As I begin a new Pilates Challenge and Lent is looming I was reflecting on goal-setting. It can be so hard to stick to the goals we set. Most of us do not fail at goals because we are lazy. We fail because we are overexposed.
Modern life has us living like houses with every window open. People can see in. Noise can get in. Expectations (our own and everyone else’s) wander through the rooms. And somewhere in that bright, drafty space, we try to build a life of intention.
A goal, at its simplest, is a form of naming.
This is what I am choosing.
This is what I am refusing.
This is who I am trying to become.
But Catholics, if we are honest, often carry a quiet suspicion of goals. Not because we think discipline is bad, but because we know how easily spiritual life can be bent into performance. We know how quickly a desire for growth becomes a desire for control. We know the taste of setting lofty intentions and then feeling like we have disappointed God when we fail. Good old Catholic guilt.
So I want to suggest something gentler and more demanding at the same time.
Not goals as a self-improvement project.
Goals as a vow of attention.
What You Look At, You Become
Spiritual goals are not just ‘add prayer’ to an already crowded life, like a vitamin you forget to take. A spiritual goal is closer to re-ordering: deciding what gets first claim on your interior world.
Because formation rarely happens in the big moments.
It happens in what you rehearse.
The thought you return to.
The story you tell yourself when you’re tired.
The way you speak to the person in front of you when you’re late.
The tiny permissions you give yourself.
The tiny denials you practice. (I did mention that Lent was coming).
A practical theology of goal-setting begins here: not with ambition, but with anthropology. We are not saved by willpower; we are trained by what we repeatedly love. So the question beneath every goal is not ‘Can I do this?’ It is ‘What will this do to my heart?’
There is a moment in 1 Kings at Horeb when the prophet Elijah – fresh from public courage – collapses into private despair. He sits under a tree and tells God, in effect, ‘I’m done.’ He is depleted. He is afraid. He cannot see a way forward.
And God does something that is both utterly ordinary and deeply theological.
God feeds him.
Then lets him sleep.
Then feeds him again.
Before a strategy, before a motivational speech, before a five-year vision plan – bread and rest.
This is not a minor detail. It is a revelation of how God works with the human person. God does not bypass our humanity to make us holy. He enters it. He supports it. He heals it. He respects the limits of a body and the bruising of a soul.
If you are struggling to keep goals, the first question may not be, What’s wrong with my discipline? It may be, What is my depletion asking me to admit?
Sometimes the most spiritual goal is not more.
It is enough.
Enough sleep.
Enough water.
Enough silence to stop living as if your worth is measured in output.
A saint is not someone who never hits a wall. A saint is someone who learns to meet God there. We tend to speak about balance like it’s a tidy equation: work + exercise + prayer + family + friends + self-care = thriving. But anyone who has lived a real life knows balance is seasonal, not static. Some weeks are triage. Some months are endurance. Some years are simply a long obedience in the same direction. What you need is not a perfect schedule. You need a rule of life — a few non-negotiables that hold you steady when everything else shifts.
Not harsh rules. Human ones. It is not ‘I will become a different person by next month.’ It is ‘I will return to what is true today.’ Spiritual Goals Aren’t About Impressing God God is not your manager. Grace is not a KPI. The point of spiritual goals is not to build a religious résumé. The point is communion. Union. Becoming the kind of person who can receive love and give it without distortion. So choose goals that make you more available to God and more gentle with people. Choose goals that put a small leash on your worst instincts. Choose goals that create room for the Holy Spirit to interrupt you.
And if you fall behind (you will), refuse the drama of self-condemnation. Repentance in the Christian tradition is not theatrical self-hatred. It is returning. Turning back. Reorienting. Every time you begin again, you are practicing resurrection. That’s a vow of attention.
Eat. Rest. Pray. Begin again.
The Female Theologian 