What is Wellness?

What is wellness? 

Wellness is creating mindful awareness around all the things that impact your personal health, happiness, and fulfillment, and continually working towards creating your optimal scenario for wellness in that moment of time in your life. 

This means, your ideal state of wellness is in your life is always evolving. What may have worked to help you feel your healthiest, happiest and most fulfilled in your life 6 months ago may not work today. 

I often use having a baby as a good example. 

Remember before kids when there was no such thing as self-care? It didn’t need to be a focus on our wellness at that time because self-care naturally happened. 

You rested when we felt tired, you went out with friends and had a social life, and you had the time and energy to do things that naturally contributed to our improved well-being. 

Then you become a mom, and this little human is depending on you to live. Suddenly, the day to day activities you had that naturally maintain an optimal level of well-being are traded out with activities focus on caring for your family. 

It’s really not a mystery why so many moms feel overwhelmed, exhausted, and simply burnt-out. 

Wellness is about actively paying attention to what you need to feel your best, even if it’s not what worked for you before. 

Why is wellness important in my life? 

When you can be intentional and focus on your personal wellness, you’ll likely feel healthier, more energized, and connected to your purpose as a person. 

Let’s use an example: Say “Susan” doesn’t pay attention to her well-being in her life, so she goes out to eat 4 out of 5 weeknights, she stays up until 2 am every night watching Netflix as her way to relax, and her work has 24/7 access to her even though her role really doesn’t require it. As a result, Susan probably doesn’t feel great. She stresses out about money, she is always tired, and she feels overworked and underappreciated. 

If Susan created a “wellness vision” for herself, she might decide that she’d like to only eat out 2 nights a week and make dinner at home the rest of the nights, set an alarm on her phone to go to turn off all electronics by 10pm, and maybe even have a conversation with her work about her available working hours and setting clear boundaries with her boss. 

Which version of Susan do you think feels healthier, more energized, and happier? 

Above all, wellness is an ongoing effort that doesn’t ever stop in your life. You wouldn’t brush your teeth one day and call it good for the next year. Having a constant awareness of your personal wellness is an essential part of living your healthiest, happiest and most fulfilled life. 

What does “ideal” wellness look like? 

Every person is different, which is why there isn’t one solid definition of what wellness should look like. That being said, looking at your life as a circle and seeing all the things that impact your life in that circle can help to create a visual image of what your personal wellness looks like and if something is missing. 

Take a look at the image below that represents all the areas of wellness in your life. Are you noticing the areas of the diagram that you feel like you do well in? Are there one or two areas that stand out to you as something you could spend a little more time focusing on? 

Having a tool like this to reference on a regular basis can be helpful to actively reflect on your personal wellness and what area might need a little more attention on a given day, week, month, or year.