us more generous and more willing to help others.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Awe gets us out of our heads in the spiritual self-care that is exactly what sometimes needs.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Nature, one of my favorite places to be, is one of the most relatable sources of awe for most people.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Something about being in that natural world, whether it's a park, a garden, it returns us to this sense of the scale.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Our problems feel more manageable, our bodies relax, and our minds might even find quiet.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Creativity is another doorway when you're making something, whether it be writing or baking or building or growing or painting, you might enter a state that psychologists call flow.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Time disappears, the inner critic goes quiet, and you're entirely present.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: That can be a spiritual experience.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you call it that or not, find your awe, protect your time, because guess what?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a luxury.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Building a routine, here's what I want you to leave with on this episode, is building a sustainable spiritual practice.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not have to be elaborate, but it needs to be a routine that is simple and consistent, the practice that helps you come back to yourself that might look like five minutes of silence with your coffee in the morning, a weekly walk in nature, one evening a week with no screens, and something creative, a monthly value check-in, a journal you write down when you need to process big things.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: The key is consistency over intensity.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: A five-minute practice you can do every day will do more for your spiritual health than two-hour retreat that you do randomly.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it should feel like coming home, not like another thing to do on your to-do list.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: It shouldn't feel like a chore.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if it does, adjust it.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Before we close this arc, I want you to zoom out for a moment and talk about what these episodes, how they might fit together for you.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Self-care is not a list of separate boxes to check, but it is a whole ecosystem for you to use.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Your physical health affects your emotional, your emotional health affects your ability to be present spiritually.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Your spiritual groundedness affects how you treat your body, and they are connected.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: When you neglect one dome long enough, the other ones are going to feel that effect.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: When you are invested in one intensely, the other benefits.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: The goal isn't perfection across all of these five domes, but the goal is awareness, knowing which area needs more attention and consistency in the small practices that keep each other alive.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: You start with the arc by doing self-care baseline audit.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: That means checking yourself.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Lowest.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's your starting point.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not all five at once, just one.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Build one practice, make one habit, and then layer on the next.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Your action step to walk away with from this one is choose one spiritual practice to protect for it this week.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: It can be simple five minutes in silence in the morning, a walk without your phone, revisiting your value list, spitting what even doing something creative.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is, put it on your calendar, make it an appointment, name it something that is r resonates with you, and notice how you feel afterwards.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: That noticing is that data to help you build a practice that you actually want to keep.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And if you need somebody to keep you accountable, go hit me up on Instagram and send me a message and I'll help you keep it on track.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: I am proud of the work that you're doing just by showing up and listening to this podcast.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because awareness really is one of your first steps.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you love this episode as much as I did, head on over and rate and subscribe so you will never miss an episode.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: New episodes are going to be dropped on Thursdays.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Until then, this is Becca, and don't forget, enrich your life by being intentional.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast was created, produced, and recorded, and edited by Stacked Inten.