Health and Wellness: Finding the Perfect Balance
How to create your own personal harmony.
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.
The 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!
What we do each and everyday matters.
The smallest decisions we make repeatedly are the ones that have the most impact on our lives. Where are you spending your time and energy each day?