The ultimate goal of human life is to achieve complete wellness. This is often misunderstood and many choose to solely focus on health and fitness.
However, there is far more to the concept. Wellness means to use healthy habits to create a healthy balance in your day to day life.
This means achieving physical and mental health. The World Health Organization (WHO), defines wellness as being “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
This means that our wellness is directly affected by several aspects of our life. These include things like social interactions, exercise, mental health, sleep, and nutrition.
So while social media may have us convinced that the key to wellness is tons of yoga and eating quinoa salads; this is far from the truth. Wellness is about learning to balance your life.
There are eight dimensions that wellness can be measured. They are:
- Physical: Caring for your body to stay healthy now and in the future
- Intellectual: The desire to learn and value lifelong learning as well as enjoying being mentally challenged
- Emotional: Understanding and respecting your feelings, values, and attitudes. Valuing emotional feedback and managing your own feelings.
- Social: The ability to maintain healthy relationships, develop friendships, and intimate relations. and show empathy to those around you.
- Spiritual: Searching for and finding purpose, value, and meaning and participating in activities that are consistent with your beliefs and values
- Vocational: The ability to work in order to gain personal satisfaction and life enrichment. Using your skills in a meaningful way
- Financial: The ability to manage your resources, live within your means, making informed financial decisions and investments, set realistic goals, and prepare for possible emergencies.
- Environmental: Understanding social, natural, and built environments and their effect on your health
Sometimes, hitting the gym is not the answer to feeling better. It may take a little longer but learning to evaluate all aspects of your life will make achieving wellness much easier.
However, that’s not to say you should disregard your fitness goals. So let’s test your health and fitness knowledge. Are you really the fitness expert you believe you are?
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Written By:
Ra’eesah Manack