New Year’s Resolutions for Spiritual Growth

I’ve committed publicly (on Facebook) to going sugar-free this year. What are your New Year’s resolutions? What will you do in 2016 to support your spiritual growth?

You might wonder why I equate eliminating sugar from my diet with spiritual growth. The reason is that your soul sees mind, body, and spirit as one. From its point of view, what happens to one affects the other.

When you do something beneficial to the care and well-being of your body, your soul feels that it’s being nurtured too. It will respond with positive emotions. That’s why you’ll never hear someone say, “I gave up smoking and now I feel really bad about myself.”

In the same way, have you ever known anyone who takes regular exercise, drinks smoothies, and meditates daily say something like, “I was so much happier as a couch potato.”

Your emotions are the voice of your soul. When you commit to a New Year’s resolution, your soul rewards you with positive feelings. And the great thing is that you don’t have to climb Everest to start feeling good about yourself. You can start with something small like making a commitment to tidy your workspace for ten minutes every Friday, or meditating for a few minutes every day.

Change is, from the perspective of your soul, something to welcome. Your soul sees change as inevitable, and always wants you to embrace it rather than resist it. And when your soul feels that you’re stuck in a rut, and life isn’t working as well for you as it should, it sees change – however small – as the key to creating spiritual growth.

To get mind, body, and spirit working like a finely tuned machine, you need to have all three parts engaged. To stimulate your mind, a New Year’s resolution might be to switch off the TV and read more. Getting your body involved might mean little more than getting off the sofa for twenty minutes and taking a walk around the block. And ten minutes of meditation every day is all it takes to begin connecting with your spiritual self.

When you achieve a small goal, it makes it easier to tackle the bigger ones. A ten-minute walk might lead to daily workouts at the gym. And when you honor your body in such a way, your soul will thank you by giving you feelings of enhanced self-respect. And the more you experience that sense of self-worth, the easier it will become. The key to spiritual growth is to recognize that your soul sees mind, body, and spirit as a bundle, with each part connected to the others. Nurture your mind with a good book, and you feel physically and emotionally better. Spend an hour doing yoga, and all three parts align with one another.

DEAR DIARY: I’ve been sugar-free for three days now. I feel better – physically, mentally and emotionally – and that’s making it easier to get past the cravings. I realize I don’t need 72% dark chocolate every day to be happy. Time for a meditation now.

Do have any New Year’s resolutions you’d like to share? I’d love to hear about your desires for change in 2016, and how you think they might help nurture your spiritual growth!