Our wellness shapes every aspect of our daily lives, from our family lives to our social lives to our working lives. It affects our feelings, choices, and actions. Wellness is our ability to live a healthy, enjoyable, fulfilling life, as well as our ability to connect with and care for the people around us.
Aspects of Wellness
We can identify ten aspect of our lives on which our wellness impacts and which in turn impact on our wellness. By examining these ten areas more closely, we can not only identify areas in which we feel challenged, but note how one aspect of our lives affects every other. We may note how chronic illness is shaking our social wellness or, in contrast, how our emotional and intellectual wellness. By examining our personal and specific needs, we can move toward a holistic approach to our wellness.
Physical Wellness
Physical health give us the energy and freedom from pain to enjoy our work, family, and leisure time to the fullest. Common issues with physical wellness include fatigue, insomnia, headaches, body aches, and digestive problems.
Mental Wellness
Mental well-being allows us to make the most of our abilities, to face life’s stresses, and to build a life that boosts our self-worth. At the most fundamental level, mental wellness impacts on all areas of our lives. Everyone will find their mental health challenged at some point during their life, with depression, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders among the most common conditions.
Emotional Wellness
When we feel emotionally well, we are able to manage our emotions and feel resilient in the face of change and challenge. Feeling emotionally overwhelmed may lead to stress, depression, strains on social relationships, and impacts on physical health such as insomnia and increased blood pressure.
Social Wellness
Closely linked with emotional wellness, social wellness is the feeling of having strong relationships that meet our need for belonging and connection. These relationships offer companionship, advice, and support. The sense of lacking these vital connections can lead to loneliness and low self-esteem, impacting on our emotional, mental, and physical wellness.
Intellectual Wellness
This aspect of wellness is based on feeling intellectually stimulated. This feeling can be gained both at work and in leisure time through learning, engaging in creative and enriching hobbies, and sharing knowledge with others. Intellectual wellness builds happiness, self-esteem, and fulfillment, while a lack of it can make us feel frustrated, bored, and listless.
Occupational Wellness
Occupational wellness may be closely bound with intellectual wellness, but it is also centered on feeling respected, trusted, and safe in the workplace. For most people, occupational wellness also depends on feeling financially rewarded and on achieving a sufficient balance between work and leisure time. Occupational wellness impacts on all other aspects of our lives.
Financial Wellness
Financial wellness is feeling that we have enough money to meet our needs and to allow us to enjoy life. It is about feeling financially secure because we are in control of our day-to-day finances and able to prepare for the future. Financial worries can impact on our physical and mental health and stand in the way of social and intellectual wellness.
Environmental Wellness
Our surroundings have an immense effect on our bodies and minds. We all need safe, quiet, comfortable space in which to sleep, relax, work, and eat. For many of us, being able to access leafy green spaces in which to exercise and wind down is also key to our mental, emotional, and physical well-being.
Cultural Wellness
For many of us, a key aspect of our wellness is being aware of and able to maintain our culture, express our sexuality, and be respected for our gender or abilities. Our cultural wellness resides in celebrating our own culture, ethnicity, or sexuality as well as taking joy in celebrating all the other cultures, ethnicities, lifestyles genders, abilities and ages in our community. For many of us, cultural wellness is closely bound with emotional, social, and spiritual wellness.
Spiritual Wellness
Spiritual wellness is having beliefs, morals, or values that give a sense of the meaning of life. Spiritual wellness may give a feeling of being connected to something greater than ourselves. For believers, spiritual wellness may be found in communal worship and discussion. For others, spiritual wellness may be gained through meditation, yoga, volunteering, or travel. It can be boosted by activities as diverse as singing in a choir, keeping a gratitude journal, and joining a climate-change protest.