Spiritual fitness can help you leverage your value system, spirituality, and/or religion for peak performance, readiness, and resilience. Just like lifting weights a few times a year won’t make you physically fit, spiritual fitness is something to regularly attend to in order to be mission-ready. Building your spiritual fitness will help provide the resources you need to carry on during times of stress, hardship, tragedy, and even when things are going well. While what it means to be spiritually fit can be deeply personal and different for everyone, the benefits can also help with unit cohesion and keep family members close.
One way to build spiritual fitness is through daily reflection, prayer, or meditation. Think about how your answers to the following questions can help guide your core beliefs, resilience, and skills through the challenges of military life.
Use the following checklist to set spiritual goals for yourself, as well as a personal AAR to decide what’s going well or where you need to take a different course of action. Tip: Print it out and post it somewhere you’ll see it each day, or use it as wallpaper for your phone or a screen saver for your computer.
Published on: February 25, 2020
At the start of each day, reflect on these questions to help enhance your performance and well-being. At the end of each day, use them as a personal AAR to grow your spiritual fitness.
- Be grateful. What are you thankful for and how will you show it? What do you want to make sure you do NOT take for granted?
- Serve others. What personal strengths and gifts can you share? What’s one thing you can do today to make the world a little bit better?
- Overcome challenges. What do you need to accept? Where can you take action? Who or what helps give you the strength to persevere and grow?
- Forgive yourself and others. What anger, pain, guilt, or hatred do you want to release? What can you learn? What do you hope for in the future?
- Live your values. What values do you want to live out? What drives you to be your best? What are your temptations? How can you avoid them?
- Connect with something greater. How will you take time to deeply engage with something larger than yourself? How can you meaningfully connect with others, nature, or a higher power?