Over the next week we are going to focus on the eight aspects of wellness. We are going to dedicate an article to each of these aspects of wellness. Though there are sometimes extra facets of wellness added in some studies, for the purpose of our project we will focus on the following eight: vocational, intellectual, physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, environmental and social. Oftentimes we tend to focus on simply one or two facets of our wellness in our lives while letting the other aspects fall to the wayside. All of us have aspects we excel in and aspects we falter in so typically we focus on the parts we are good at while letting the other parts remain underdeveloped. No one likes to not be good at something, so it is natural for us to keep pushing to the corner the things we do not do well in, especially if we are already financially secure. So, in order to help our readers rectify this problem we are going to offer daily exercises in each of these aspects of wellness to both help us identify which aspects of wellness we need improvement on and how to form the habits and goals necessary to make the appropriate changes.
Perhaps you are wondering, why do you need to excel in all 8 aspects of wellness? Perhaps you know you are particularly weak in one or two areas but have not really seen negative impacts or feel you don’t have time to fix it. The most common case of this I see, especially in ambitious and work minded people, is that we are great at our vocational and financial wellness but then we may falter in other aspects, especially spiritual, social and physical. While these imbalances haven't “caught up” with us yet, many issues people have later in life, health problems, divorce, non clinical depression, all stem from these imbalances in wellness. We are holistic beings and need to approach our life holistically. It is not enough to excel in part of your life and ignore others. We need to strive for balance. Perhaps this can even mean sacrificing some attention from one aspect of your life to others in order to maintain the balance in your life.
It is the same philosophy that is applied for dance moves such as a hip circle or a high kick. If you are really great at bringing your hip to the left but are stiff on the right, the solution for the hip circle isn't to make half of it look great while the other side barely moves, it is to balance the movement and focus on improving one side. If you don't, it can throw your balance off making you approach your next dance move improperly and it can even injure you from the misalignment in the body. Instead, the solution here is to stretch out the right side and put more thoughtful intention into your left side. That way even if the circle is imbalanced, in time you will make the right side as large as the left and you won't injure yourself in the meantime. Just like a hip circle needs symmetry, so does your life.
How are we going to address assessing and fixing our wellness areas? First and foremost we need to take an honest evaluation of ourselves and then start creating new habits. We want habits because they help us with our self regulation. Self regulation is a conscious effort to direct our behavior and control our impulses in order to achieve our short and long term goals. Self regulation requires a lot of mental energy and we need to be consciously thinking of it. This means that often when we are using just self regulation alone, we will fail in controlling our stronger impulses. When we start forming constructive habits though we can counteract this. Habits require little to no mental energy. Typically we view habits as a negative thing. For example, you have a habit for cigarettes so you put one in your mouth walking out of a restaurant without even thinking. Or you have a habit for social media and you sign on every time you pick up your phone despite having no real interest in what is going on on there. But we can use good habits to help ourselves instead of hurt ourselves. Such as, if we create a habit to go to the gym every morning or to end the day in meditation, these habits will help us work past lulls in energy or other issues preventing us from fulfilling these goals with self regulation alone.
But this whole process will require an incredibly honest and thorough examination of oneself. As we move forward over the next few days, we need to take a good hard look at our weaknesses and bad habits so we can replace them with good habits and build up the underdeveloped areas in our lives. Understand that this is only to improve ourselves and create balance which is needed for holistic wellness and ultimately will positively benefit all aspects of our lives, including the ones we are already succeeding in. Nothing in this world is static, and our wellness is no different. Wellness is not a single goal but a lifestyle that ebbs and flows. It is not a one size fits all, but requires a personalized approach. Sometimes we need to speak into reality our needs. Otherwise, we end up becoming victims of our destructive patterns and us at Bullionite are here to help you move forward on this journey.
Are you ready to take a journey of self discovery? What are you afraid to uncover? Excited for? We would love to hear your comments and questions at info@bullionite.com