Why wellness matters

Why wellness matters

After spending a lifetime in the health and wellness industry, I’m often asked by people why wellness matters? And what does wellness even mean? To me, wellness is the complete and absolute freedom to enjoy life any way we choose based on exactly what we want and don’t want to do.

Achieving optimal health enables us to make choices because we feel like it, because we think it will be fun, because it will benefit our relationship, because it will improve our career prospects, because it will help our family, because it’s our dream.

There are so many reasons why we can choose to do certain things. 

It’s not wellness when a deciding factor that we are unable to do something is because we are too tired after a week of work, we can’t get our head off the pillow in the morning, we are in too much pain and we don’t know why, we feel uncomfortable in ourselves so we choose to stay home, we have any myriad of symptoms that we are not dealing with, but prevent us from living a full life.

This is not quality of life!

What is Wellness?

It is our ability to listen to and understand what our body is telling us through our signs, signals and symptoms.

It’s our ability to speak with our body and to know what it wants and when it wants it.

It is you, thriving, loving living your life!

Why Wellness Matters – The Four Pillars of Health & Wellness

One of the key reasons why wellness matters is that it means you are thriving, not just surviving. It is our physical, emotional, mental and soulful aspects of us in flow, with a strong foundation.

1. Physical

It is our ability to physically perform as we would like every single day, however, we choose that to be. Our ability to have the energy, to perform to our highest standards in each area.

To be able to breathe deeply, move freely, nourish ourselves, to have a sex drive of our choosing, to enjoy our body and enjoy being in our body, to have quality sleep, to play sport, to be free from anything other than enjoyment with our physical body and to have our body be able to perform all of its amazing, incredible functions at its best.

2. Mental

It is our ability to be switched on, to feel clear in our mind, to be creative, to understand our thoughts, to recall and remember, to deal with our minds stress, to be able to switch off, to feel confident and strong within ourselves.

3. Emotional

It is our ability to deal with and process our emotions as they arise, to respond to life that is authentically us, to feel love and give love freely, to honour ourselves in each moment, to feel confident within ourselves, to feel seen and heard, to move with our intuition and to trust ourselves and to feel safe, peaceful and content. 

4. Soulful

Is our ability to be part of something that we add value to and that is larger than us, whether that be a local footy club, volunteering, your friends, your family or religion.

Whatever it is for you, we are designed to be part of a community, large or small. It is us having someone and something to care about, other than ourselves. It is having a purpose, something that lights us up, that either makes us get out of bed in the morning, or brings us joy on a weekend.

It’s us knowing we add value to others.

Wellness is a combination

Wellness is a combination of all four pillars.

They each work into and through each other. They each need each other to be in flow and be complete.

Without one, like the foundation of a house, the wellness house falls over.

How do you achieve Wellness?

Wellness is the actions we take each day, the behaviours we practice, our habits that we repeat. We know and have heard numerous times, “if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got”.

Our ability for us to be truly well, is dependent upon us taking responsibility for our health completely, the decisions we have made so far, and the decisions we choose to make moving forward.

Yes, it will take change, anything worthwhile does. Yes, it will feel different, but isn’t that what we want?

In all, Wellness is not just Fitness;

  • We can be fit and not healthy.
  • We can be fit to run a marathon but not to swim or lift a weight over our head.
  • We can be fit enough to run 10k’s but have backaches, high cholesterol and high blood pressure.

Wellness is not only health in one area.

Often we say we are healthy, yet while we feel good in our body, we feel conflicted within our emotions. We may feel energised, but not feel like we are adding value to others. We may feel very switched on but not feel that we can openly give love to ourselves and our loved ones.

Wellness encompasses all that we are and all that we are designed to be, at our absolute best, and seeing as it is our natural state, it’s a lot more fun to achieve it than we have often been told!