In our Catholic New Year’s Goals webinar, we covered many tips on how to elevate your daily spiritual life.

(You can watch the replay here.)

The single best thing that you can do is to commit to a schedule of daily mental prayer. Here are tips in no particular order:

1. Find a place in your home where you pray. Designate a space.
2. Find a time in the day when you pray. The prophets and the saints usually got up early to pray. Set your alarm clock earlier (go to bed earlier) and wake up to be with Christ in the morning.
3. Create a morning ritual that includes prayer. I recommend that it include Scriptural reading, also. The Bible is how God usually talks to you. “God never talks to me,” people often say. My response is, “Are you reading the Bible?” God talks to you in Scripture.
4. Use a timer on your phone. Start at 5 minutes and work up to 30 minutes daily.
5. Mental prayer is using your mind (“mental”) to speak to God. Tell him everything. Speak with your heart. Ask Him questions about your life. Ask Him theology questions? Ask Him to do more than you expect. Don’t be afraid to ask for insanely crazy requests. He likes to answer those best because they prove that we didn’t accomplish it.
6. Keep a New Testament or spiritual reading book nearby. If you’re mind loses track and wanders. Use this book to read a few sentences to focus again on Christ or spiritual thoughts.
7. Use your daily time to fill yourself with positivity. The people that I know that pray 30-60 minutes every day are very positive thinkers. Why? Because they spend time with God and learn that all things are possible through Christ. Faith and prayer build confidence and a “get it done” attitude. The most pessimistic (and lazy) people are the people who do not pray or do not spend time alone in silence. “Be still and know that I am God.”
8. Make daily prayer your identity. Repeatedly tell yourself: “I am a person who talks to the Trinity every day. That is who I am and I always do it.” Become what you are.

[reminder]We can evangelize every soul on earth if we pray and fill ourselves every day with Christ’s resurrected power. How do you best plan your goal of daily mental prayer?[/reminder]

(You can watch Catholic New Years Goals Webinar replay here.)