What is well-being? How can you improve it?
According to the Better Health Channel of Australia, “Wellbeing is not just the absence of disease or illness. It’s a complex combination of a person’s physical, mental, emotional and social health factors. Wellbeing is strongly linked to happiness and life satisfaction. In short, wellbeing could be described as how you feel about yourself and your life.”
The kind promise I am considering this month is “I will spend my time in ways that enhance the well-being of myself and others.”
Today, I am exploring the idea of well-being
Corporate Wellness suggests five areas of well-being:
- physical – diet, exercise habits, sleep patterns, overall fitness
- emotional – our ability to cope with stress and manage our emotions effectively.
- social – our ability to form and maintain positive relationships with others.
- Intellectual – our ability to learn, grow, and develop new skills and knowledge.
- Spiritual – our sense of meaning and purpose.
Individual definitions of well-being change as people age. Ideas of well-being differ between cultures, according to an article by Aaron Jarden and Annalise Roache.
Improving your well-being
Tchiki Davis, in Psychology Today, points out that we can build skills that improve our well-being. Like any skills-building process, they must be practiced over time. Davis includes emotional wellness skills like positivity, emotion regulation, mindfulness and resilience. For physical wellness, we need to understand what’s included in a healthy diet and exercise plan and implement them. Social skills include kindness, communication, and gratitude.
Davis suggests two additional areas of well-being: workplace and societal. Maintaining work life balance and finding your purpose are workplace skills. To develop societal well-being, Davis tells us, we need to develop skills that help us feel connected to all beings. We need to know how to support our environment, build stronger communities, and foster a culture of kindness, fairness, and compassion.
Well-being is a BIG concept. Reading over these definitions, we each can identify what areas we feel drawn to or that we feel we are lacking. We can develop a plan, identify skills, and begin to practice and improve.
Enhancing our well-being will improve our happiness and make us easier to be around.
In your journal:
- what areas of well-being call to you?
- What skills would you like to learn and/or practice?
- Where might you get the information you need to improve your skills?
- When and how might you practice?