Surviving vs Thriving: How to Feed Your Soul When Life is Hard | #132

Discover what it means to feed your soul and why it's critical for survival when you're living with chronic illness, prolonged stress, or challenging circumstances. Resilience coach Dawn Super shares how feeding her soul helped her thrive after 40 years of sleep deprivation from narcolepsy and invisible illness. Learn practical ways to nourish yourself beyond basic survival mode including self-care rituals, comfort items, nature, music, creative pursuits like pareidolia (finding faces in things), and the balance of helping others while maintaining boundaries. Perfect for anyone stuck in survival mode who's forgotten to do simple things for themselves, people with invisible illnesses trying to maintain joy, and anyone experiencing prolonged stress who needs permission to prioritize soul-feeding activities. Includes personal examples and the reminder that you don't get another life - make this one amazing by defining what feeding your soul means to you.

Watch the Video Here or Read the Script below

What does it mean to feed your soul? And why is it so important?

This video is for anyone who's breathing, but especially people who are living a challenging life, stuck in the suck, or experiencing prolonged stress.

This is the Daily Dose of Dawn at Dawn - videos designed to expand your thinking.

So why do we want to learn this? Because you can get stuck in survival mode and not even think to do these simple things for yourself.

Welcome back to my Happy Matters Collective.

So how did this come into my awareness? Well, being sleep deprived for 40 years is a special kind of torture. [laughter]

Seriously, it's easy to look at my content and not realize my health challenges. And this is what it's like to have an invisible illness.

I live an incredibly full life. I love my life. I'm thriving more now at 55 than I ever have. And much of that has come to me through feeding my soul.

And definitions matter. And there are a lot of different definitions for feeding your soul. So define it for yourself and start making sure that you're doing it.

You don't get another life. So do what you can to make this one amazing.

Some ways that I feed my soul are:

Self-care. I have a lot of comfort items, hot baths, sweet treats, and rubbing my own feet.

Good, loving music that makes me feel good.

Going to the beach and into nature in general.

Taking pictures of faces in things. I love the phenomenon of pareidolia.

Doing this daily dose. [laughter]

Helping others, being good but not too good.

How about you? What fills you up?

If you thought to yourself - "who has time to feed their soul?" stop whatever you're doing and get my book: https://HowToBeOnYourOwnSide.com and get on your own side!

Do you hear "happiness is a choice" and think... "yeah, right" get my free Happy Matters magnet onto your fridge to help you remember! Sign up for daily doses at dailydoseofdawn.com - I'll mail you one (really, it's free, I make them myself).