Wellness Dimensions

 

Wellness encompasses much more than physical health, which includes things like diet, exercise, and weight control. Fueling the body, stimulating the mind, and nourishing the spirit are all components of wellness, which is a comprehensive synthesis of mental, spiritual, and physical well-being.

Related: How to improve your spiritual wellness

It's more about enjoying life to the fullest, even though it always involves aiming for health. It's a lifestyle and a personalized approach to living life in a way that helps you to become the best kind of person that your potentials, circumstances, and fate will allow.

Based on the real-world experiences of those dealing with substance abuse, mental health issues, and traumatic life events, this model has developed over many years. Due to the numerous demands and problems that individuals face both on the field and in the streets, the model's initial five dimensions eventually expanded to eight.

The eight aspects of wellness—physical, intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, vocational, financial, and environmental—are connected.

Since neglecting one aspect over time can negatively impact all the others and eventually one's health, well-being, and quality of life, attention must be paid to all of the dimensions.

However, they do not need to be evenly balanced. Instead, we want to aspire for the "personal harmony" that seems most genuine to us. We all naturally have different priorities, methods, and goals, including different ideas about what it means to live life to the fullest.

In each dimension, there are a few questions you need to answer in order to know whether that side of wellness is balanced or not.

Let's get started with,

Emotional well-being:

Your mind can automatically focus on the physical when you think of health. Emotions, however, are also very important for wellbeing.

Research has indicated a link between the body's physical and regulated mental wellness. The status of your mind and body, often known as the mind-body connection, will be taken into account in a more holistic approach to health.

Related: How to be aware of the mind-body connection.

Being aware of your boundaries, knowing when to take a break, and knowing when to ask for help, whether from a friend or a professional, are all components of emotional wellbeing. Being in tune with your emotions helps you manage stress and promote your mental health so you can recover from difficult situations and keep your equilibrium. When you feel better, you perform better in all facets of your life.

Your whole mental health and wellness are greatly influenced by your emotional well-being, even if this may seem apparent. While that reality is true for everyone, for people who have mental health issues and diseases, it can be more damaging.

If you are aware of and capable of managing your emotions, you will be more equipped to navigate your own mental health issues as you learn their solutions.

Try answering these questions and let's see whether your emotional wellbeing is balanced or not.

1. Do I make an effort to keep my responsibilities to my family, friends, community, job, and self in balance?
2. Do I have any health, useful, and efficient strategies for lowering stress in my life?
3. Am I capable of making judgments with little anxiety or stress?

Physical well-being:

Good health is only one aspect of physical well-being. Achieving or failing to reach optimal functioning is directly related to our lifestyle choices and our habits about sleep, food, exercise, cleanliness, and relaxation.

Do you feel sure that you can manage any situation that comes your way and wake up with a lot of energy and optimism for the day? or do headaches, pain, discomfort, and exhaustion frequently divert your attention? Perhaps you feel drowsy or exhausted, which makes it difficult for you to finish chores. Physical health is the foundation of all of that.

You can create a strategy that only addresses one area of your life, such as boosting physical activity, depending on your needs. Or for a more cumulative approach, your strategy might incorporate a variety of actions, such as reducing alcohol consumption, eating more vegetables, and going to bed at the same time every night. The ultimate goal is to enhance general physical health.

Make sure to concentrate on your advantages rather than your disadvantages. This may seem paradoxical to improving health, but we have a higher chance of success when we apply our talent to the area that requires work.

1. Do I regularly consume a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains?
2. Do I move my body, stretch, and work out three to five times a week?
3. Do I sleep for a minimum of eight hours every night?

Environmental wellness:

Environmental wellness is your feeling of security, comfort, and connection to your physical environment. It means considering how you, your community, and your environment interact.

Your environmental welfare may be enhanced by living in greater harmony with the environment and your community. Your immediate environment is the first step toward wellness. Your personal space affects your productivity, emotional health, and mental state. Environmental health includes not just your own space but also larger communities, regions, and the world as a whole.

Living in a nurturing and healthy environment and being conscious of and considerate of our surroundings are both components of environmental well-being.

How you feel is greatly influenced by the surroundings in which you live. For instance, those who live in countries with a lot of rain and cloudy days may suffer from seasonal depression, which will harm their social, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing, among other things.

Overall, you might feel more pleased when you're in a pleasant setting and contributing to environmental protection.

1. Do I make an effort to consume less consumer waste?
2. Do I recycle as much rubbish as I can?
3. Do I always pay attention to my surroundings?

Financial well-being:

Feeling safe and in control is key to financial wellness. It's about managing the unexpected, maximizing your daily financial resources, and staying on course for a sound financial future. In a nutshell, self-assured, powerful, and financially robust.

Individuals who feel financially successful are less anxious about money. Their relationships as well as their general physical and mental wellness benefit from this.

Helping your coworkers, clients, and community develop financial health is more crucial than ever.

1. Do I have a strategy in place to pay for my education and move into my first job?
2. Do I plan my monthly expenses (or pay period)?
3. Do I try my best to stay away from consumer debt?

Intellectual wellness:

Our daily wellbeing can be greatly impacted by the way we decide to structure our mental processes and to absorb fresh viewpoints.

Maintaining healthy mental habits, being receptive to new ideas, and aiming for creativity in our daily lives are all components of intellectual wellness.

Without intellectual wellbeing, it can be easy to fall into destructive thinking habits and routines that prevent us from becoming our best selves and from moving ahead in life. Maintaining our general health and welfare on a regular basis and remaining receptive to fresh viewpoints, ideas, and approaches to problem-solving might help with this.

1. Do I continue to be open to new concepts and abilities?
2. Do I look for chances to learn and partake in mentally stimulating activities?
3. Do I search for creative solutions to issues I encounter?

Occupational wellness:

Creating a sense of wellbeing in our everyday lives requires striking the correct work-life balance. Maintaining positive connections with coworkers and managing work-related responsibilities and stress are both components of occupational wellness, which is a good work-life balance. Personal activities that permit leisure, relaxation, and socializing with friends and family balance out work-life responsibilities.

One of the first things we think about when considering the aspects of wellness that contribute to a healthy lifestyle is striking the correct work-life balance. We may exhibit our talents and abilities while forming deep relationships with people when we have a rewarding work experience. A balanced and healthy personal life provides us with the vitality and inventiveness required to tackle life's everyday obstacles.

1. Do I generally like coming to work?
2. Do I objectives for the next role in my career, along with a strategy to achieve them?
3. Do I keep track of my personal achievements for future job searches?

Social wellbeing:

Being able to establish and preserve wholesome, mutually beneficial connections with those around us is a sign of social healthiness. Good social connections can boost our resilience and capacity to handle life's obstacle by offering us consolation and support during trying times.

Our connections with other people are important, but so are the ways in which we choose to communicate, express ourselves, and build our own unique routines around them. It may also refer to our broader community and the ways in which we engage with and support the social groupings that surround us.

Our daily physical and mental wellbeing can be greatly impacted by social wellness or the lack of it. Strong social networks have been linked to longer lifespans, better stress management, and a host of other health advantages, including increased community, according to research.

1. Do I schedule time for friends and family?
2. Do I like spending time with other people?
3. Do I think my connections are fulfilling and positive?

Spiritual wellness:

A growing feeling of meaning and purpose in life, including one's own ethics and values, is referred to as spiritual wellbeing. In addition to personal behaviors that are not characterized by a religion or religious group, it may also involve religious activities and communal involvement.

Spiritual beliefs that relate to views on life, death and the nature of reality. They may also invlove the presence of a relationship with a higher force. Rituals like prayer and meditation, attending religious services, or engaging in physical exercises like Yoga, Tai Chai, or Qigong are example of practices.

Related: Find your spiritual healing modality

1. Do I schedule time in my day for prayer or meditation?
2. Does my life seem to have a purpose or direction?
3. Do I show that I am grateful and appreciative of what I have?

The most effective feature of this methodology has been its strength based approach to helping people develop and reinforce new habits by focusing on their daily routines and behaviors.

People frequently list important daily activities, such as sleeping which benefits them in many ways including social, emotional, and physical. Many people benefit from routinely checking in to reflect on their day or weekly activities including their, physical, social, emotional, and other activities, for both, short-term and long-term healing. People are frequently able to recogize what they're doing and think about ways to keep stregnthening their everyday routines and behaviors.

It can be difficult to make the best decisions for your health and wellbeing. Even if we are aware of what is healthy for us and how we might improve, we might not follow through it or, if we do, we might revert to our old habits.

Self regulation and habits are two elements that are praticulary relevant to wellbeing, but there are many other aspects that impact human behavior, including what we do, how we do it, and whether we will succeed.

Self-regulation:

Effective human fucntioning relies heavily on self-regulation, which is defined as our ability to direct our behavior and control our impulses so that we meet certain standards, achieve certain goals, or research certain ideas. 

Self-regulation enables us to act in ways that are both short and long-term best interests and consistent with our deepest values. 

But, it has a drawback; it requires mental energy, and the brain is constantly searching for ways to conserve energy.

Habits:

On the other hand, habits use relatively little energy. We need to spend less time and effort deliberately considering and choosing a behavior if it can boiled down to a routine. The brain can preserve self control to concentrate on life's major choices and free us up to do meaningful things like thinking back on the past and making plans for the future thanks to the cognitive economy and performance efficiency of habits.

Related: Learn how to break us with your bad habits

Estabishing new routines is difficult. Habits tend to keep us doing what we usually do, even when we know what's best for us and have the greatest of intentions. Any of us may tell you that they are hard to modify.

However, by using two fundamentals; self awareness and startegies, we can increase the likelihood of success. Both are essential for the effective development of habits.

Strategies:

Selecting tactics that increase your chances of success alos make change more attainable. These tactics include scheduling, monitoring, investing in accountability systems, abstaining, adjusting convenience, planning safeguards, identifying justifications and erroneous assumptions, employing distractions, rewards and treats, pairing activities and starting with routines that are directly improve self-control.

New habits take an average of 66 days to form, so the more techniques you utilize, the better. Most affective habits modifications involves coordinating many tactics to create a single new behavior.

Self-awareness:

If you pay attention to who you are and include routines that capitalize on your abilities, habits, and strenghts, change becomes much more attainable. You may develop the habits that suits you if you are self-aware.

Understand other facets of oneself, such as, whether one is a procrastinator, sprinter, or marathoner; whether one is under or over-buyer; whether one prefers simplicity or plenty; whether one prefers familiarity or novelty; and whether one is a finisher or opener, are all examples of self-awareness. It also covers whether you like taking tiny or large moves and whether you are more focused on prevention or promotion.

Final words

Change might take a while at times. It occasionally necessitates several trials and failures. However, the efforts are definitely valuable for continuous improvement, and one achievement frequently results in another. 

Think about the following while you think about wellness, habits, health, wellbeing, and quality of life you want to achieve: 

Are you going to accept yourself or expect more from yourself?

Will you think about the future or will you embrace your present?

Will you take care of yourself or will you ignore yourself?

The process of achieving wellness is dynamic, ever-evolving, and shifting. It is a way of life, a customized strategy for living that enables you to develop into the finest version of yourself, that your destiny, circumstances, and potential will permit. 

The decisions you make today will determine your present and future; The past is history.

Get started and become the best version of yourself without worrying about perfection.

All love and support