Category: Spirituality

Spiritual Bravery: My Focus for 2021

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Only recently have I been the type of person to pick a word or phrase to focus on for the upcoming year (as opposed to more concrete resolutions), but as I’ve thought ahead to what I want my 2021 to look like, my mind kept bringing up the word “faith.” 

What do I mean when I say “faith?” I mean belief in God or a higher being, and trusting that God is actively working in my life, that things in my life are happening for a reason – and enjoying the peace that comes with that conviction.

For the past 5 years or so, I’ve been very mindful that my faith feels like it is lacking. It’s most noticeable when I am around someone who has strong faith – whose faith influences their daily decisions and isn’t just something they talk about in appropriate religious contexts. 

Religion is something that has always been a part of my life – I grew up going to church every Sunday, and in general have always been a rule-follower and someone who is concerned with “doing the right thing” and being a “good person.” But religion and faith are very different.

Like many others who grew up being religious or going to church, there comes a point in your life when you start to wonder why your church/religion does things the way they do, and if you actually believe those are the right things to be doing in the first place. Depending on what conclusions you come to in answering those questions, this can be a pretty scary or even earth-shattering time of life. 

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Election Grief Is Real

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It’s 5:30 am (for me at least) the day after the election. Try as I might, I did end up checking the polls a few times yesterday, despite telling myself I wouldn’t. I didn’t feel like there was a reason to get excited or riled up based on results that weren’t final yet.

I was successful in avoiding Facebook, however, and plan to avoid it for at least the rest of the week. Maybe that week should turn into the next four years…

Recently I saw a post that said something to the effect of: no matter who wins the election, half of America will feel like they lost.

That has really stuck with me. Inevitably half of our country will be feeling sad, defeated, and perhaps angry or outraged. That’s 165 million people who may be grieving the results of the election.

And when I say grieving, I really mean it quite literally. I thought about the term “election grief,” and while I’m not sure if it’s a clinical term, it’s a real thing. A quick search of “election grief” led me to results such as “Grief and Loss After the Election” and “Your Post-Election Pain is Real Grief.” They were articles from 2016 and 2018, but are still obviously relevant to 2020.

Psych Central reported that their page “5 Stages of Grief and Loss” got a 210% increase in traffic the day after the 2016 election.

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My Reading List from 2019

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Despite having a lot of homework last year, I still managed to read a handful of really great books! I am a pretty avid reader (and writer I suppose) and I just don’t feel right if I’m not reading something. Lately I’ve been really interested in personal development books or books with a spiritual focus. I wanted to share some of my favorites from the past year:

  • Dare to Lead – Brené Brown

Everyone should read this book! (Yes, I said it!) I had never read any of Brené Brown’s other books, but this book gives a good summary and builds upon things she has talked about previously. My main takeaways from this book were 1) Making your list and 2) Choosing your Core Values. Your list is a small (1 inch by 1 inch) piece of paper with names of people whose opinion of you matters – the idea is that you should not worry about what everyone thinks about you (you will be crippled with anxiety) but you should also not disregard all opinions of you, for fear of turning into a person you don’t want to be. We all need a core group of people to hold us accountable to being the person we want to be. These people could be mentors, role models, family members – anyone whose advice you value and that knows you well. The “choosing your values” exercise required you to look at a list of about 50 attributes, and choose 2 that you felt embodied you and that you wanted to live into. These values define every choice you make. It is hard to narrow it down – but I ended up choosing Honesty and Making a Difference as my two values. It has empowered me to make hard decisions as I view life through this “lens.” There are so many more good things about the book that I don’t have time to talk about – read it, you won’t regret it. I have a quote from the book written on my white board at work:

“If you choose courage, you will absolutely know failure, disappointment, setback, even heartbreak. That’s why we call is courage. That’s why it’s so rare.” 

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