Spiritual well-being reinforces every other aspect of soldiers’ health and readiness, the chief of the personnel branch in the Office of the Army Chief of Chaplains said.

“Spiritual readiness is a keystone habit,” Col. Douglas Ball said Dec. 4 during a Hot Topic on Holistic Health and Fitness hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army. “People who participate in communal religion on a weekly basis tend to be healthier, live longer [and] have more resilient marriages. … They work better with larger society, and they have lower rates of depression and/or suicide.”

The Army’s Holistic Health and Fitness system prioritizes five aspects of wellness, including physical, mental, nutritional, spiritual and sleep readiness to enable soldier and unit readiness.

Developing inner strength begins with understanding your purpose, said Lt. Gen. Brian Eifler, the deputy Army chief of staff for personnel, G-1.

“Everybody’s put on this planet for a purpose, and finding that out and figuring out what that is and pursuing that is really important,” he said. “We exist to fight and win our nation's wars, and that's a team purpose that we all get together and get behind. But even deeper than that, what is my personal purpose? Some people struggle with that.”

To intentionally cultivate a culture of spiritual readiness, support and modeling from leadership is key, said Col. Shmuel Felzenberg, command chaplain for U.S. Army Transformation and Training Command.

Leaders can do this by "modeling it, giving it buy-in and letting soldiers and their families see and know about it” and by “intentional planning” of spiritual fitness activities, he said. “Every single soldier is ultimately responsible for and owns that spiritual battle space within that. It is a never-ending developmental approach and work in progress.”

Being receptive to feedback and being authentic also enables soldiers to grow more effectively, Eifler said. “You’ve got to continue to develop yourself and really be humble enough to listen to other people and grow yourself,” he said. “You've got to be who you are. You can't put up a front, you can't fake this, right? You can't fake this, because everybody will know, especially soldiers. Soldiers know.”

Units with spiritually grounded soldiers have pride in their units and will succeed even under less-than-ideal conditions, Eifler said. “The more you have that purpose and that sense of identity, the less likely you're going to be thwarted when things go south,” he said. “Who is going to survive? Who is going to come back when the chips are down? That's who we want in our military.”