How soul searching helped a change and transformation coach find meaning

The word ‘soul’ is increasingly making its presence more felt in our everyday language and I for one think this is something to be celebrated. Many of us base our initial understanding on words and their meaning from how and when we first heard of them; as well as the context in which we were taught their significance.

For years, I associated the word ‘soul’ entirely with religion; most likely because it was where I first was introduced to it when, as a very young Catholic girl, I was told that when I sinned it stained my soul. Every subsequent mention and reference to the word, growing up, always led me back to religion. I couldn’t and didn’t even try to separate them. Like so many others, I’ve really struggled through the years with holding on to my personal faith.

As I navigated several personal setbacks in my life, I found myself inevitably asking ‘why me’, and instead of finding comfort in my faith I found myself totally withdrawing from it. However, it didn’t take long for me to realise that without it my life was emptier and lacked meaning and this made me miss it all the more.

More recently, the ongoing horrendous and unpalatable revelations related to religious and state institutions challenged my faith in such a profound way, leaving me floundering and not knowing what to do next. I found it impossible to reconcile all that I was hearing with something that for me had once represented goodness and comfort. This, of course, didn’t get resolved overnight and, in fact, is taking a large amount of work and soul-searching (pun-intended) for me to arrive at a position that not just feels right for me, but one that I feel extremely comfortable with, not to mention comforted by.

It began with the complex task of attempting to separate my personal faith from the institution in which it was housed so that I could explore in a lot more detail just what it meant to me. It required the rediscovering of my relationship with, and my understanding of, my soul – what it was, where it was in me and how to be aware of and listen to it. Thus started the voyage which would eventually take me back home to myself and home to my faith.

To explain my current acceptance and understanding of what the ‘soul’ is, I, first of all, need to share with you what my god, and not my religion, means to me. My god is a god of kindness. She is nature, she is the sun, moon and stars. He is light and air. She is the trees, the flowers the animals. He is forgiving and she is love. She created me and he appears in my thoughts and my words. She is always with me. He is always minding me. Deep down, I have always known this, but I wasn’t all that sure just how to articulate the way I communicated with her. Until I remembered my soul.

As I opened my mind and my heart to learning more about my soul, I found that this was something I already knew. When these realisations started to come, what was notable was that they didn’t surprise or shock me, instead they felt like I was re-discovering something I had always known. It happened like this because when it comes to the soul that’s how it works. Much of what I am writing here represents my own personal opinions and beliefs, and I am sharing them here in the hope that they may reignite something that is already in you too.

I believe that my soul is not just the very essence of me, but she is me. She is my intuition. She is what makes me unique. She is my spiritual life-force. She was here before I was born and will remain when I die. When I quieten my mind and listen to how I really feel about something, it is my soul that I hear whispering back to me. My soul always knows the way and if I listen to her, really listen to her, I trust that she will never lead me astray.

To help me understand further, and in keeping with my innate desire to always be practical I really needed to know exactly where in my body my soul was located. Where was I speaking to and what part of me, I was listening to, when I was communicating with my soul, felt very important to me. I finally settled on the general location being in my heart space. Once I acknowledged this, it gave me somewhere in my body to focus on and that really helped with my rediscovering her and her powers.

I firmly believe that your soul is the spiritual part of you. When it comes to understanding what your soul purpose might be, I would proffer that it is primarily to remember the truth of who you are and then to go on and share that with the world. Everything to do with your soul is a feeling, a knowing, rather than a physical thing. It focuses more on why we do something as opposed to what it is we do.

My reconnection journey to my soul has been one of the most rewarding discoveries of my life. I know that that’s a strong statement but it’s one that I now feel comfortable declaring. It has helped me make sense of so many events in my life and most importantly it has helped me make sense of who I am and who I am becoming.

The more I go inward and reconnect to myself, the more I am able to cultivate a deeper trust and belief in who I am, who I want to be and what my soul is guiding me to do. Leading global conservationist John Muir, to my mind, captured this best when he famously said, ‘into the forest, I go to lose my mind and find my soul’. Let this be the nudge you needed to go and find yours.

Niamh Ennis is Ireland’s leading Change & Transformation Coach and Author of GET UNSTUCK who through her private practice, writings, programmes, workshops and podcast has inspired, activated and helped thousands of people to make significant changes in their lives. She is an accredited Personal, Leadership & Executive Coach and the Lead Coach in the IMAGE Business Club. Niamh is currently accepting applications for The RESET for Change her 3 Month Bespoke 1-1 Coaching Programme.  Follow her on Instagram at @1niamhennis.