How Doing What Brings You Joy Becomes A Spiritual Experience

“Why should we all use our creative power? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.”
— Brenda Ueland

What is the antidote to the stress and overwhelm of daily life?

Ritualized creativity.

There’s a Sanskrit word Sadhana which means daily spiritual practice. It’s our unique daily habit of connecting with our higher self, inner peace, and joy.

In traditional Hindu and Buddhist practices, it serves as an individual’s primary form of meditation.

However, a Sadhana practice extends beyond the obvious rituals of meditation and yoga.

For the modern human, at its heart, Sadhana is about tapping into your authentic creative power to cultivate self-intimacy so you can be better in the external world.

Sadhana is the habit of joy.

A Sadhana practice can be literally anything that brings you so much joy that it becomes a beautiful sacred experience.

So, what activities bring you unbridled joy?

What gives you more energy so you can show up brighter and lighter?

What do you love doing that renders success and failure irrelevant?

Turn one of these activities into a daily Sadhana habit and make it non-negotiable.

Your Sadhana will compound.

If you treat your practice with playful sincerity and do it consistently, eventually your whole life will reflect your Sadhana.

You will greet every day full of possibilities.

It will allow you to be creative every day while at the same time learning, exploring, and experimenting while not attaching it to an end result.

I’ve done this with my daily writing habit. For those 45 minutes that I sit down to write each morning, all the background noise of life seems to go on mute. It’s just me and the ideas and thoughts coming from inside me.

No agenda. No deadline. No ROI.

Being fully present in each session has allowed my life to flow more freely. In time, all the things I typically stressed about that were usually tied to some future outcome seemed less burdensome because at the end of the day, I know tomorrow morning I always have my Sadhana to lift my spirit.

The garden of your life.

Here’s a caveat: your daily Sadhana or habit of joy doesn’t get you off the hook for everything else in your life.

The stuff you are counted on to do for your job, business, home life, health, family, friends, etc is still important.

All the other facets of your life still matter.

These aspects are the garden of your life: beautiful rows of flowers and trees that you attend to every day to ensure their survival. However, your Sadhana practice is what keeps the weeds out. It’s the act of nurturing your garden of life beyond just survival or getting by but rather to have each part thrive and radiate its beauty.

Daily Sadhana is identity change.

Like with any habit you consistently do, over time you are shaping your self-image. You’re becoming a new person.

You’re re-igniting the creative bliss inside you while reconditioning yourself to experience life differently.

If committing to doing it every day indefinitely seems daunting or impractical, start small. Commit to 3–4 times per week or set the intention to do it for 30 days then see how you feel.

Time passes regardless. Why not use it to form the habit of doing something that brings you joy and connects you more with the identities your soul is seeking to express?