51 Spiritual Goals To Thrive In (2024)

You’ve been taught to chase after your life’s dreams, but no one taught you how to nurture the part of you that can’t be seen; your soul, spirit, intellect, will, ego, energy, emotions, conscience, and more.

Read on to discover how setting spiritual goals can help you thrive and enhance your life.

Let’s dive right into it.

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Spiritual Goals
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1. Practice Gratitude

This spiritual goal is one of the best ways to begin. Feel gratitude for the simplest things in your life that bring you some level of joy.

2. Recognize Your Ego

It’s what keeps us prepared for physical survival, however, the ego can take over and drive suffering.

3. Spread Kindness

Take action to help someone that promises no reward. Just a smile or a genuinely kind word could make all the difference to bring peace to someone.

4. Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness involves living in the moment and observing your own human experience through all five of your senses.

You can handle challenges in a relaxed and effective way, opens doors to help you authentically understand yourself, increases your mental stability, etc.

5. Self Reflection

Reflect on your decisions and actions each day as a spiritual goal. Look at them from an objective viewpoint and ask yourself what you could do better.

Stay objective to the story or emotions of the day so you can see clearly.

Related: Goals For Next Year And How To Set Them In A SMART Way

6. Write A Journal

Intentional reflection and writing can help you assess where you’ve been and where you’re going.

Reflective moments to writing in a journal can actually challenge the beliefs you once felt so sure about. Then you can adopt new beliefs more in line with who you really are.

7. Know Your Values

Your values are what make life meaningful to you. Get to know what they are and let the importance of them ground you.

8. Meditate Daily

Spend 5 or 10 minutes a day meditating to sense your connection with something bigger than yourself–or a higher realm of some sort. 

You will gain clarity, and work toward connecting with your highest self.

9. Freedom To Choose

Exercise your freedom to choose your thoughts and beliefs. You don’t have to believe every thought you think. Question them, as a spiritual goal, and decide if they fit your values.

10. Show Empathy

Empathy creates a new level of patience, understanding and compassion toward others by sensing what they may be feeling. Sometimes not even a word needs to be spoken.

11. Get To Know Yourself

Know the quality of your thoughts and how they make you feel in your body.

12. Validate Your Emotions

Your experiences together with your thoughts and beliefs create your emotions. So validate and accept them as they come up, let them pass through you and let them go.

Holding onto the story of the experience and the emotion from it only brings you suffering. 

13. Cultivate Tolerance

Ask another person to explain their beliefs or perspective so you can try to understand their point of view.

Look at your similarities with others rather than your differences.

Spiritual
Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash

14. Volunteer

Volunteering in your community will help take you out of your comfort zone and allow you to be a part of something that’s bigger than yourself.

It’ll also help you make a difference to people in your community in a way that you may never truly understand.

15. Incorporate Rituals

Create small, yet meaningful habits, such as gratitude before meals, evening prayer, reading inspirational books or scriptures, or whatever lifts your spirit.

16. Let Go Of Unhealthy Habits

Mindfulness helps you become more aware of unhealthy habits you never thought about before.

Choose to let them go to the past and replace them with more healthy ones.

Related: Dreams Vs Goals: Differences & Strategies To Succeed

17. Radiate Peace

Identify ways to make your relationships, thoughts, and actions more peaceful. Work to ease tensions in different areas of your life to advance your spiritual growth.

Avoid unnecessary negativity while setting firm boundaries, peacefully, on things you will and will not tolerate.

18. Observe How Interconnected Everything Is

Spiritual growth necessitates looking inwards, yet it’s important to also open your focus and sense that you’re part of a larger whole.

You’re connected to people, things, and the universe in a significant way that touches your life and the lives of others. This enlightening realization supports your actions, beliefs, and thoughts for growth.

19. Extend Grace

Help someone else on their spiritual journey.

Extend grace to someone who needs a break, or help someone understand the pieces of their shattered dreams.

20. Spend More Time In Nature

Humans are a part of nature and we’ve somehow separated ourselves from it. We’ve set out to control it, rather than work with it.

Spending time in nature helps you remember and connect to who you really are.

21. Walk Barefoot On The Ground

The energy of our bodies aligns with the energy of the Earth. Walking barefoot allows the Earth’s energy to flow up and merge with our energy. 

Benefits are a healthier body, mind and spirit.

22. Life Always Works In Your Favour

Even in challenging circumstances Life is working to help you see who you really are. Recognize that Life gives us opportunities to be the light in the world through our challenges.

23. Sit In Stillness

Sitting in stillness just means to be with your mind clear of thinking and notice the sounds you hear and what you see without labelling them.

Just notice everything your senses pick up and as they pass, let them go.

24. Observe Without Labelling

Observing without labelling, just notice there a sound without labelling it as chirping, a bird or a motor. Just look without labelling the things. 

This is a practice done without letting the mind engage. You are just the awareness.

25. Grounding

Connecting to the Earth’s energy is done two ways. One is by standing or walking barefoot on the ground and connecting to the Earth physically.

Another is by sitting inside and visualizing your energy reaching down through your feet and into the Earth. Your energy then spans out like roots into the ground.

26. Be Open To Not Knowing

Many of us feel safer knowing how a circumstance will go. Although if you can let go of the need to know how and just keep the feeling of the vision in your heart, you are being the master.

27. Sing, Dance or Skip!

These activities lower stress, stimulate an immune response, increase your pain threshold, improve heart and lung function, etc. 

They’re also fun ways to reach your spiritual goal. They lift your vibration leading to more optimism, self worth, and gratitude. Well worth singing a few bars, even if you think you sing badly!

28. Release The Victim Mentality

Feeling sorry for yourself keeps you stuck in a victim or martyr mindset. This disconnects you from spiritual growth.

Follow the steps to letting go of unhealthy habits.

29. Uplifting Music

Upbeat sounds and lyrics naturally help you raise your spirits and if the lyrics are spiritual it can also bring you closer to connecting to your sacred side.

30. Nature Sounds

Hearing nature sounds can help connect you to the sacredness of the Earth. 

The physical benefits are reduced pain, lower stress, enhanced mood and better cognitive performance.

31. Appreciate Beauty

There is beauty everywhere if you look closely enough. When you change your perspective, the things you look at tend to change. 

Begin to appreciate beauty and you will see beauty in more things, lifting your resolve to thrive.

32. Take In A Sunrise

The awe you feel at witnessing a sunrise helps you plug into the stillness to see there is something bigger we’re all a part of.

33. Join A Group Of Like-Minded People

Surround yourself with people whose goals and aspirations are similar to yours. You won’t feel alone in your attempts and you’ll have accountability buddies.

You’ll be helping each other.

34. Forgive

Holding on to grudges and past hurts only hurts yourself. It does nothing to the other person. 

Decide whether it’s really worth it to you to hold onto these things. Then let go and forgive.

35. Become More Discerning

Discernment is the ability to spot the difference between right and wrong, truth and falsehood. 

It requires gaining a strong sense of who you are and understanding motives. This can be achieved by spending more time in devotion and meditation.

36. Tune Into Your Intuition

Intuition is the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning. 

Maintaining a relationship with the universe through devotion can help you become more intuitive.

37. Create A Prayer Routine

Prayer is communication between humans and God. Goals to unload your burdens in prayer or by praying for others can be made routine.

If you don’t believe in God, prayers can simply be offered to the universe or the energy around you.

Related: Best Free Printable Goal Charts & Templates

38. Let Go Of Control

Your ego loves to fool you into believing you can control and fix everything in your life and even other people, leaving you or others suffering in some way.

Understand there are many things beyond you that you have no control over, and it’s okay. You may feel relieved.

39. Observe Fasting

Fasting can help you maintain your focus when observing spiritual commitments, as well as improve your health as this is a good way to detoxify your body.

40. Learn More About The Universe

Set goals to read and study books about the universe and getting to know it better. Knowing more about the universe is one of the hallmarks of spirituality.

Setting Spiritual Goals
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41. Visit Spiritual Sites

Most of the world’s religions have holy places or places of historical significance attached to them.

Plan to visit such sites alone or with a small group to help you connect deeper with the stories that form the practices of such religions.

42. Seek Spiritual Answers To Life’s Questions

Questions often come up in the human mind, like: Where do people go when they die? Will the world come to an end? Is there judgment after death? 

Set a goal to unravel the truths to such questions and form your own opinion about them.

43. Detach From Suffering

If you’re caught up in repeating the “story” of what happened either in your head or out loud, you are holding yourself back from connecting to the deeper you.

Whatever was painful in the past, make it your intention to finally release it and view it from an objection perspective. Close the book on that story and cultivate things that make you thrive in your spiritual life.

44. Mindful Walking

Walk so you can press pause on life and just be in the moment. Take in all the sights and sounds with your senses and let the beauty around you arise.

Mindful walking is a practice that can serve many great benefits.

45. Listen To Your Body

Emotions are a signal your body gives you to let you know whether your thoughts or beliefs are in line with your higher self or not.

Once you recognize this signal, you can allow that emotion to move through you and let a thought or belief that feels better take its place.

46. Spiritual Quotes

Keep some uplifting spiritual quotes handy to listen to so you can go to them whenever you recognize it’s time to connect to your higher self again.

47. Recognize Your Energy Body

It’s less obvious to pay attention to your energetic body because it’s more subtle and unseen.

Mindfully tuning into subtle signs and signals in and around you helps you learn to keep all your energy centers aligned.

48. Practice Yoga

The intention behind yoga is to harmonize your body, mind, and soul. The physical benefits are well known, but it also helps you connect with your body and the emotions stored deep within.

Yoga encourages non-judgement and an acceptance about where you are in life with the knowledge that you’re building a strong foundation for a more empowering life.

49. Deepen Your Religious Practice

Whatever religion speaks to you, deepen it by learning more about its history and the deeper meanings and teachings.

50. Clear Your Space

You constantly exchange energy and information with others and it’s natural that you may end up feeling drained or overwhelmed.

Clear your energetic and mental space, for example, by smudging with incense, sage, cedar, or palo santo. Clearing clutter in your living space also clears your energy.

51. Unplug From Technology 

While online technology is a blessing, it can distract you from your goals if you constantly check social media, or go online, even without noticing.

Join the movement toward digital detoxes, by setting time aside to unplug from technology and internet service. 

Related: 100+ Monthly Goal Ideas That Will Change Your Life

What Can I Do For Spiritual Growth?

Set spiritual goals by exploring your core, and asking yourself questions like, Who am I? What’s my purpose? What do I value most?

Set goals to think more deeply about yourself and allow you to notice things that will help you achieve fulfillment. 

Set spiritual goals to look for deeper meanings in your life and analyze patterns to help you see you have control over your destiny.

Take five to 10 minutes to meditate each day when you wake up, your lunch break or before bed. 

Spiritual goals will free your mind and foster a stronger relationship with your spiritual wellness.

What Are Some Examples Of Personal Goals?

Goal setting helps us achieve better results and to feel motivated by taking responsibility for our actions.

Some examples of personal goal setting are:

  • In the new year, I will spend more free time with family
  • To grow and mature as a person
  • Develop new skills to be successful professionally
  • Express love to my family more often
  • Write in my journal every day

Smart Spiritual Goals

S.M.A.R.T. goals are written with the following criteria so you can have greater success with your goal setting:

  • Specific: Be specific enough so you’ll know when you’ve achieved your goals.
  • Measurable: Keep track of your goals by having a way to measure it.
  • Achievable: Set your goals high enough to challenge yourself and push you past your comfort zone, yet not so high they’re impossible to achieve.
  • Realistic: Make sure your goals line up with your vision which is crucial to accomplishing them.
  • Time-related: Whether a week or a month, time based goals help you pace yourself as you move towards your desired outcome.

For example:

  • Overall Goal: I want to grow spiritually and thrive.

S.M.A.R.T. Goal: I will focus on my spiritual habits and begin by spending more time in nature. I’ll do this for one week and I’ll notice a change when I’m successful.

Related: A Goal Without A Plan Is Just A Wish

How Can I Focus On Spiritual Growth?

Set an intention for spiritual growth and write down your spiritual goals.

An idea could be to involve your family and community to grow with you spiritually.

Join an online community for ideas and connections to help you stay on track. The bottom line is that growing spiritually is relational in nature. 

Your spiritual goals will connect you to your direct relationship to God, the Divine, the Universe or whatever label you feel comfortable using.

Spiritual Goals For The Atheist

It’s often thought that atheists have no spirituality. Spirituality is simply an adjective used to describe the search for one’s place in the universe.

Spiritual goals are the intentions you have to discover your purpose and live a meaningful life.

It doesn’t matter if you follow the teachings of Christ, Buddah, or even if you’re not religious at all and don’t believe in God.

Setting spiritual goals makes you feel connected to the Universe, the world and the people in it. Atheists get that, and it’s essential to our species’ psychological makeup to feel this way.

What Is The Ultimate Goal Of Spirituality?

Goals like, getting the new car, the bigger house or your sister to be more loving does not bring “happiness” if you haven’t done the work to focus on feeling fulfilled.

The ultimate spiritual goals are to be enlightened enough to allow the challenges that are inevitable in life, to come and go while enduring much less suffering.

Join the many people who are finding their Divine connection and freeing themselves from mental health issues.

Let kindness fill your heart and have the intention to serve others. These will help you focus on your spiritual goals to thrive.

If this article has set your mind to be curious about what your spiritual goals are for thriving, then please forward this to a friend to support ✅ their journey. Or comment below ✅✅ on what your spiritual goals are.

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About The Author

Bijan Kholghi is a certified life coach with the Milton Erickson Institute Heidelberg (Germany). He helps clients and couples reach breakthroughs in their lives by changing subconscious patterns. His solution-oriented approach is based on Systemic- and Hypnotherapy.

Bijan