By Tanya Jolliffe RDN, LD, CMHIMP
Just when we think things have gotten as crazy as they can in 2020, something new comes along. Trying to live a healthy lifestyle amid all that is going on around us can be difficult. However, it is important now more than ever.
When people think about their health and well-being, many times the focus is on physical health or mental well-being without regard to other dimensions of well-being. Those are certainly important areas but there are many other dimensions that form us and allow us to function fully – body, mind, and spirit.
Living a healthy life means establishing and maintaining lifestyle choices and habits that improve all dimensions of our well-being while limiting choices and habits that diminish our overall well-being. There are many dimensions of health and wellness which are important for stress reduction, health management, and social interactions. Let’s take a quick look at what dimensions of wellness include:
- Physical well-being focuses on all aspects of our physical health including physical activity, nutrition, and daily health habits.
- Emotional well-being focuses on our ability to identify and define physical responses to external triggers.
- Mental well-being focuses on mental associations, feelings, and reactions to emotional triggers.
- Spiritual well-being focuses on daily habits related to beliefs, principles, and values used to direct life.
- Relational well-being focuses on how the people and relationships around us impact our life.
- Intellectual well-being focuses on the amount of information and knowledge taken in and dispensed.
- Social well-being focuses on how we deal with people, conflict, time, and work to life balance.
- Vocational well-being focuses on the use of gifts, skills, and talents in a purposeful way.
- Financial well-being focuses on the level of satisfaction experienced with current and future financial situations.
- Environmental well-being focuses on daily habits from an environmental impact consideration.
We are whole people not people that deal with issues in segmented areas of life in isolation. When stress, dis-ease, and uncertainty are experienced, they have a negative influence on our complete health and well-being.
In Jeremiah 30:17 we read this word of the Lord, “But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds.” For many of us, our wounds go much deeper than just physical or mental injury. Injuries experienced there seep into other dimensions of our well-being while injuries in other dimensions of our well-being influence our physical and mental health as well. If we are to have our health restored and our wounds healed, we must do some integrative work to examine the total extent of our wounds and determine what strategic steps are necessary to heal those wounds based on what we discover.
That examination and process of healing wounds requires an integrative plan that promotes personal growth and development. A framework that helps people reach short term goals with long term health and well-being in mind is also necessary. To start that process of examination, consider each area of wellness and ask yourself some key questions:
- How am I doing in this area? What am I happy about? What am I concerned about?
- What changes would I like to make in this area?
- How would I go about doing that?
- What resources are necessary to make changes?
Once you have answered some of those questions. Write a brief sentence about what you will do first to address concerns and promote health and healing. If you find you would like help digging into discovering and beginning to heal wounds that are negatively influencing your well-being, consider working with someone to help you with the process.
Don’t let all the craziness of the world around you and the things you can’t control negatively influence the lifestyle choices that you CAN control. As we prepare to begin a new year, now is a great time to turn the page and begin anew.
