Three Spiritual Clichés That Are Easier Said Than Done

Full disclosure, I am the first to put my hand up to admit that I have said all three of these spiritual clichés multiple times, in words both spoken and written, to myself, my friends and my clients.

In fact, to the whole world.

The thing is, there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these phrases. The reason I’m writing this post is that I’ve noticed that there are certain phrases that are said with good intentions, but that have lost their meaning along the way.

It’s almost as if they have become the poster child of the spiritual revolution, and as such, they have become diluted, shallow and a little more meaningless than they truly are.

So, before we dive into these spiritual clichés and what each one is really about, let’s talk about why we oversimplify these sayings and what our drive is behind sharing advice (even if it is very well-meaning!).

Are you a talker or are you a listener?

It’s so easy to give advice to others, rather than accept that same advice for ourselves.

Especially if you have the 3-3, 12-3, 17-8 or 5-5 energy in your Soul Contract. Often, these are really chatty energies that love to use their voice to communicate with the world.

Yet, while these people like to speak and share, they are not often the greatest listeners. And this goes for all of us - it is generally so much more enjoyable for us to listen to ourselves speak, than it is to give space to hear what others want to share.

This is just a little ego thing around wanting to be heard and validated. And believe it or not, it is often the people who had to speak up to get their parents' attention as a child who are the loudest and have the biggest internal cry to be heard, which they then project outwardly into the world.

This is something you can keep in mind the next time you are being talked at or talked over by someone. It is just their need to be heard that is coming through in the way they dominate a conversation.

So we know that it’s easy to give advice, which is partially linked to avoidance (after all, it is easier to pick apart other people’s problems than it is to confront our own), but there is a bigger theme going on underneath the surface.

The intention behind well-meaning advice

Helping others can feel really good, especially if you have the 8 8 energy in your Soul Contract, which is all about wanting to support others. Yet, this energy can also turn into a need to fix, save or heal other people, which is not quite so healthy or supportive.

Many of us are empaths, so we can really empathise with people’s pain. We also have big hearts and a lot of love to share, which is why we want to help people. And we know how to help someone because we’ve either been there and experienced it, or we just intuitively know what they need.

This is the kind of loving energy that we need more of in this world.

However, there is another reason why we love to share advice, and this comes from our need to feel important, powerful and special. This is a slightly less attractive side of this ‘sharing energy’, and one that many of us don’t like to acknowledge within ourselves.

We’re all human and it’s completely normal to want validation and recognition.

Yet, if we get to the real truth of this, even if it is a little ugly and shameful, can we recognise the difference between when we give advice from a place of love, versus when we give advice in order to feel more important within ourselves?

A good example of this is when I qualified as a Kinesiologist in 2019. I was so passionate about Kinesiology that every conversation I had always revolved back to how Kinesiology could help someone.

I can see now that it was maybe a tad irritating for my friends and family. But more than that, I wanted recognition for my choices, I wanted validation from my family and I wanted to feel competent in what I was doing. So sharing advice was the way that I could get those things.

Why spiritual clichés don’t work

The lessons I’ve learnt since are this: I never offer people advice unless they ask for it. I never offer people sessions unless they ask for it. And I try to keep my opinions to myself, unless they ask.

All valuable and worthy lessons indeed, and all a work in progress.

With time and experience, I understand these three clichés in a much better light, not only from experience within my own life but from the many client sessions, training and interactions I have had with wonderful humans along the way.

My goal in writing this is not to label them as ‘wrong’ but to create more discernment around how we use them with people who perhaps need a little more support and guidance than a simple feel-good phrase.

We are all infinitely complex beings, but there is one thing that is not complex about us at all. We all just want to be seen, heard, accepted and loved. And one of the most powerful ways we can offer these things to someone is through listening to them - not through speaking and sharing clichéd statements that have little meaningful value.

So let us get into these three common clichés and see what is really going on under the surface.

Spiritual cliché no. 1: just trust the process

The first spiritual cliché on my list is the infamous “just trust.”

So achingly simple and so alarmingly invalidating, especially for people who are in really tricky situations in their life. This is probably the most commonly used one, echoed around the world from healing centres to yoga studios to therapy sessions.

Trust is a major part of life and is arguably the bedrock of creating inner peace. After all, if we trust that everything is working out for us then we come out of future fear, worry and anxiety, which drastically lightens our energy and creates a harmonious vibration that attracts more harmonious things.

It’s like magic.

This is how trust works - once we let go of the fear and move into faith, then we alter our energy on the deepest levels of our being.

This does not mean that we will not face hardship or challenges, rather it means that we will trust that it will work out in the highest and best good, which promotes peace, relaxation and acceptance, all the things that make us feel so swell.

Yet asking someone who has been repeatedly let down by life to “just trust” is not going to cut the mustard.

When we feel abandoned by God, betrayed by the Universe and let down by the people who were supposed to unconditionally love and care for us, it takes a huge amount of time and energy to rebuild that trust in life again.

If you have the 13-4 or the 4-4 energy in your Soul Contract, you may have a really hard time trusting that life will support you. Perhaps you have been let down by your parents, partners, or life has dealt you some hard blows.

A similar phrase that people like to share is that “everything happens for a reason” which can be another slightly insensitive thing to say to someone who is dealing with difficult and challenging life circumstances.

It’s true that when we look back on our lives, the jigsaw pieces of our past always fit together to create perspective and understanding.

While we can always choose to view our life experiences through the lens of “things happen to me” or “things happen for me”, it takes effort to move to this place of empowerment, and we need to be respectful of each other’s pace.

Trust is built by the smallest steps forward and through gentle healing of emotional trauma in the body - it is not something that can be instantly embodied, but rather something that is gradually built back up.

Spiritual cliché no. 2: just let go

Ah, another favourite of mine. “Just let it go” is my second favourite spiritual cliché on the list.

Letting go is an incredibly painful process for many of us. It’s our attachments to things, such as who we once were, past loves, dreams and expectations, along with the emotional pain we’re not ready to release, that make it so damn hard to fully release.

There are so many things we hold onto, and so many reasons why.

If you have the 11-2 or 8-8 energy in your Soul Contract, letting go may feel especially challenging (which is exactly what I wrote about in my latest post).

One of the reasons letting go cannot be oversimplified by this spiritual cliché is that there are several parts to the process. Letting go requires a deeper understanding and commitment. It involves going into the anger, the fear, the grief, and all the surrounding emotions that hook the attachment in place.

At the end of the day, letting go is not about releasing all thoughts and memories of a person, place or past. It’s about releasing our attachment to that person, place or past, and recognising what that attachment has been feeding us.

We have to go inwards and actively ask ourselves, “what did it give me that I fear I won’t find again?” or, more succinctly, “what does it give me that I fear I can’t give myself?”.

A good example is my attachment to a past version of myself who I look back on with rose-tinted glasses, feeling that she was healthier and happier than I am now. My fear is that I won’t ever have that fitness, happiness and fun in my life again, so I hold onto the memory of her, believing that by doing so I will bring myself closer to those things I so desperately want.

The truth is, holding on actively blocks us from allowing the new into our lives. We all know this deep down, but sometimes it feels easier to hold onto the past rather than take the risk that nothing will fill its place.

Deep down we all want to feel safe - and we often take any shortcut to reach that feeling, even though it doesn’t serve us in the long run.

Spiritual cliché no. 3: don’t compare yourself

The third and final spiritual cliché that I’m excited to share is “don’t compare yourself to others” because comparison is something I love to write about.

The reason I talk about comparison so much is because I tend to struggle with it myself.

Comparison isn’t something I’m always conscious of feeling. Often, it operates sneakily in the background without me quite being aware that it’s there, which is why it’s so tricky to get a handle on.

If you have the 3 energy in your Soul Contract, you may struggle with feelings of self-worth. Where it trips us up is that we can easily say the words “I love myself” out loud, but can we feel them as true?

This is a key difference between what we say and what we embody.

I truly believe the world has a self-worth problem. If we all felt worthy, accepted and loved, there would be no need for greed, wars and corruption, driven by little people with big egos. The world would be chill.

The truth is, we live in a world where we are constantly saturated with information. We each have unfettered access to the lives of everyone through our phones - meaning we interact with people on a scale that isn’t necessarily healthy for us.

In the past, we never interacted with thousands of people a day, but now we’re constantly surrounded by people on our phones, apps and screens, and this is what creates huge levels of comparison

To tell someone, in this day and age, not to compare themselves to others, is not only extremely obvious advice, but it’s also not very helpful because we don’t compare ourselves consciously; we compare ourselves subconsciously.

It’s an unconscious behaviour that we need to take gentle steps to become aware of.

It’s only when we become aware of our behaviours and habits that aren’t supporting us that we can begin to change them. Yet, as I mentioned before, comparison isn’t such a simple one to identify.

The easiest way to tell whether you’re stuck in comparison (without quite realising it) is to notice how we feel after spending time with people, on social media, or out in public. Take a note of your levels of joy, the ease you feel within yourself, and your inner peace. Are they settled, or are they disturbed?

3 spiritual truths that are way easier said than done

So there we have it, the three spiritual sayings that sometimes just aren’t the best thing to share.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to help someone by sharing some well-meaning advice - but when someone is struggling, sometimes the best thing we can offer them isn’t simplified platitudes and generic slogans, but something more meaningful.

If, deep down, all we want is to be accepted for who we are and the challenges we’re experiencing, maybe we just need someone to listen to us, to hold our hand and to give us a hug and a cup of tea.

This is validation at its finest.

When we’re going through tough times, we often need support in that moment, rather than putting a positive spin on a situation. So perhaps we can all just take a step back from our need to help, and let people come to us when they’re ready.

If you’d like support and guidance on your spiritual journey, you may like to explore my monthly group healing membership Your Authentic Soul, or sign up to my newsletter to stay in touch for more similar posts.

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Carry on exploring