Spiritual fitness

Hello Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) family! We, your YPG Religious Affairs Officers, would like to talk to you about spiritual fitness! We all have gone through tough times such as moving away from a community where you have built strong connections, the struggles of teleworking, hardships in your life, and even tragedies. How do we overcome all the stress, confusion and discomfort from these we ask ourselves? By building our personal spiritual fitness.

Spiritual fitness is about developing your coping and resilience skills through understanding your own beliefs and how you interact with the world. Spiritual fitness can help you leverage your value system, spirituality, and/or religious beliefs for peak performance, readiness, and resilience. Just like we go to the gym to lift weights, if you only lift weights a few times a year, it won’t make you physically fit. Spiritual fitness needs to be worked on frequently in order to be mission ready. Not everyone shares the same purpose, spirituality is something personal. You may ask yourself, “How do I achieve this? How can I successfully strengthen my spiritual fitness?” The answer to this question is not as simple as one would think. The reason for this is that we are all different, we think different, our purposes in life are not the same. But, even though we may not all share the same purpose, we do share the similar goals. Your spiritual fitness is typically healthier if you practice your faith, beliefs and other activities that support your spirituality. Some strategies we can focus on to help build individual spiritual fitness are to overcome challenges, be grateful, forgive yourself and others, live your values, connect with something greater and serve others. To begin the journey, take small steps consistently. It’s a journey for your life time, make progress day to day.