Where to Start With Your Wellness Journey

Wellness is not as straightforward as health fads and diets make it seem. It is an idea that encompasses many parts of your life. The concept of wellness spans from your mind, body, and soul. It is a mindset and way of life to incorporate into your routine, not just a one-off dietary supplement. When looking into the best ways to begin your wellness journey, consider making a wellness wheel. With a wellness wheel, you can easily visualize all of the key areas of wellness and take an intimate look into how they are active in your own life. Read on for the major health categories to consider when beginning your wellness journey. 

Physical Wellness

Let’s begin with our most basic understanding of wellness: physical. Physical wellness includes eating right, exercising, and monitoring caffeine and alcohol intake. Tracking your physical wellness can help you grow stronger with age, monitor common health concerns like diabetes or high cholesterol, and improve your mental health. It also ensures that your metabolism stays in shape. 

Mental/Emotional Wellness

The next slot in your wheel is mental or emotional wellness. The goal of this type of wellness is to stay mindful of your mental health. This is crucial to keeping your physical wellness in check. Mental health can impact all areas of your life from social exposure, staying fit, and even increasing your chances of contracting stress induced illnesses like IBS, high blood pressure, or migraines. Keeping a journal, seeing a counselor, or even mediating can help you stay in touch within your mental wellness. 

Financial Wellness

Financial wellness is as straightforward as the name suggests. Keeping yourself financially healthy ensures that yet another stress is taken off of your plate. It doesn’t mean you have to be fabulously wealthy, but it does mean keeping a close eye on your finances and making stable choices with your money. Keeping a budget, passively investing, and starting a savings account are some of the best ways to stay financially well as it ensures you are stable for the long run with money to spare. 

Social Wellness

Humans are social creatures and the comfort and enjoyment we get from interacting with others is another way to ensure wellness. You don’t have to have loads of friends or be popular on social media to incorporate social wellness into your life. It comes down to making time for meaningful interactions in your life. This can be going out to drinks with friends, having lunch with a coworker, or calling family or friends. Social wellness can help keep you in check with other areas of your life as well. It also can bolster your emotional wellness via positive interaction with others.

Intellectual Wellness 

To go along with social stimulation, it is also important to continue your growth intellectually. Investing time in your intellectual wellness can have long term rewards. Reading a book, learning a new language, and immersing yourself in new ideas and cultures not only enriches your life, it can also stave off common neurological diseases. Staying mentally keen and curious can help push devastating diseases like dementia and Alzheimers away. Just as you would strengthen our immune system against disease, your mind is no different. 

Environmental Wellness

No matter where you go, what you eat, or who you meet, we cannot underestimate the importance of our environment. Having a safe, comforting, and clean space to live in is crucial for the stability of wellness. Your home environment is a foundation for so many other aspects of your life. Being able to come home and relax in a clean space is a building block to success in other wellness areas like mental, social, and physical health. Simple tasks like deep cleaning once a week, keeping laundry in check, and even something as easy as making your bed can keep you on the right track during your wellness journey. 

Spiritual Wellness

The last area to add to your personal wellness wheel is the concept of spiritual wellness. While this sounds like it has a religious slant, it can really be anything you wish. Spiritual wellness can involve actively engaging and practicing your faith but it can also involve simple rituals where you get in touch with who you are. This type of wellness encourages us to tap into our moral and ethical codes and make sure we are living by the rules that we define, not what others say. Taking time to meditate, do deep breathing exercises, or even set aside time for self care, are all ways to practice spiritual wellness.

Your Wellness, Your Life 

With these categories fresh in your mind, you should be well on your way to creating your very own wellness wheel and hopefully you are inspired to begin your wellness journey. Wellness is a lifelong practice with no definitive set of rules or timeline. Remember that this journey is one of growth, not reaching an end goal. Today is the best time to start incorporating wellness into your life.