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You are frustrated with your life. On the surface, everything seems perfect. Perfect husband. Perfect house. Perfect children. Perfect wardrobe. Perfect job. All this perfection all around you yet you are incredibly unhappy. You can’t really put your finger on anything so you buy more clothes, you go on better trips, you get a better car, you enroll your kids in the best private school, or you move into a more powerful position in your career. Still, you feel marginally discontent. You don’t really want to complain. After all, there are starving children in Africa. So you start to pick your life apart. Your spouse isn’t as great in bed, or your coworker works too slowly, or your child has messy hair.

The problem, though, is not out there. You have everything you ever thought you wanted, but you still aren’t happy. How do you fix that? Another Pilates class, another personal development workshop, another spiritual retreat?

I challenge you to save the money. Do something radical. Sit still. Breathe.

Now that you’ve identified everything you don’t want, ask yourself the most important question, What do I really want?

It’s your life.

Have you considered that the high flying career is not perfection to you. It may have been your mother’s dream, or your college roommate’s dream. It may have even have been your dream at 15, but now, at 30, it’s not your perfection anymore. Maybe, what you really want is a life at home with your kids. Or maybe, you’re in the opposite position. You’re at home being the perfect wife and mother and something is still niggling. You jump at every chance you can to write something. Only, you feel stuck writing PTA announcements when you know there’s something more. You might be thinking that you can’t abandon your children. Is it still what you want? Do you think there might be something in between?

Rather than pick your life apart trying to find out what’s wrong, try a new approach. When are you happiest? What were you doing at that time? Is there a way to create a little bit of that in your life today?

The most important question is: What do you want? Going in search of what’s wrong is like pulling on the hanging thread. Before you know it you’ve unraveled your favorite sweater and you are no better off for it. Instead, find the things you love. The things that warm your heart. Build your life around what you want. Give up the search for the pea under the mattress, and find another bed.

In Spirit,
Nneka

I’ve been so overwhelmed with presidential duties at church, writing and publishing serious posts, working my day job, and trying to sell my house that I feel like I’ve forgotten how to have plain old fun.

What? Fun and spirituality together? Why yes! Spirituality doesn’t have to be all pious and pontificating. It is the activity of expressing Spirit. Sometimes that doesn’t involve sitting and meditating. Gasp! Sometimes it’s enjoying some of life’s guilty pleasures.

My number one guilty pleasure is chick lit. Romantic fiction that’s written in the girl is unhappy with life, girl wants boy, girl finds herself, girl gets boy style. I love it!

So, let’s take a break today from some of the more serious forms of spirituality and talk about some of the things that warm your heart, but that you might not think fall under the “personal development” umbrella.

I’ll give you another one: anything Beyonce

What are your guilty pleasures?

In Spirit,
Nneka