Wellness is the realization of our true potential to live a healthier, happier and more successful existence.
Wellness Dimensions
Wellness involves the awareness of our current state of health in multiple dimensions with the initiative, tools and support to make lasting changes towards a more optimal life.
The primary top-level dimensions of wellness are: mental, physical, spiritual, social and lifestyle. Each primary dimension of wellness includes multiple sub-dimensions.
Mental Wellness
The mental dimension of wellness includes developing a healthy personal philosophy, maintaining a learning aptitude and establishing a base of useful knowledge.
Physical Wellness
The physical dimension of wellness includes our overall physical health, physical fitness and appearance. Starting with physical health, a wellness approach would not be to simply avoid sickness and disease, but to know that our health is always fleeting and our body’s always under attack.
Spiritual Wellness
The spiritual dimension of wellness includes becoming aware of our life’s purpose, developing our innate gifts and using our talents in a positive way and getting in touch with our spirituality. Operating “on purpose” and using our talents can be spiritually lifting and tremendously positive as compared to merely getting by, pleasing others, or surviving.
Social Wellness
The social dimension of wellness includes the careful creation and maintenance of healthy and positive relationships, our contribution and involvement in the community and our impact on our surroundings or environment at large.
Lifestyle Wellness
The lifestyle dimension of wellness includes our work and workplace, our leisure time and our home environment. As most of us will spend more than half our lives at work, what we do at work matters immensely to our wellness.
Reaching a particular level of health and life satisfaction that we defined for ourselves in each dimension could also be considered as achieving Wellness. It is different for everyone.
How do you assess your own wellness?
– Do you have a positive learning aptitude?
– Do you eat mostly natural, unprocessed food whenever possible?
– Do you seek preventative, natural, alternative and holistic therapies over chemicals?
– Do you exercise at least 3 times per week?
– Are you making enough time each day to relax, reflect, sleep and renew yourself?
– Have you dissolved destructive relationships?
– Are you prepared for the possibility of a natural or unnatural disaster?
If you can answer “yes” to most of these questions, you’re doing well. If not, you can start today.