Journey To The Soul

Your Energy is GOLD ✨

• Jacenda Villa

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What if the unexamined parts of your life are the very things holding you back from living authentically? Join me, as we unravel the transformative power of mindfulness and how it can bring profound clarity to our chaotic lives. This episode invites you to journey with me into mindfulness practices that heighten awareness and help align your actions with your core values. I share personal insights on how self-reflection and journaling can illuminate what truly matters, offering practical steps to focus your energy intentionally and live a life resonating with your deepest desires.

The conversation doesn't stop there. We explore the importance of a life audit to identify and eliminate energy-draining activities misaligned with your values. It's about recognizing that our time is finite and shifting focus towards nurturing pursuits that fulfill our soul's purpose. As the new year approaches, reflect on your goals and aspirations with me. So, settle in with your favorite cup of tea or coffee, and let's embark on this meaningful exploration of intentional living.

List of Values

Instagram: @jacendamarie


Speaker 1:

Hi, loves, welcome to the Journey to the Soul podcast. I am your host, jacinda Villa, a spiritual life coach and holistic health coach. Every week, we will be diving deep into all things purpose, wellness, spirituality and creating the life that you dream of. This space is meant to be safe and transformative for you to dive into the deepest parts of yourself. I will share what I have learned from my journey along this path years of research and mentors along the way. Having spent many years living life out of alignment and afraid to go after my dreams, I know firsthand what it means to take the first step down, living a life authentic to you. We are on this road of self-discovery together. It is time for you to live the life you imagined. Hello, my loves, welcome to another episode of the podcast. Episode of the podcast. I am so excited to have you here with me for another week of Journey to the Soul. Wherever you are tuning in from, it is so amazing for me to see where everyone tunes in from places from all over the world. So, wherever you are listening from, hello, welcome to this week's episode. I hope you have a cup of coffee or tea with you as you take in this week's episode because it's a little bit more of a juicy one. There's going to be a lot of things that we're going to be talking about today for you to ponder on, and things like that. So cozy up and let's get started.

Speaker 1:

I wanted to start this episode with talking about how mindfulness has really transformed my life. I have talked about meditations and how I meditate and that being a practice in my life in other podcast episodes, but mindfulness has truly transformed every aspect of my life and it's something that has become more of a mainstream conversation over the last few years. I feel it has gained a lot of interest, because us being able to be mindful what that brings into our lives is really something that the world just needs more of right now. Right, and it is really a seed that you plant and it grows when you water it. So, when it comes to mindfulness, I really love looking at it through different lenses of life, because it makes you aware of the things that you would not notice otherwise. And that's what mindfulness brings to us when we meditate or when we sit and do some breath work or we just give ourselves space to be is that it simply allows you to notice things that you can't always see, when you are constantly going or in a rush or in a state of anxiety or survival, and when you start practicing any kind of mindfulness in your life, it really is something that you apply into every aspect of life, and that's something that I want to talk about in a whole other episode, because I truly feel like meditation has been something that has gifted me, that it's allowed me to just be mindful in every aspect of life, to be intentional in every area of my life, to be intentional in every area of my life, and I want to dive into that more with you in the coming weeks.

Speaker 1:

But today I really want us to explore mindfulness when it comes to what we consume and the elements of life we focus our energy on. Your energy is gold. It is worth so much, and there is only so much that you can do in this life, because we only have so much time all of us which means that there is only so much that we can experience is only so much that we can experience, only so much we can learn, only so many people we can meet, only so many places we can go and visit, and it can be hard for some of us to really accept that. Some people might actually not want to accept it at all, but it's really a perspective to explore because it allows us to discern the things that are meaningful to us. And, as you listen to this episode today, I want you to create space so you can really sit with these concepts we will be discussing and the questions I will be asking you as well. So, if you are a journal person, I would love if you pull out your journal whether that's a physical one or on your iPad, on your phone, and just give yourself space and the ability to be radically honest about what comes up as we move through these exercises. I really want you to let go of any expectations that you may have about yourself or that others may have about you. This is simply between you and you. This is a time to really connect to what is important to you so that you can live the life intended for you. If you happen to be listening to this while you are multitasking, come back to it at another moment in time so you could really take some time to work through the questions. We're going to be looking at the three steps to living an intentional life and you can work over the next three parts at your own pace, and the first thing that we're going to be touching on is about your values.

Speaker 1:

I have talked in other podcast episodes about how identifying your values is so pivotal for you to live a life that is in alignment for you and the utter importance of them. I talk about it in the podcast episode called Crafting your Canvas, which is all about desire, manifestation joy and really creating the life that you want for yourself from a different lens. So I would highly suggest that you listen to that as well as this episode. For you to really be in charge of your life and the life that you want to live. Every moment of your life counts and you really need to ask yourself what are the things for you that are a non-negotiable in your life. It's so important for us to discern the things that are really important enough so we can make sure that we are devoting our time and energy into what we value and desire.

Speaker 1:

I am linking a list of values for you to look at. If you may struggle to identify your values, you might not know where to start with it. I really encourage you to look through the list. See what stands out to you from the list and you'll kind of be able to immediately notice what feels resonant for you and your values truly become your anchor in life. They anchor you into your authenticity of who you really are and what is meaningful to you. Your values may change over time as you grow and evolve and expand as a human being on this planet. There will be different seasons where you value certain things. If you are in a season of building in your life, maybe you value resilience and consistency and devotion devotion. If you are in a season of motherhood and that's something that's really high on your list then perhaps you value presence and kindness and joyfulness.

Speaker 1:

For the purpose of today, I want you to think about everything that you do or consume in a day the people you interact with, the places you go to. The books you read the podcasts you listen to the food you eat, the conversations you have, the work you do every day, the music you listen to, what you consume on social media, the people you follow on there really take some time to think about and process in all the ways you put your energy into something each and every day, big and small. Out of all the things that come to mind. Ask yourself what is truly important to you and makes your life worth living. What brings you joy, what brings you a deep sense of peace and purpose every day? What makes you feel alive? What makes you happy dance? What makes you laugh so hard until your belly hurts? What do you wish you could do more of? Take some time reflecting on these questions as we get ready to move on.

Speaker 1:

The second thing that we are going to be looking at is removing what isn't working from your life With your values in hand. Notice what is draining your energy. Be candid with yourself. We can constantly tell ourselves that we are only going to spend only a few minutes doing something that really isn't the best use of our time, and we know that. We all have something that we do, that we know we could be doing something else that we really should be doing or would rather do, but we're doing this now and we kind of feel guilty about it. I'm just going to give you an example Scrolling on your phone for 15 minutes every day, that adds up to two hours a week almost, and I know most people feel like they never have enough time.

Speaker 1:

We don't have enough time to do the things that we really want to do, to do certain things, to be more present with our kids, to cook dinner every night and and, if you wanted to, you could start cooking dinner at home five days a week, or go on a walk once a day or meditate for 10 minutes. Those two hours that you spend a week would allow you to meal prep dinner for two hours for the week, or spend 20 minutes each evening cooking a simple meal. You can go for a walk for 25 minutes five days out of the week. You could meditate every day and still have time left over. And we always find reasons, and what we need to be asking ourselves is where are we really focusing our energy on? We all get the same 24 hours in a day. We need to be intentional about our time. Audit your life, look at all of the areas that we referenced before. It can be in the smallest ways, but really only pour energy into the things that add meaning to your life.

Speaker 1:

The last step for living an intentional life is to discern and progress With your values and energy drains identified. You can now make life choices that are in alignment with the life you want to live when you are trying to make a decision about committing to something or not. Simply ask yourself if this is aligned with you. Evaluate it from the lens of your values and desires. If it is and it brings value into your life in some way, move forward with it. If not, let it go. There are no ifs, ands or buts here. You don't owe anyone an explanation about your life and why you are choosing not to do something that isn't right for you. Choosing not to do something that isn't right for you. Even if you may not fully understand your own desires, your values, you owe it to yourself to live your life as you wish. Once you do the first two steps, this last one will be quite straightforward. This last one will be quite straightforward For everything that you evaluate in your life. I want you to think of your energy as currency, as gold. Every time you go and do something, it requires an exchange of that gold. Ask yourself if this is really worth it.

Speaker 1:

We all want to do all the things in this life, but we can only do so much at once. We can only take on so many things at a single time. This has helped me so much with being very intentional with my time and energy, and there are so many things that I want to do, learn, read, places I want to travel to. I want to do as much as possible throughout my entire life. Of course, I know I don't want to live my life through others, by being on my phone on social media, spending my time doing things I don't like or enjoy, not really living and enjoying my life in the here and now. And there is nothing inherently wrong with social media. It is all in the way in which we use it, the energy we have behind it. However, most people use it as a way to escape from their life and it can easily become an addiction, and we all have our own values and recognize what really aligns with us, and this is me just sharing personally that social media is something that I really don't like spending much time on at all. I recognize it and I spend as little time as possible because I rather spend my time doing something else, something that nurtures my soul, something that lays another brick down towards the life that I'm building, and the cost to value ratio between time and what it brings into my life just really isn't there. And this is something that I've been able to identify by auditing my life, which, in terms, allows us to focus on how we spend our time, money and resources.

Speaker 1:

I've done a version of a life audit throughout the last couple of years of my life. Every so often. I do one every year. I do one for the year to come, and I've been doing this for quite a while, so I am pretty clear about what it is I want to focus my energy on and, like I mentioned at the beginning, what you value and what you do want to focus your energy on is going to change, so you have to have clarity around what that is what you do want to focus on. You can see how becoming aware of you can see how becoming aware of this can allow you to really take charge of your life.

Speaker 1:

Do you want to get to the end of your life and realize that you did not experience as much joy as you wish you had? You didn't spend as much time with those you love. You didn't explore the places that you yearn to go to. You didn't read the books you really wanted to read. You didn't do work that was deeply meaningful to you. You didn't spend your time with the people that you love. You didn't spend your days experiencing anything that was truly important to you, a whole life lost, and this evaluation brings you certainty about what you are certain is worth focusing your energy on. What do you know is right and true and authentic to you and deserves more of that? It really is such a wonderful time to reflect on these things as we get ready to embark on a new year soon.

Speaker 1:

Working through this exercise every year to realign with the life you want to live can be transformational. Doing something like this is kind of like getting a tire alignment or an oil change. It's to make sure that you're on the right track, that everything is good, before you carry on for your journey, taking the time to do it so that you don't begin the new year. Whether you're listening to this right before the new year starts or whenever you listen to this, this will come to you at the right time for you to listen to it, but it doesn't matter when. But it's just for you to have a moment to realign, to reground yourself and make sure that you are on the right path. If you've wavered a little bit, you can also come back to it every few months or once a quarter. You can really feel out what feels right to you. Some of us may need a more consistent reminder, while other people like to have the intentions and putting them out into the world. Until you revisit them again in a year, and every time you do it it will look different as you evolve and our desires evolve, and our values do as well.

Speaker 1:

We get to choose what we focus our energy on. We are in the driver's seat of our life. If there's something that is not really working for us in some aspect of life, guess what we get to choose what we want to do with it and we can say, okay, great, it's been good so far and let it go and carry on with what really counts. So ask yourself is the life you are living fulfilling? Are you working towards something meaningful? Do you know it with certainty? It's never too late to take a step towards doing that, towards living a life that you intended. It doesn't matter how old you are, what season of life you are in, what part of the world you live in. At any moment of your life, you could choose to do something small, to take the step slightly more towards where you want to go, and that should be something that just fills us with so much peace because, even though it can feel like we are not living the life that is intended for us, and sometimes we don't even know how to cross that path between where we are now and the life that we do want to lead, taking the first step is truly all that matters. So, in the most micro way today, see where you can take your first tiny step, because life is always unfolding beautifully and divinely for us.

Speaker 1:

I am still getting ready for our move. That will be happening in the next couple of weeks too, so I'll still be posting a bit sporadically, but I am sending you all so much love. Take care of yourself and let's be kind to one another. Till then, and family, I'd love to hear your takeaways, so share them with me by leaving a comment below or heading over to my Instagram at Jacinda Marie. I am sending you all so much love.