Are You Doing Enough For Your Spiritual Growth?

Is this “never enough” mindset actually doing you any good though, or is it simply trapping you in the same chokehold of insecurity that we find in almost every other area of our lives? Are you really not doing enough or is there something else going on beneath the surface here? In today’s blog post, I’m going to be answering these questions and showing you exactly what you need to do to overcome this conundrum of never feeling like you’re doing enough.

Why You Feel Like You’re Not Doing Enough

Often, we think of our feelings as messages and treat them as though they are a complete source of information in themselves, but this is actually not true. When we feel like we’re not doing enough, the assumption is that we must not be doing enough, but the feeling does not always equal the reality. Taking a feeling at face value in this way is kind of like seeing a notification pop-up on your phone telling you that you have a new email but not actually reading the email. The feeling is only there to tell you that something is going on. It’s the notification, not the message.

This means we really can’t assume that feeling like we’re not doing enough actually means that we need to be doing more. You can’t assume that you know the contents of an email just by the subject line, right? In the same way, we need to open up this feeling and really examine it in order to understand what it’s communicating.

When we actually open up and start to read this particular message, what we find is a sense of inadequacy, of insecurity. What’s hiding underneath the sense that you’re not doing enough is that it has very little to do with what you’re actually doing and much more to do with the fact that you don’t feel like you are enough. We are told basically from the time we are infants that we are not enough. We are told that we’re not getting good enough grades, that we are not performing well enough in our sports, that we are not progressing quickly enough, or that were not cultivating interest in the right things, we feel like we don’t have enough friends are like we’re not popular enough, our careers aren’t progressing fast enough, we’re not making enough money, we’re not enough for the right partner, we’re not good enough parents. Throughout our entire lives, we are dealing with this impending cloud of perceived inadequacy. It hangs over everything we do, everything we are, and touches every part of our lives. It makes sense that it would touch our spiritual lives as well.

Especially in this modern world, with all the incredible technology that we have, we see other people and their spiritual practices up close and personal every single day. It’s hard not to feel inadequate when you see these spiritual gurus meditating and doing everything perfectly in their spiritual life all day, every day. Of course you would feel like you don’t measure up to that! The reality is that these people who seem like they have the perfect spiritual lives are no more perfect than you are. They have off days where their meditations aren’t so good. They have moments of doubt. They sometimes forget that spiritual practice that they were really meaning to do that day. The things we see online and on social media are a highlight reel and you are comparing someone else’s highlight reel to your barefaced reality. Of course it’s going to seem like you don’t measure up! But does this appearance of being so spiritually active and connected actually equal real spiritual growth and connectivity?

What Is “Enough”?

When it comes right down to it, many of us wouldn’t actually be able to give a clear answer as to what would actually be enough. This word, enough, is so indistinct and so malleable as to be practically meaningless in this context. What actually is enough spiritually? When are you meditating enough? When are you praying enough? How do you know when you’ve done enough ceremony? How do you know when you’ve done enough inner child work? How do you know when you’re connected enough? At what point are you really doing enough?

By this point, you should be realizing that you really don’t have an answer to any of these questions. The truth is, none of us do. Most of us could throw ourselves full force into spirituality and become monks, living in caves doing nothing but meditating and praying all day, and still somehow feel like we are missing something and like we are not quite doing enough. Because there is no finish line with enough! Enough is just vague enough to always be a little further away than where you are currently. It’s the finish line you can never reach.

The good news is that you get to define what is enough for you personally. You get to choose your own goals and what you want to accomplish in your spiritual life and when you give enough a definition of your own you will move from having a target that you can never hit to having an actionable, achievable goal that you can move towards every day and feel good about when you accomplish it. So how do you define enough for yourself?

1. What are your tangible, real world goals?

First, you need to know what you are actually trying to accomplish. If you don’t know where you’re going, you have no way of knowing when you get there. This is not the time to be thinking about ethereal, intangible goals like “I want to be more connected to source”. We want concrete, measurable goals in your life that you can know with 100% certainty that you have either achieved or you haven’t. So what do you actually want? Do you want to feel less anxious? Do you want your relationships to be smoother and more harmonious? Do you want more abundance in your life?

To dig even deeper, once you have an idea of what you want, I want you to ask yourself why you want it. Do you want more abundance in your life for the sense of safety that it will give you? Or maybe you want that abundance for the freedom that it will allow you to have? Or maybe you even want that abundant so that you can take care of the people in your life and give back to your community. Figure out why you want what you want. You may find that the thing you thought you wanted was actually a cover-up for some deeper desire. If this is the case, I want you to start focusing on that deeper desire instead. You can continue this process until you feel like you’ve really drilled down to the core of what it is that you desire in your life.

2. What do you need to do spiritually to achieve these goals?

Next, you want to decide what you need to do to actually accomplish that goal. If you are desiring more abundance for the sense of freedom that it gives you, then how can you use your spiritual toolbox to bring more abundance and more freedom into your life? You might find an abundance meditation that you can listen to, you might pick up a gratitude practice, you might find ways to focus on the freedom that you already experience to bring yourself into that frequency, or you might use tarot cards or Oracle cards to help you make decisions to move you towards abundance and freedom, and you might find crystals that carry an energy of abundance and freedom.

It’s also a good idea to give yourself goalposts so that you know when you’ve reached your desired endpoint. For example, instead of saying that you want abundance and freedom, you might be more specific and say that you want to earn $10,000 a month so that you can travel more. This way you can align your spiritual actions, such as meditation and tarot, with the more ordinary actions that you need to take to create the cash flow that you need in a life where you can take time to travel. Remember that spiritual practice without real world action isn’t going to get you where you want to go. We didn’t come to a physical 3D reality to be purely spiritual beings. We came here to be physical beings, which means that we came here to enact our personal will on the world around us through the actions that we take.

3. How can you turn these actions into daily, weekly, or monthly tasks or habits?

Now that you have a better idea of the kinds of spiritual tools that you will need to accomplish your specific goals, how can you turn these spiritual actions into daily, weekly, or monthly habits? You might decide to listen to the abundance meditation every morning while you drink your coffee. You could give yourself a weekly tarot reading on Sunday to ensure that you’re still moving in the right direction for your goals. You could try to incorporate a monthly day trip to see nearby sites and visit nearby towns and cities to give yourself that sense of freedom and travel. Find ways to turn these spiritual actions into regular, repeatable routines in your life.

The goal here is to find the point of minimum effective dose in your spiritual life. Again, we didn’t come to physical reality to be purely spiritual beings, so it doesn’t make sense for us to spend all of our time and energy focused on spirituality. You want to use your spirituality as a toolbox that allows you to enhance your life and move in the direction you want your life to go. And you want to do this without expending a huge unnecessary amount of energy that you could be using to enjoy your life, spend time with your loved ones, or pursue your goals and hobbies. Don’t give yourself a giant laundry list of tasks that you have to accomplish every single day. You’re much better off giving yourself one small thing to do every day that is almost too easy than giving yourself a huge list of things to do that is too difficult to accomplish so you find that many days you don’t even start because it’s too daunting. It’s better to start too small than it is to start too big.

So When Are You Doing Enough?

Okay, all of that is well and good, but how do you know when you’re really actually doing enough? The truth is that enough is completely subjective. What is enough by my standards might be too much by someone else’s standards and nowhere near enough by yet another person’s standards. You are doing enough when you are taking the actions that move you towards your goals steadily. There is no need for you to be doing as much as you can handle when that is likely to only lead to burnout and halt your progress towards creating the life you want. More is not better in all cases. You’re doing enough when you decide that you are doing enough; when you decide that you are enough.

In reality, there will always be a new goal to chase, a new desire to fulfill, and a new goalpost to reach for. There is no end state where you have absolutely everything you want and you are exactly the person that you want to be. Humans are hard-wired with desire inbuilt. When we achieve one desire, there is another one waiting right behind it. This means that there is no rush. You don’t have to try to do it all at once and accomplish everything today. You can never reach the end of your desires, so there is no reason for you to push yourself to your limit trying to get there faster. You will get there and the moment you do, there will be somewhere new for you to go. This means that your job is to enjoy the journey. Your job isn’t to get where you’re going because there is no end destination. All you’re here to do is to embark on this journey and find the wonder, the joy, and the connection that you encounter along the way. If you do that, then you are doing enough.

Recognize How Much You’re Already Doing

Finally, many of us have a bad habit of feeling like we are not doing enough despite how much we are already doing. It’s very easy for us to completely discount the actions that we are already taking as too little or too insignificant. We have got to stop this! When all we do is push ourselves harder and never give ourselves the recognition of what we have already attained, what we are already doing, and the effort that we are already giving, then we are robbing ourselves of the joy of being in the moment.

So take a look at what you’re already doing! I mean, do a serious audit of your spiritual life, write it all down. If you read your tarot cards once or twice a month, write it down. If you journal on a regular basis, write it down. If you take the time to read a blog post, listen to a podcast, or watch a YouTube video that teaches you something about yourself and about your spirituality, then write that down. If you have a thought-provoking conversation with a friend about your spirituality, write it down. If you meditate for five minutes every day, write that down. If you pick a crystal every morning to take with you through your day, write that down.

Write down all of these small, insignificant seeming actions that you take every day and take a moment to actually recognize how much you are really doing. Most of us are doing so much more than we realize! We discount these small things as not important or as trivial and they are anything but. Start giving the practice that you have the respect that it deserves. You’ve already put in so much time and effort building yourself as a person and creating these daily practices, and weaving spirituality into your life. You are doing so much more than you think you are! It’s time for you to realize this and to give yourself permission for this to be enough.

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Updated on August 19, 2023 by Avery Hart