New Year, New Me: Simple Steps to Spiritual Wellness

In her Faith In The Home column, Marriage and Family Life Coordinator at the Diocese of East Anglia, Dr Antonia Braithwaite encourages us to focus on spiritual self-improvement alongside physical wellness. Dr Braithwaite suggests setting practical, achievable goals and integrating positive habits into daily life.

New Year, New Me!

The beginning of a new year is often taken as an opportunity to kickstart new routines and form new plans usually aimed at setting in place habits for health and wellness, for travel and new hobbies. Websites and social media posts abound with ideas for practical and creative ways to make the new year your “best yet”!

But what about focusing on developing habits for spiritual self-improvement? As important as physical self-improvement is, dieting and exercise and developing skills, our spiritual lives also need nourishment and attention. None of us can claim that we are where we should be in terms of our personal holiness; there is no standing still in the spiritual life, there is only growth or decline, and we can all benefit from assessing every now and then whether our daily habits are conducive to spiritual growth, or whether we have slipped into some bad habits and changes need to be made.

A good exercise is to sit down with a pen and paper and jot down five goals that are practical and conducive to spiritual growth, and also how you can achieve them.

As an example:

1. Goal: Pray a morning offering every day
How I will achieve this: I will find a morning offering prayer and set it as the background on my phone, so I will see it each morning and remember.

2. Goal: Read the daily Gospel reading
How I will achieve this: I will sign up to a mailing list that will email me the Gospel each morning, and then read this before doing anything else on my phone (example: www.christian.art will send you the daily gospel reading and an associated art reflection each morning).

3. Goal: Read the Bible with the children
How I will achieve this: I will buy a Catholic children’s Bible and set aside time on one evening every week to sit together and read the stories (or just read one of the Gospels from a regular Bible).

4. Goal: Pray the Rosary
How I will achieve this: I will choose a specific time in the morning/evening on specific day(s), and then set a reminder. If needed I will find an online rosary that I can pray with (on YouTube or Hallow app) or play it in the car while I am driving.

5. Goal: Go to confession monthly
How I will achieve this: I will note down in the diary the next time I am due to go to confession and then make sure I keep that morning/afternoon free so that I can go.

These are just examples; there are many other things that even busy parents and families can do together: attending Mass more often and not just Sundays, spending time in silent reflection on the gospel, turning off the TV in the evening and pray together a family, singing a hymn together before bed…

Let a new year be an opportunity for taking stock and making changes for a new holier you!

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