What is wellness? why do we need it and how can we get it?

What is wellness? why do we need it and how can we get it? The main focus of this whole blog is wellness, but why and how is it related to health?

What is wellness and why are we talking about it?

Let’s look at wellness as a journey, a journey to thrive not just survive. Wellness is an act, an act of practicing healthy habits daily. It is a holistic practice for better physical, mental and spiritual well-being. But how is this linked to our health? It is linked by the active pursuit of overall health; we all want to be ‘healthy’ but what does healthy mean? It’s not just living without disease, healthy is holistic choices, behaviours and lifestyle. All of these which lead to our ‘wellness’.

It’s important that we don’t just look at wellness as being happy, that we look at it deeper and integrate it into our daily lives. So, let’s take a look how.

How do we integrate it into our lives?

We can ensure wellness in our lives by doing a number of things. The main aspects been mental health, self-love, nutrition, exercise, spiritual, emotional and social. Let’s not confuse it with well-being and happiness and look at it as a journey, an active state of making the decisions to give ourselves health, love, success and much more. We are actively making decisions now and taking steps to a healthier lifestyle, better choices and healthy mind. But wellness isn’t static, its not just one thing, its many things to create a balance. Lets look further into it.

Dimensions of wellness

Look at this as an ongoing process of evolving as a person. With a multi-dimensional approach taking into account, emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, occupational, physical, social and spiritual well-being. Each one is connected and creates a balance which in turn gives us ideal health and well-being, our own ideal wellness.

We must look at each dimension separately, how we can evolve in these areas?. Avoid thinking that you need to ‘change’ and try to look at it as evolving and growing as a person. Thinking you need to change may cause negative feelings about yourself and that is never the goal. So, what can you do to grow? What can you do to grow in your emotional wellness? This may be looking at how you react in certain situations, do you judge, do you speak negatively or positively? How can you grow and start to react and think more positive. do you judge because of insecurities in yourself? How can you change this? It may not be an easy step and may mean looking into your childhood for where these feeling came from. But remember it’s a journey, an active pursuit. Financial wellness, do you look at your finances negatively? If so, why? Is this something you have taken on from childhood, maybe your parents didn’t have spare money while you were growing up and you have a mindset that looks negatively at money. Physical wellness, do you skip workouts thinking that that is self-love, do you eat that chocolate bar for the quick hit of dopamine?. Self-love is discipline and doing things for your future self and future health that will dramatically improve your wellness.

Take a look at each dimension and try to see how you can evolve in that area and grow. Journalling may be a good habit to adopt, meditation, morning routines, diet, list making, even surrounding yourself with positive people may be a step you need to take. Take each one and look at how you can integrate it into your daily life. Just remember this won’t be instant, like that dopamine from that chocolate bar, instead this will be something that is an active state, something that you pursue and will keep evolving and growing as you do as a person.

Growth not change

As you start growing in each area you will see a balance happening in your life, you will see wellness in your life. It will bring harmony and peace, but what are your next steps into reaching this? Look at 1 or 2 things at a time, don’t get overwhelmed. One step at a time. People have busy lives, so look at what will make the biggest impact to start with, is that food? Or your environment? Everyone is different and each individual will choose a different area to start with. Give yourself a week or two on each area, not everything has to be done in that time, it’s about the journey and what works for you.

Lets finish up

We are here to thrive and not just survive, we are here to enjoy this little life and to keep questioning how to get more out of it. There are ways to take control of our future self and wellness, different dimensions to look at and to truly grow as a person. Just remember it is about growing as a person, not changing. We can get what we want from life, we can be happy and succeed. So, take some time and think about your future wellness, how are you going to start making that growth as a person? We will dive deeper into this in our next blogs.

If you want to take a little look further about me and about why my wellness journey started then just click on here.