7 Amazing Ways to Define Soulful and Live With Depth

Many of us are craving more depth, meaning, and connection in life.

As a soul coach, I’ve been helping people around the world have a closer relationship with the soul for decades. Why? Largely, because my personal journey to the soul has been long and winding. You’ve seen the Wizard of Oz? Think of that.

I’ve found that this deeper relationship with yourself translates to greater self-love, living with purpose, and a strong connection to Spirit.

This is soul-centered spirituality and being soulful is the way you come home to the eternal part of you (your soul) that’s been with you all along.

You’re curious about the term soulful and would like to know more about its meaning.

In this article, you’ll learn:

• 7 specific ways to define being soulful.
• How to recognize it in yourself
• Pioneers of soulfulness (Jung, Thomas Moore, Hillman) and how their work shaped mine
• How I brought soulfulness into my own life
• Daily habits and practices for being soulful.

If being soulful resonates with you, The Sunday Scroll is where I write each week about soul-centered spirituality for spiritually hungry souls. Join here.

What does soulful mean?

Soulful means living with your soul at the center of your life.

Your soul is the eternal part of you that is connected always, and being soulful is letting your soul lead you. You love depth and avoid shallow waters. You seek greater meaning in life. And you move through your days with a deep sense of purpose and fulfillment.

However, soulful is a very expansive term and it’s not doing justice to this word, this term, to simplify it in this way. This is why I have listed 7 ways to define soulful below. Please scroll down for the list.

What is a soulful person?

A soulful person is someone who lives with their soul at the center of their life. It shapes how they think, how they love, how they choose, and how they show up every day.

They live with intention, appreciate deeper meaning, and receive both inner and outer guidance in everyday life. They know they don’t operate alone.

We’re Craving More Depth Right Now

Life moves fast, and so much of it feels shallow, surface type living. Soulful living is the antidote.

When you slow down and listen to your soul, depth finds you. Meaning finds you. Connection finds you. The hunger you feel isn’t a flaw. It’s your soul reminding you that it wants more.

For a complete guide to Being True to Yourself including what is the soul, finding yourself, authentic living, soulful, the courage to be yourself, destiny, soul lessons, soul level, read: Being True to Yourself: A Complete Guide to Living from Your Soul.

7 Ways to Define Soulful

Here are 7 ways to define soulful and what it means to be a soulful person, so you can recognize it in yourself and make your life like a bowl of macaroni and cheese: warm, easy, and wonderful.

1. Connection to something bigger

Being soulful is focusing on your relationship with yourself and something bigger than yourself.

Think of something bigger as the sacred otherness of life. It’s the unseen, but felt Presence.

It’s sacred.

Being soulful means this connection is a priority in your life. (I’m speaking from a non-religious point of view.)

When you’re connected to something bigger, fear doesn’t get the last word. This relationship gives you a deeper kind of courage, because you know you’re supported and guided, even when you’re doing something that scares you.

And I’m not saying that makes it easy. I’ve had plenty of moments where I knew what I needed to do, and I still had to take a very deep breath and push through my fear. Or, if I’m being honest, not do it at all, until I can.

My deep dive into the soul became my life’s work. It also became my award-winning book, The Butterfly Silhouette: 12 Principles for Following Your Soul (winner of the San Francisco Book Festival in both Spirituality and Poetry). Soulful living isn’t theory to me. It’s the path I walked, and the one I help others walk now.”

2. Soulful expression

Soulful expression is expressing yourself from the soul, which means you’re speaking and living from a place of authenticity and truth.

It’s the courage to be true to your soul and true to YOU, even when it would be easier to appear a certain way to others…. appearing more impressive, intelligent, clever.

Soulful people don’t just feel deeply, they express it with sincerity, honoring wha they’re feeling instead of judging themselves for having these sticky emotions.

Once I started expressing myself openly, bit by bit, through writing, books, and being honest with people who mattered to me, I felt a new kind of freedom.

3. Living with emotional depth

Living with emotional depth means you pay attention to what you feel instead of brushing it off or being distracted. You don’t pretend you’re fine when you’re not, and you don’t rush yourself through your emotions.

I know, it’s not easy. But, you’re trusting that you’re being held during it.

A soulful person doesn’t fear their emotions or treat them like a something to fix. Emotions just are. You respect your feelings because they help you understand what matters to you and what within you needs care and healing.

Emotional depth also means you’re willing to be honest with yourself. You can admit when something hurts, when you’re proud of yourself, when you miss someone, or when you’ve outgrown a version of your life.

This kind of depth changes your relationships too. Your soulmate connections are more authentic and you want conversations that feel real, safe, and meaningful.

Seeing with soulful eyes

Seeing with soulful eyes is seeing the world from your soul’s perspective. What does that mean? It’s seeing yourself and the world around you without the trauma, hurt, and fear.

How do we possibly do that? Seeing with soulful eyes is a process of soul healing and growth for sure.

Here’s a simple exercise to try: Take your body up 300 feet and watch yourself, or imagine watching your soul, from this higher vantage point.

Watch what’s happening from an elevated spot. As you practice this over time, you’ll notice a shift in how attached you are to the duality of daily life, the ego, and your body.

At a minimum, simply stepping away from a situation for a few moments helps you see more clearly.

4. Meaning over superficialities

Being soulful means you care more about what’s true than what looks good on the outside. You’d rather live in a way that feels true than spend your life impressing people or keeping up appearances.

You don’t live near the surface.

When you value meaning, you stop making choices just to fit in or look successful. You start asking yourself: Does this actually matter to me?

This is one of the biggest shifts in soulful living. You move from proving yourself to being yourself, and your life gets simpler because you’re not constantly trying to manage your ego.

5. Living with purpose

Being soulful means that you know you’re here for a reason, and you want your life to reflect that. You make choices based on what you need to give and learn in this life.

Your soul is the place within you that knows you, loves you, and is rooting for you to fulfill your destiny. When you live on purpose, you embrace that inner knowing and start taking action.

At the end of the day, your soul is here to fulfill a destiny. This involves learning lessons and growing as a result, so ultimately we choose the highest timeline for our destiny.

As a quick reference, here’s my Guide to Spiritual Growth.

6. Soulful self-love

Soulful self-love is when you love your soul as yourself. It’s choosing to be on your own side, even when you’re a mess, learning, or growing slowly.

As you love your soul, you’ll feel more compassion for yourself and forgive your mistakes more easily. You’ll also have more patience with how slowly growth can go, because you’ll understand you’re learning your soul’s lessons in divine time and order.

We can’t hurry these things.

Soulful self-love includes gentle self-honesty. That means you tell yourself the truth without judging yourself and you’re committed to being a good friend to yourself.

Here are my 200 affirmations for self-love to help you reprogram your brain for unconditional self-love.

For a complete guide to Self-Love including self-care, how to connect with  your soul, shadow work, affirmations, the self-love journey, self-compassion, self-forgiveness, embracing imperfections read: A Complete Guide to Self-love: Make Your Soul Smile.

7. You ask for guidance regularly

Rebecca Rosen, a spiritual medium, advises us to ask our spirit guides for clarity and guidance. The relationship with my guides is a priority for me since my husband passed away, and he has become a spirit guide of mine. (This isn’t typically the case with deceased loved ones.)

This spiritual guidance can come from the spiritual or physical world. Turn to the sacred otherness of life in whatever form you believe. And, God, Spirit, our Spirit Guides, etc. send us helpers on earth.

They might be people you can ask for help from, authors with an elevated point of view, teachers, mentors, and leaders who are put on your path to help you along your way.

It’s soulful to stay open to the MANY ways that you are being guided to your highest good and greatest healing.

If you’re in a situation that feels soul crushing, be sure to ask for guidance to find clarity.

Also, we have soul lessons that we are meant to learn, we know this coming into this life and we structure our lives to give us opportunities to learn these lessons. Begin by asking: what is my soul here to learn? Ask your guides, Spirit, your higher self… just ask.

This is what it means to be true to your soul. You stop trying to do it alone. You ask. You listen. You let yourself be guided. Soulful living is not a performance. It’s a practice of trusting the eternal part of you that is connected always.

Soulful affirmations and soulfulness

It feels good to be doing something that makes the world better. But, you might be confused about how to best use your life? Here are some soulful thoughts to commit to your soul’s purpose.

I am helping others from my place of power, clarity, and alignment.

I am walking the path that’s meant for me.

I believe there’s a plan for my life.

I let go of any blocks or vibrations from my past that stand in the way of using my life for the highest good and greatest healing.

I love myself anyway.

I release all shame from the past.

I release guilt over not doing enough.

I depend solely on myself and God for my happiness, security, and inner peace.

By creating more money I’m able to help on a wider scale.

Pioneers of Soulfulness

When I began studying the soul, I read books written by pioneers of soulfulness, like Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

Carl Jung believed, “The soul is the source of our sense of meaning in life, as well as our creativity, thanks to how it fosters our relation to the ‘archetype of the God-image.’”

He’s the author of Memories, Dreams, Reflections and in this book he shares how the soul presents itself in life for further reading.

During a time when I was bored in my career, I found Thomas Moore’s, Care of the Soul: A Guide For Cultivating Depth And Sacredness In Everyday Life, and this was a pivotal point for me.

In my article on my spiritual blog, I list the other soulful influences I’ve had like James Hillman, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pema Chodron, and more.

I dove head first into my deep desire for depth, meaning, and sacredness.

How I brought soulfulness into my life

In my 30’s, I longed for a deeper understanding of myself, my role in the world, and greater self-love.

As I focused on my relationship with my soul, I began understanding my weaknesses, my emotions, and what I felt called to do with my life.

It’s not a simple explanation.

One example of soulfulness was, as I plunged deeper into myself and grew in self-love, I slowly began to accept myself. My prior quickness to be critical of myself was replaced with self-compassion and tolerance.

It’s a process of going deeper with oneself and growing in self-love and confidence to be who you believe you’re meant to be.

And even parts of life that seem devoid of soul, like Artificial Intelligence, there can be some soul buried in there.

Take this short quiz to see how soulful you are!

Soulful music meaning

Soulful music has deep emotion that moves us.

Soulful music is associated with artists like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Luther Vandross, or Barry White.

Sam Cooke has been called the King of Soul for his soulful voice and lyrics that leave you with no doubt that he feels the depths of his music.

Couldn’t Adele, David Bowie, Darryl Hall, or a New Orleans band also be considered soulful?

Maybe, maybe not.

Cambridge dictionary defines soul music as, “Popular music that expresses deep feelings, originally performed by Black Americans” And, “A type of popular music with a strong beat and rhythm that developed from gospel music.”

However, Cambridge does not have a definition of soulful music. Hmmmm….

When you feel a soul connection to the music, story, or genre, you’re probably listening to soulful music.

Soulful is the word of the day

Soulful is the word of the day! No wonder over 5,000 people a month search the dictionary on Google for the words or synonyms to describe it!

A soulful synonym would be words like depth, innate power, richness, connection, wholeness, self-acceptance and expressing deep feeling, more than usual emotion.

A soulful adjective would be words like depth, meaning, emotional, non physical, and truth.

Being a soulful person is similar to soulful music in that you’re not superficial and there is true substance to you.

And ironically, it’s also expressing profound thoughts.

FAQ: Soulful Meaning

Final thoughts

Every email I’ve sent for the past five years ends with… to your full expression.

Expressing yourself is at the center of being soulful.

Our souls love when we express who we are. And not from an ego place, but from a deeper place.

One way to connect with this deep part of you is to go out and be in nature. In nature you can access the quiet, still place within you, which helps the soul feel nourished.

This is what it means to be true to your soul, this eternal part of you that is connected always.

Again, being soulful is FEELING on a deep and true level that you are a unique person, worthy of love and with something special to share.