What do the words health and wellness mean to you personally? Have you ever truly thought about it?
I hear many people define health as the absence of illness, injury, or disease. Sounds good. I sure would like to be healthy… This has been a goal of mine for years!
Let’s compare that to overall wellness. A common definition of wellness is the state of being in good health, especially as an actively pursued goal.
In other words, wellness is much more than just the absence of illness. It is the health-promoting behaviors you commit to that allow you to live life at your fullest potential. It is a conscious choice that you actively work towards throughout your days, weeks and lifetime to commit to the habits and routines that support your overall wellness in all areas of life, not just your physical health.
I’ve noticed that my personal relationship with health and wellness has changed many times over the last 3 decades as I’ve aged and evolved into the young lady I am today. As a teenager and young adult, I notice I used to only consider my physical health. What sports did I play, how often did I get to the gym, what style workouts were suggested and popular at the time, etc.
As I entered my late 20’s, I started to understand the importance of proper nutrition, hydration and sleep patterns. I also began to observe my emotional health as I recognized the severity of my anxiety as I navigated the real world, career choices, relationship challenges, etc. At the age of 30 or so, I notice that my physical and emotional wellbeing were both on point to the best of my abilities, however now I was stressing out about my financial state of affairs and my disconnect with the social side of my life as I commit to being a mother of 2 young girls.
This pattern of observing myself continues to this day as I deepen my awareness of the importance of living a life I love and how there is so much more to health and wellness than what you eat and how often you workout. I’ve spent the last 13 years of my life trying to figure out just how to prioritize my time and energy to allow for growth and transformation and enjoyment in all areas of my life. I found myself eager and excited to put together this ever evolving puzzle.
Listed below are 8 Pillars of Wellness, in no particular order, commonly suggested as being the most important categories to focus your time and attention on when striving for complete health and overall wellness.
Social Wellness: a sense of connection and belonging
Emotional Wellness: a sense of confidence in your ability to control your feelings and behaviors as you navigate life
Spiritual Wellness: a sense of clear values and beliefs you hold as true that help you find meaning and purpose in life
Environmental Wellness: the people you spend your time with (family, friends. co-workers, etc) and the physical places you spend your time in (car, home, office, etc)
Occupational Wellness: a sense of satisfaction with your choice of work
Intellectual Wellness: a commitment to seeking out ways to use your personal knowledge and skills to cultivate mental growth.
Financial Wellness: a sense of financial security and freedom to live life fully.
Physical Wellness: making consistent positive choices with your nutrition, hydration, fitness and sleep patterns
Do you take the time to observe and reflect on exactly how you are showing up in each of these areas of your life?
After hundreds of conversations surrounding this topic over the years, I created a simple tool that gives a clear, visual display of just how balanced one’s life actually is. This tool is called The Wellness Wheel and the questionnaire includes a list of the 10 categories I value most when it comes to achieving complete wellness.
These specific areas include Nutrition, Hydration, Sleep, Movement, Time Management, Personal Development, Meditation/Affirmations, Goal setting for both your Personal and Professional Life along with your general Happiness and Fulfillment from day to day.
The goal is to honestly rate yourself on a scale of 1 (struggling to feel satisfied in this area) to 10 (completely satisfied and crushing it!)
After rating yourself in each category, you simply plug in the numbers on the actual chart to get a clear visual of how balanced your wheel actually is.
I know for a fact this can feel like complete overwhelm as you try to decide how and where to begin to create positive changes! When you look at your wheel, you’ll see areas where you’re totally crushing it. You’ll also notice the areas that need some serious attention.
Best case scenario is that your wheel begins to even out! We’re looking for progress, not perfection. We’re looking for simple changes and upgrades that you can commit to consistently as you start to increase your expectations of what you want for yourself and your life.
So, what can you do right now to further pursue your relationship with wellness? Here are just a few simple suggestions that have the potential to lead to big results:
Nutrition: Focus on upgrading your nutritional habits by adding vegetables to each and every meal. Start to eliminate or significantly reduce the 5 common inflammatory foods such as flour, grains, sugar, dairy and alcohol.
Hydration: Drink ½ of your body weight in ounces of water each day. Start to eliminate or significantly reduce your intake of coffee, sweetened beverages and alcohol.
Sleep: Aim for 7+ hours each night with a similar sleep/wake time each day.
Movement: Move your body in some way (walk, run, structured workout) for 30 minutes each day, 5+ days per week.
Time Management: Set aside time at the beginning of each week to intentionally plan out the logistics of your routines and responsibilities.
Personal Development: Set aside 20-30 minutes each day to read a book, listen to an inspiring podcast or enroll in an online course that will support your personal growth and transformation.
Meditation/Affirmations: Quiet your mind and guide your inner dialogue using the tools of meditation and written affirmations. As little as 5 minutes a day can be extremely beneficial.
Personal/Professional Goal Setting: Set aside time each month to write down specific goals that you’ve had on your mind and would like to make progress on.
General Happiness and Fulfillment: Take note of how you feel at the end of most days. Use very specific words to describe how you feel. Pay attention to when and where you feel the happiest and most fulfilled throughout the week and make sure you do more of those things!!
My mission in life is to guide and support individuals, especially overextended women, as they reconnect with themselves through each one of these wellness pillars in order to live life at their highest potential. My focus is to find the most effective and efficient way to “check the box”.
We’re looking for long term consistency that actually becomes your lifestyle.
Upgrading your habits and routines to support a healthy and balanced life doesn’t have to be intimidating or overwhelming. Start with the basics and stay consistent!
Maximize Your Physical Well-Being: Achieving Balance Across All Aspects of Life
Do you feel as though you have full control of your life, with all elements in perfect balance? Do you feel like you have achieved a maximum level of physical well-being?
I am fairly certain that most of us would have to answer these questions with a clear “No.” Sure, there might be times where it seems that we have full control and are performing at our best; however, many of us struggle with balancing the responsibilities of life and maximizing our physical well-being, and often experience more lows than highs. We encounter obstacles that seem impossible to overcome, and we fail to do the things we know we should. We may look for quick fixes, even though we know that, in the long run, these won’t be effective.
Many of my clients and students express repeatedly that there just doesn’t seem to be enough time for everything that needs to be done. It appears that everyone is continuously more stressed, busy, unhappy and physically unwell. While you could spend a lot of time analyzing why this might be so, it is more productive to focus on basic, simple ways to live life to the fullest, increase your physical well-being and balance your life in healthy and happy ways.
Setting the Stage
You are a multidimensional being, including mind, body and spirit. Achieving optimal health and a desired state of wellness requires a continuous readjustment of all elements to achieve balance. This journey of finding balance in all aspects of life seems to be the never-ending endeavor of the human race, inspiring us to search for a better way.
The Power of Knowledge
The good news is that we actually know a lot about the functioning of the different dimensions of wellness, including physical, mental/emotional and spiritual well-being, which can help us understand what we ought to do to achieve maximum physical well-being.
The Barrier
Transferring theory into practice (i.e., knowledge into action) is what presents the challenge for most people. This barrier usually creates the limitations to achieving an optimal level of physical well-being.
The Answer
There a few key, yet simple, action steps we can take to balance the different aspects of our lives. Just remember that it will be an ongoing effort to reevaluate, readjust and rebalance, as needed. These elements will directly and indirectly affect physical well-being, yet all are important to achieving maximum wellness.
To experience positive change, you have to be willing to take a chance and challenge yourself. Are you ready? Now is the time to embark on a new journey to live a complete life that maximizes your physical capabilities and wellness.
1. Choose
Living life to the fullest is a choice, and you have an enormous amount of control over your life, including your time and health. Choose to take a chance to change for optimum wellness. It is not your circumstances that dictate the outcome; it is how you choose to respond. Write this sentence on a piece of paper or position it on your desktop or phone and say it out loud every morning: “I choose to live life to the fullest!”
2. Prioritize
Before you can achieve any level of balance in your life, you need to set your priorities. Create a list of your top five priorities and place this list where it will be visible to you. This will help you shift your energy in the right direction. You will probably notice that much of your time is spent on the things that have a lower priority in your life, which can actually drain you physically and cause unnecessary stress.
3. Organize
Not surprisingly, those who are organized have a lot more time to do the things they want to do. Organization decreases stress and provides an automatic sense of control. Organizing your time will be the key element to help you experience an increased level of physical well-being. This also means that you need to think ahead and plan how you will spend your time, including healthy habits related to resting, moving and eating. Use the calendar function on your electronic device or find a helpful app to start organizing your responsibilities and elements related to health and fitness. Make to do lists and check off the things you have completed; this provides an amazing feeling of accomplishment and positivity.
4. Train
It will take practice, but you need to outline a training plan for your physical activity, eating and drinking patterns, sleeping habits and stress-management techniques. This will require some serious self-discipline, but you will start noticing that it will add phenomenal strength, energy, positivity and balance to your life.
Specifically, ensure to do the following and consider these as a general guideline (assuming that you do not suffer from any medical conditions, in which case you should always consult a physician):
5. Pause
Achieving balance and experiencing maximum physical well-being will require you to consider the power of rest, breaks, vacation and meditation in your life. Sleep should occur every night at a regular time for at least seven to eight hours. Take a lunch break and mini-breaks throughout the day. Start your day with a meditation (could be spiritual or non-spiritual depending on your belief system). Take regular vacations (preferably every three months for at least a week if that is possible). At the end of the day, reflect on what went well and what needs to change and improve tomorrow in relation to all things on the list above.
At the end of the day, restate your new objective: “I choose to live life to the fullest!” Finding a desired level of equilibrium in your life will be an ongoing journey, but if you can manage to implement these action strategies, you will achieve a greater level of balance that will contribute significantly to your physical well-being and inspire you to continue to do better. You will be energized and have a much more positive outlook on life because you know that you took a chance to choose to challenge yourself and change for the better.