Ep #54: The Spiritual Side of Blogging

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Do you think of spirituality when you hear the word blogging? I didn’t used to, but now I completely understand that blogging is art and have come to embrace the spiritual side of blogging. Listen to my interview with Julie Piatt as she talks about spirituality and creativity and how to be inspired!

The Spiritual Side of Blogging with Julie Piatt is the next topic on the Namely Marly Podcast

When I first set out on a blogging journey, I thought it was all about the technical stuff. Learn SEO. Take better photos. Understand tags. Get link-backs. Focus on social media development.

And, I understand these are important skills for a food blogger. However, there’s something more to getting it right. The word that comes to mind right now is soul.

Understanding your own soul can help you understand the underlying passion for your blog. Because, in the end, I believe blogging is a creative venture.

Any time you make something out of nothing, and people like it, you’re an artist. — Jerry Seinfeld

And when you’re an artist, you have to be in touch with that highly creative version of yourself. To me, that’s become a spiritual journey. It’s one of the reasons I reached out to Julie Piatt, otherwise known as SriMati to talk about spirituality, especially as it relates to creative work.

I'm a channel of creativity. — Julie Piatt #choppedcon Click To Tweet I channeled my artistic expression into food, because food is creative expression. — Julie Piatt #choppedcon Click To Tweet

Julie explains how that in yogi traditions, the art and skill of serving food to others is really the greatest blessing you can offer others. Therefore sharing our recipes and helping others with the preparation and serving of food, is enabling them to experience that greatest blessing. That’s powerful!

When people are cooking my food, they’re actually getting a little of this frequency and this gift that I received. It really is divine expression. — Julie Piatt

We talked about how sometimes it’s easy to look at time in the kitchen as being domestic, therefore less valued. However, Julie explains that the kitchen was traditionally the place where the sacred fire was kept in the home. She described it as the sacred fire of spirituality. And women were traditionally the keeper of the flame.

What I’m speaking to is embodying this strong fierce, courageous, feminine frequency that is fully sustained on her own, that does not need to be rescued, that does not need any male energy outside of herself to complete her. — Julie Piatt

That’s a vision of a strong, powerful, creative, entrepreneurial blogger we can all embrace!

The thing that I’m inspired about are spiritual topics, of self empowerment, and connecting to your divine blueprint, and living your authentic life, but I mean really. With extreme faith. With reverence for all life. Understanding yourself as a self-sustainable ecosystem. Self sourcing. Not needing anyone else in that field. — Julie Piatt

We are spiritual beings having a human experience. — Julie Piatt #choppedcon Click To Tweet

Of course, we talk about the topic of meditation. Julie explains how we have the answers we seek inside, in our own heart. The thing is, we have to access that. Julie recommends meditation as the key to knowing yourself and to access your heart’s desires.

If you commit your first order of business to knowing yourself, then you can make decisions that are informed, that are not wasteful, that don’t just create karma or a bunch of wrong actions. — Julie Piatt

You may wonder why knowing yourself is so important. Well, first of all, it can actually save you time. Because by knowing yourself, you can avoid the wasted time and frustration of taking a wrong path. We’ve all been there before. The way to prevent that is by knowing yourself.

You can spend a lot of time going down a career path that is not in alignment with who you are, it’s not how you were created. — Julie Piatt

Your heart knows your deepest desires better than you know them yourself. — Julie Piatt Click To Tweet

Julie recommends making sure you use time wisely in order to cultivate good habits. One of those habits, of course, is meditation. She also recommends clean eating, including a plant-based diet.

Julie and I talk about perfectionism because it’s something that trips up a lot of creative entrepreneurs. She explains that perfectionism is a way of holding you back from your true expression.

Perfectionism is keeping you from accessing all of your life force, all of that creativity that needs to come through. — Julie Piatt

One thing that feeds the fire of perfectionism is the negative comments that are out there, especially for online creative entrepreneurs. It can sometimes be hard to take. Julie describes that she has two approaches for dealing with all comments, negative or positive. First, she recognizes that the comment reflects the person giving them more than they reflect you. If you know who you are and what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, receiving either positive or negative feedback won’t be as much of a concern. That’s the same as looking for something external to validate you. Second, Julie begins each day by giving her work over to a higher power, and she ends her day that way as well.

What people say is about them. It has nothing to do with you. — Julie Piatt

If you consider no other spiritual practice, you may want to at least give this a try: Each day Julie offers the work she does to a higher power. I’ve read about this practice with other creatives and it can be a wonderful tool for following your creative path.

At the end of the day I lay my entire day and life down at the feet of the force and I say, ‘It’s all yours. All of it. Every compliment. Every triumph. Every business deal. every relationships. every song. It’s yours. So is the hate. so is the mistake and the thing I shouldn’t have said or the thing that didn’t go the way I wanted it to. That all belongs to that source as well.

Even better, a path to creative spirituality can help you serve your audience.

The more we can be servants of something greater outside of ourselves, the more connected the more meaningful, the more powerful and the more impactful the life can be. — Julie Piatt

Finally, learn how to tune into your highest creative calling by giving up perfectionism, knowing your true self, and by expressing your creativity.

In art there is no right or wrong, it’s how much emotion are you channeling and how are you connecting and how are you expressing, and how are you affecting the viewer. — Julie Piatt

Our goal at ChoppedCon is to help you be your best. We hope these tips on the Spiritual Side of Blogging is helpful to the important work you’re doing every day!

Now, go forth and Be Your Best You!

Featured Content – The Spiritual Side of Blogging

Here are some of the highlights of my discussion with Julie, where we discuss:

  • Learn about how Julie uses the name SriMati
  • Learn about Julie’s recipe development and her wildly popular book The Plant-Powered Way that she co-authored with her husband, Rich Roll
  • How Julie first started creating healthy recipes
  • Understanding the role of women in the kitchen
  • How we can learn to become spiritual creative beings
  • Julie talks about the key that will change your creative life
  • Julie talks about the struggles she’s been through in her life that have contributed to her ever-growing spirituality
  • Julie shares tips on meditation, including how to meditate during difficult times
  • We talk about perfectionism and how it can be a buzzkill for creativity
  • Julie shares how the way art is taught doesn’t encourage creative expression
  • Julie is a mother of five and talks about how she created moving meditation techniques
  • Julie talks about how to deal with negative comments
  • Julie talks about why she doesn’t have a TV

Show Notes

This episode includes references to some resources you might find interesting. Here they are:

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Posted in Cultivating Creativity, Podcast