Challenge: Complete the Wellness Wheel activities HERE and HERE. Is your wheel round? Make a goal to work on one aspect of your health to round out your wellness wheel.
This is not a weight loss challenge, but a healthy living challenge. Being healthy is more than just eating right and being active. To be truly healthy, you should pay attention to, or check-in with each of the following categories in your life:
Physical- Good nutrition, regular physical activity, absence of illness. This dimension examines the ability to take charge of your health by making conscious decisions to be healthy. This is also the dimension of health that is visible to others. It’s like the top layer of our health, made up of our genetics and lifestyle behaviors. Many of us struggle to continually eat healthily, engage in physical activity, or get enough sleep. Reasons why we may try and fail to maintain a healthy lifestyle may come from a different layer or dimension of our wellness.
The next three dimensions influence or support our physical health.
Intellectual- Critical thinking, creativity, curiosity. The performance of mental functions such as reading, writing, solving problems, planning, and analyzing. This dimension considers the desire to be a lifelong learner. It’s the ability to be open to new experiences and ideas in order to continue growing.
Emotional health and social health are closely intertwined.
Emotional- expressing feelings and reactions, coping with emotions in a healthy way, adapting to change, dealing with life’s adversity or challenges, having a positive attitude most of the time and a positive self-concept.
Social- Relationships and community interaction. Having people to express emotions with, people to share life’s joys and letdowns with, enjoying things with other people, listening to others and having others listen to you. Having meaningful relationships helps us cope with our emotions better.
Social media has made it possible for us to keep in touch with friends and loved ones across the globe, and it can have a place in our social dimension of health. However, this can’t be our only or even our main source of interaction. We need personal, close, face-to-face, hands-on relationships.
If we are mentally (intellectually and emotionally) healthy, we are more likely to be socially healthy.
Social and mental health support physical health changes you may want to make.
Spiritual- Living a life with meaning and purpose. Many people often think that spiritual health is about religion. Religion can be part of one’s spiritual health, but what we’re really talking about here is living your life in harmony with your core values, guiding principles, and beliefs. When something in our life doesn’t agree with our values, there is usually a disruption in the wellness wheel, and other dimensions may suffer as a result.
The environment we live in and the culture we are part of can affect all our dimensions of health.
Environmental/Cultural- Our environment involves our surroundings like our community, climate, neighborhood, our home and workplace. Our culture involves the groups of people we surround ourselves and identify with such as family, friends, and co-workers. Does your environment have access to healthy food, parks, or safe places to exercise? Do your family members value healthy eating? Do your co-workers work long hours? These and many more are all questions to consider when looking at your environment and culture.
Occupational/Hobby- This spoke of the wheel is about finding fulfillment in your job. It is also the ability to establish balance between work and leisure time. If you are retired, you might call this the hobby dimension.
You may be thinking to yourself, “There’s no way I can work on all of this!” but don’t worry about tackling all of these. Take an assessment of yourself by completing your own wellness wheel. Follow the directions on your handout to find what spokes of your wellness wheel need some attention. There may be things we do that take up a lot of our time that aren’t that important to us, or don’t align with our values. We need to be willing to let go of those things so other aspects of our life can be healthy and thrive.
Question: What spoke of the wellness wheel are you going to be focused on this week, and how are you going to improve your health in that dimension?
Resources:
University of Missouri Extension- Taking Care of You, Session 1
University of Nebraska- Wellness Wheel
University of Northwest Missouri- Balancing your wellness wheel