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Do you feel that you’re missing out on something despite exercising regularly, eating a healthy diet, and avoiding unhealthy habits? This feeling of void may be due to various reasons that may be inexplicable, yet the discomfort is obvious.
Regular exercise and proper nutrition can keep you fit, but can it solve all your problems? Can you hold an elephant by its tail to control it? Nope, that’s not possible. You have many more problems than just your physical fitness. Thus, your solution should also be big enough to encompass all aspects of your troubles.
Are you able to overcome stress or anxiety? Do you get an upset stomach or a headache at regular intervals? Has managing your job responsibilities become difficult lately? Is your social circle giving you negative vibes?
A problem may occur because of an indirect connection to an obvious situation. For example, a stressful job can trigger anxiety and impair your appetite. It can lead to unpleasant reactions to challenging situations in your workplace. It can impact your focus and even demotivate you to overcome it. This can happen even if you are physically fit.
Rejuvenation with holistic wellness can solve all your hidden problems.
Wellness requires a complete restoration, and not just treating some areas of your body or life. Holistic wellness is a wholesome treatment of your body, mind, and soul—optimally, consistently, and continually.
The word “holistic” comes from the Greek word holos, meaning, “entire” and, when referring to holistic treatment, it simply means “treating the entire person.”
Wellness is an active process through which people become aware of, and make choices towards a more successful existence.
– National Wellness Institute
It is a conscious, self-directed, and evolving process of achieving the full potential of your body and mind to enjoy life to its fullest.
The concept of holistic wellness deals with 8 dimensions that efficiently manage your physical, emotional, social, intellectual, spiritual, environmental, occupational, and financial factors. A disciplined approach rejuvenates your inner self to confront any challenges with much vigor.
Let’s understand how these 8 dimensions of holistic wellness can improve the quality of life.
Physical Wellness
The first instinct of physical wellness that comes to your mind would be the healthy condition of your body. If all your organs are functioning normally with no major complications, that means you are physically fit.
Well, not quite so.
There are several smaller components that make up your physical health. That includes your body mass index (BMI), cholesterol and glucose level, blood pressure, skeletal structure, muscular structure, circulatory system, and, of course, your general health condition.
You need to know each aspect of your body by assessing if it is functioning properly and coordinating correctly. This would require examining your body by a physician and specialists to monitor and regulate the physical wellness factors. Any abnormal variations can disrupt the proper functioning of your physiological system, leading to an adverse effect on the integration with other components.
A suitable fitness plan will not only arrest such imbalances but also help in curbing future challenges.
Emotional Wellness
Emotional wellness involves self-regulation of your emotions. It allows you to identify, recognize, and define your emotions and the causes that triggered them. It relies on your ability to express your thoughts and feelings and also helps you adapt to those of others.
It strengthens your ability to learn and grow from experiences. We get adapted to some situations such as emotional self-awareness and anger management from our childhood. These situations prepare us to behave as mature adults rather than immature children who display bad temper at the slightest trigger.
Emotional wellness enables you to maintain mutually satisfying relationships, manage conflicts, and remain calm during stressful times. To balance emotional wellness, it is imperative to realize what you need to change for yourself and work towards that direction. If you are not happy with yourself, chances are it will be difficult to be happy with someone else too, irrespective of any relationship type.
Physical wellness is very important to maintaining your emotional wellness. Besides abstaining from harmful habits, avoid products that contain any toxin detrimental to your mental health and the environment. Instead, get involved in a fitness program and use products made with natural and organic ingredients that keep your temperament calm.
Social Wellness
Social wellness refers to the social connections you have and how you interact with them. It involves cultivating a genuine relationship with people to whom you are attached and maintaining a healthy connection. That includes your family, friends, colleagues, and also strangers throughout your life.
However, making friends indiscriminately just for the sake of social acceptance can be detrimental, regardless of whether they bring value to your life. One toxic friendship can destroy your social circle and reel you into depression.
Social wellness helps you realize your identity and how you feel about achieving a full and satisfying life. A healthy relationship is one that promotes your personal identity, develops your personal growth, and brings the best in both people.
It’s about sharing mutually enriching aspects of your life with another person and building a socially supportive community.
Spiritual Wellness
Spiritual wellness refers to the attributes of guiding beliefs, principles, or values that give meaning and purpose to one’s life. When spirituality conjoins with compassion, you get a strong feeling for love, empathy, joy, and fulfillment. Your mind is at peace, which helps to overcome anger, fear, anxiety, and other negative feelings with a positive outlook.
Spirituality is a subjective matter and can have different interpretations for different people. For some, spirituality is about their connection with God through religious tenets, for others in science and its theories, or finding peace in meditation, so and so forth.
Although religion may have a powerful impact on most people’s spirituality, there are various other ways to express and practice it for enlightenment. What influences your spiritual beliefs may depend on your upbringing, cultural environment, and personal experiences.
As physical wellness conditions your body against sickness, spiritual wellness nurtures you to remain calm against adversaries and keeps you grounded. When you are spiritually strong, you feel a sense of peace and purpose, even when life puts you in challenging situations.
A strong spiritual belief can help to withstand the trials and tribulations without contempt or retaliation.
Intellectual Wellness
Intellectual wellness involves engaging with others through mental abilities. It involves the processes of continued learning, problem-solving, and creativity. We, humans, have varying degrees of intellectual capability and curiosity. While some individuals have a keen interest and the ability to learn as much as their minds can grasp (and more), others are content with the basic essentials.
Reading books, enhancing your current talent, and learning new skills are all means of nurturing your intellectual wellness. But pursuing these activities can vastly vary from person to person. Nevertheless, what may interest one person may be of no importance to another.
Intellectual wellness does not necessarily require a theoretical approach. So, just because you are not a voracious reader does not mean you should dismiss this wellness. Learning a new sport rarely needs reading but practice.
Depending on your age and interests, you can fulfill your intellectual journey by learning and improving as per the limits you set. You are the captain of your ship. Navigate and steer it well.
Occupational Wellness
Occupational wellness is related to intellectual wellness in terms of your profession that suits your intellect. It is the ability to achieve a comfortable balance between work and leisure time, address workplace stress, and maintain healthy relationships with co-workers. It describes job satisfaction and emphasizes your happiness within the context of your work life.
Occupational wellness directly relates your occupational development to your attitude towards your work. In a healthy work environment, they expect you to contribute your knowledge, skills, and talent for better productivity that is both personally meaningful and rewarding.
Job dissatisfaction can be a trigger for stress, anxiety, and depression. Such negativity will not only affect productivity at your workplace but also damage your health, happiness, and well-being.
Occupational wellness involves exploring various career options and finding the right fit. It is important for your overall well-being to invest wisely in your time and efforts to “do what you love and love what you do”. When you are doing what they expect you to do, you broaden your sense of meaning and purpose, leading to faster career growth.
Financial Wellness
Financial wellness is directly linked to occupational wellness, as your income depends on your occupation. The basic distinction between the two is that occupational wellness deals with job satisfaction and career fulfillment, whereas financial wellness deals solely with finances. It assesses your stability in all aspects of finance, vis-à-vis income, expenses, investments, and liabilities.
The underlying concept of financial wellness is financial security, one of the most common goals reported by employees across all sectors globally.
Some employers are concerned with the health of their employees to prevent loss of productivity and offer packages that safeguard their absence from work. These services do not just take care of employees when they are sick, but also prevent sickness in the first place with amenities for fitness, smoking cessation, diet, and lifestyle management programs.
Financial wellness programs should offer holistic support and advice to employees so they can meet their short-term needs while working toward long-term goals. Every employee has their own individual financial priorities and obligations. So a successful wellness program requires solutions tailored to an employee’s unique circumstances to resolve.
Maintaining good control over your expenses and ensuring a regular income is of prime importance for financial wellness. Credit card debts and loans, bad investments, and unnecessary expenses can dry up the best of your income sources and leave you financially unstable.
Environmental Wellness
Environmental wellness is a process that involves learning, understanding, and contributing to the health of our planet and its atmosphere. This requires establishing a sustainable lifestyle, preserving natural resources, and eliminating pollutants that lead to excessive waste.
Your lifestyle, irrespective of the geographical location, should include an environmental awareness that appreciates the scarce natural resources which are fast depleting. It should proactively respect and care for your surroundings and play an active role in your community.
When your personal surroundings are responsibly taken care of—clean and organized—you experience a greater sense of comfort and attachment. Being environmentally healthy not only enhances your personal health but also protects the future health of your community and the world. It can prevent epidemic diseases and the scarcity of natural resources.
Conclusion
If your life is less blissful than what you aspire for, look into these 8 dimensions and find out where your energies are lacking or wasted away. Connect those dots and strengthen the thread to bring in a complete rejuvenation.
Bring happiness into your life and share it with others who are less fortunate. A positive reciprocal of good deeds cultivates healthy well-being and a prosperous community.