I’ll never forget when I discovered the concept of wellness for the first time.
Summer after freshmen year in college, I enrolled in summer classes and could finally start diving into health and wellness pre-requisites. I was pumped!
And while the classroom was quiet, muggy and peers were nodding off left and right, I was never more invigorated in my life.
The wellness dimensions (and wellness wheel) struck me hard, and something clicked– could there be more to being healthy than those two-a-day workout, slim fast and an apple for lunch and restricting cheeseburgers from my diet?
On the flip side, here lied the support for why certain things really fueled my soul. For example:
- drinking water
- exercising with the sunrise
- volunteering/working as a nanny
- Finding satisfaction and success as a student
These things were more than just tasks, these made up my well-being!
Going from the classroom into my community health internship and then into nursing, I dove further into this wellness concept. As a Pediatric Nurse, I learned so much and gained new perspectives from patients and their families.
And it became a passion.
I loved thinking it, planning it, implementing it and most of all– teaching it.
Yet, despite all that rich experience at the bedside, the most impactful experience of understanding wellness has been my personal journey of motherhood. Everything from experiencing loss to the everyday overwhelm of preparing dinner.
Now, please don’t read that as I feel like my health and well-being is perfect– it’s not.
But I can say this:
Motherhood has gifted me a deeper understanding of wellness.
It’s like all my education, experiences and perspectives culminated into a concept that I leaned into. And then revealed a new perspective.
In this post we are going to define wellness, introduce the 8 dimensions, and get to the heart of the matter.
What is wellness?
If you flip open a dictionary (or google…who am I kidding?), Merriam Webster explains it as:
“The quality or state of being in good health especially as an actively sought goal.”
So, what does that mean?
I think the simplest explanation is:
- You strive to be healthy (ie. the goal)
- You’re doing things daily to pursue that goal (ie. taking action)
Think of wellness as the whole picture (often referred to as holistic) of your health and purpose – what you eat, fitness, stress, relationships, faith, motivation, level of satisfaction, ability to buy groceries, etc.
These all play together to make up wellness, or your well-being.
If you like analogies, think of wellness as a car:
- You rely on your car to get around each day
- The car is made up of many parts
- Without once part (and one that functions), it’s likely your car wouldn’t work…or at least not very well.
Wellness is multi-Dimensional
Just like your car, wellness is more than just one part. There are 8 dimensions that work together:
- Physical– all physical aspects of body
- Emotional– the ability to identify feelings and process emotions
- Intellectual-brain health and growth from mental activities
- Spiritual— purpose and meaning to life
- Social— connections, relationships, and personal expression
- Occupational– Satisfaction in job/career
- Environmental— interaction between the world around you
- Financial–finances and planning/managing those finances
If this seems overwhelming, think of it as actually giving you more control over your health. For example, you can focus on other areas of your life instead of just the food on your plate.
Now, to simplify it even more, let’s get to the heart of the matter. The core of our wellness!
Heart, Mind, Body and Soul
We often hear that wellness is somewhere between the physical and mental aspects of our health and hear the term ‘mind, body and soul.’
While we know that wellness includes broader dimensions like mentioned above, I actually believe this:
The core of wellness is in the heart.
I mentioned mom life has influenced my wellness. So much so that I have restructured the concept slightly to focus on who I think belongs at the middle of all these dimensions.
Jesus Christ.
He and our faith propel us to be healthier on every level.
He takes us from just happy and healthy to a grateful, abundant life.
Therefore, wellness around here is ‘heart, mind, body and soul.’
Wellness offers freedom and confidence
Putting Christ at the center of wellness actually simplifies wellness. For example:
You can do all the workouts, eat as clean as you want, and even feed your mind all the positive quotes, but if your heart isn’t turned in the right direction and rooted in faith, you’ll never reach full abundance, or truly experienced a balanced life.
In another words, you are not enough without Him, and you’ll always be on the hamster wheel of trying to find happiness and purpose. You’ll rely on things, i.e. the latest fad diet, smaller jeans, gleaming clean countertops, all the bubble baths — to feel whole.
Ali Beth Stuckey sums this up in her book:
This is it.
This is where:
- all foods fit, free from diet culture
- you do a quick workout to honor and strengthen your mind and body, not chase a pant size
- you embrace easy recipes because avoiding the overwhelm actually shines light on the joy of this job.
- you cultivate a grateful heart so that you can give thanks even when things are hard.
- where you go about the dailyness of being a mom, adding in those small steps (aka healthier habits) that reveal purpose.
This is where you embrace the mess and chaos.
Where you find satisfaction.
Joy.
Freedom.
Christ- centered wellness transforms us from just surviving to thriving. We can bust through the myths of “one size fits all” and latest trends and overwhelm, knowing that God created us with bio individuality and equips us with different gifts.
And thanks to this concept, we can shift our definition from just “healthy” and more towards “hearty.”
We become better stewards of ourselves and those we care about –in our homes, communities and even in the world.
And we go from a life well lived to a life well loved.
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it
Provers 4:23
This post is the first of my wellness series. Be sure to subscribe so we can walk through this concept together.
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