Be your own teacher and student!

I have heard about alignment and read a lot about how people feel once achieved but I never truly understood until recently what this means, feels like or even how to obtain it.

I want to take a second and explain how I figured this out and simplify what it means to be in alignment for me. My hope is to help you, the one reading this, to move towards this with more understanding and or recognize when you are or when you are not in alignment.

When I am speaking about alignment I simple mean balance with your mind body and spirit. This ultimately feels like peace, and knowing that you are on the right path.

Until I started noticing myself and all that makes me who I am which is my mind/thoughts, my body/physical/outward looks/internal and spirit/soul/inner being, I could not understand how to become aligned. You must first start being your own student and teacher of your world and journey!

I was starting to notice when my thoughts (mind) were about eating a plant-based diet (body) and moving my body daily, I was also feeling deep peace and knowing that I was on MY path (soul). This got me curious. This came into my awareness when I quit smoking (again) over a month ago and my husband and children did not even know and were saying things like “no offense mom, but normally I can tell that you are TRYING (this is resistance) to quit” by this she means that I am extremely difficult to live with, lol! It got me thinking about what is different this time…. I realized that almost 2 years ago this same situation played out, and at that time I was fasting for 21 days and heavy into my bible study and spirituality as well. That was when it hit me…. this is alignment!

On the flip side: It was also just brought to my awareness when I became unbalanced when I was too heavy into spirituality. I did not want to be any where but in my Zen room. I only wanted to be alone with spirit and my inner being. Once I realized this, I started making it a point to be active in my physical world as well and with the other humans that I love.

Ok, I seriously thought this blog would just flow out of me as I have been excited to write it for over a week now, but I am now seeing why it is difficult to put these things into words.

I’ll keep trying though…

I’ve been too heavy physically and then too heavy mentally and I just recently discovered being too heavy spiritually.

When I really started to dive deeper with my spiritual practices and develop my gifts and discover my purpose is when I decided to eat only plant-based food. This came along naturally and not forced. I have been learning about nutrition and my bodies needs for over a year in school now. I have been leaning more towards eating plant-based for the same amount of time. On top of that this “diet” speaks to my mind/body/spirit. What I mean is, analytically this makes since to me for environmental reasons and much more (which you can read in previous blog post). My body is happy when eating this way as it is getting all the nutrients and superfoods that it needs to feel its best and not the rest of the stuff it doesn’t like. My spirit is happy and at ease with eating plants and spices only.

All that to say everything came authentically and with ease with each new turn in my path. (1.) I leaned into my spiritual practice and being for a deeper understanding of who Tiffany is. Which lead me to (2.) plant-based eating. That led me to (3.) feeling good in my body and enough energy to work out every day. This led me to (4.) releasing harmful addictions and other habits that no longer served me like binge snacking at night, too much coffee, laziness and more. I then was called to (5.) dive even deeper into my inner self and continue to grow and expand my spirit life. I could keep going but this is getting quite long for a blog. To sum this part up I never sat down and planned any of this, nor do I think I could have, it was just the next right thing to do for me.

I am going to try to recap now:

I started by observing myself, my actions and habits, my feelings, and emotions at any given moment, I kept my eyes and ears (physical and spiritual) open to signs for my next steps and ultimately was open to receive and grow. I was willing to go deep and face things that might be painful or I might not be an expert in and fail.

I then, this is a key point, kept moving in the direction of what felt right and good. I am not talking about the feel good from eating a ben and jerry's ice cream because we all know following that small indulgent of your taste buds comes other icky feelings physically and mentally.

When I noticed peace, I asked “Why” this helped me be more mindful of it and do more of that. When something felt forced or not good, I asked “Why”, this helped me rethink what I was trying to do and change if needed, and ultimately move past or through it faster and with more ease.

Being my own teacher and student is helping me have more self confidence and let go of self-doubt. I can write this blog post right now despite feelings of imposter syndrome and self-doubt. Which they did come up, I paused when I noticed and asked why and many follow up questions and then told my ego to take a back seat that I got this and no matter what, this is a good post to get out in the world and I know the good feelings that will come once I get this out and publish!

Some quick things to get you started:

Sit with your self: get quiet and listen to your inner thoughts and feelings as you would a teacher giving a lesson

Journal: Either find prompts to help guide you or just free write/brain dump, and read them back through out your week and get curious about why you wrote that.

Ask yourself often: how does this feel, do I want more of this feeling in my life or less, etc.

Follow the good feeling things and let go of the rest.

There is so much help out there, my go to are books as a tool and my life coach has been extremely helpful to me. Dive into something using whatever tools that work well for you and how you learn.

Sending blessing and Lots of Love to you!

Tiffany

If you want or need help with balance in your life and want one on one help go check out my wellness package! I am gifting the first 10 people who sign up after reading this blog this 6 week coaching package for free. When checking out enter Gift10 in the coupon code section! From my heart to yours!