What is “Salted”?

Welcome!

I’m excited to share with you how the idea behind salted came into full fruition over the years.

The idea of salted came to me a few years ago. I was applying various practices in my life that allowed me to better understand the copious influences in my life that were subconsciously forming my thoughts, feelings and actions. Even as a mental health professional, I was struggling with major anxiety and didn’t understand why. It was showing up in every area of my life. I found myself striving for satisfaction and fulfillment, and this eventually led me to a place where my unique value and purpose had become muddied with who I thought I should be, what I thought my life should look like, and how I can become successful in the eyes of others.

Living in a culture that encourages a false sense of connection, fleeting satisfaction, immediate gratification, and freedom found in what society promotes as successful and attractive, we can often find ourselves investing our time and attention in multiple places at once, weighed down from life’s stressors, obligations, and expectations we put on ourselves to keep up. Neurologically, we are training our brains to be motivated towards a lifestyle of hustle that catalyzes instant dopamine release and temporary satisfaction instead of a lifestyle grounded in presence, uniqueness, growth and self-awareness.

The idea behind salted was formed to foster renewal in the way we allow the bountiful influences of this world to dictate how we think, who we are, and what we chase after. Many of us have normalized the idea of merely living with anxiety, not taking into consideration that we have the ability to understand why our bodies are having a physiological reaction to something. We are more than capable of unpacking the cause of our anxiousness and eventually training our brains to do so automatically. This practice would involve processing our feelings, and retraining our nervous systems to tolerate stress, instead of white knuckling through seasons of life.

In simpler terms – when we experience something, our brains react, sending signals to the rest of our bodies indicating safety or harm. Understanding what we are experiencing is a difficult discipline and practice on its own, and yet, it is necessary in order to then understand why we feel what we feel about what we are experiencing and process these emotions.

So why is this process so pertinent to our mental health and why don’t we practice it?

We are living in a world where in 10 minutes of scrolling on our phones, we can see something hilarious, tremendously painful, something that makes us happy, something that sparks envy, something that triggers comparison, then fear, then happiness again! And what do we do? We lock our screen and immediately dive back into our work or personal conversations without understanding that our brain is still processing all of these various emotions whether we are aware of it or not.

We are training our brains all day to not process what we are experiencing. Then we wonder why we feel overwhelmed, why our brains won’t turn off when we lie down, why we are experiencing emotions that we can’t explain the cause of, etc. But we are intelligently made for so much more than to settle with this lifestyle!

There are many factors unique to each person’s life that impact our ability to get unstuck, to be fully present, and to be completely free from striving towards ever-changing societal norms. These varying factors uniquely impact our ability to process our emotions, to understand our true value and to live a life of resilience, in which we are present and proud of.

In Matthew 5:13, Jesus speaks to the identity of his disciples stating, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, other than to be thrown out and trampled by men”.

Romans 12:2 states, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

Just as salt was held at a high value and used historically to preserve food, and enhance flavor, God’s word tells us, WE are the salt of the earth, made with a preserving influence, held at a high value and created uniquely to add and enhance the quality of our relationships, environments and places of influence. However, just as Matthew 5 emphasizes, salt must be kept salty to be used at the value it was intended for.

What happens when we lose our ability to do so? What happens when we lose our ability to preserve our mental health or our unique influence, and instead, we conform? We find ourselves, overwhelmed, troubled and anxious from the stressors of the patterns of this world. This is what impacts our ability to be present, to be fulfilled, and to be out true selves.

This is what staying salted is all about. Salted provides resources, education, and support that go against the grain of societal and cultural influences. Salted will help you learn how to regulate your nervous system, increase your resilience to stress and minimize your anxiousness by giving you tools to help you live in the present and embody the valuable life that you were made for.

Stay Salted, Friends!