What Is Health And Wellness About: 9 Important Self-Care Tips

What is health and wellness about, and why are they important? The aim of wellness is to live your healthiest, and best life. A life that’s rich in health, love, joy, life experience, adventure, and diversity.

Your health and wellness have an enormous impact on your life, happiness levels and wellbeing. They are influenced by the choices you make each day! The good news is that you don’t need to be perfect.

You just need to make good health and wellness choices more often than not. Regularly making good choices helps you to feel good about yourself. This in turn increases your confidence levels and self-esteem.

When you maintain wellness through a healthy and enriched lifestyle, you do what’s right for your body, mind and soul. Many of the activities that keep you healthy can also improve your mental focus. They can decrease stress and improve the quality of your life!

There are 9 aspects of wellness and associated self-care tips. Each aspect is important in its own right. However only you can determine the importance of each aspect within your own life.

Your present and future life satisfaction is determined by the choices you make each day! With this in mind let’s make a start by considering each aspect in turn.

1. Physical Aspect

As you move forward in life, you probably expect to be able to do all the things that you can do today. You don’t want to think that as you grow older, you’ll become frail, slower in movement and more disposed to illness.

But this could easily happen if you don’t pay attention to your health and wellness! Failing to care for yourself can lead to poor overall health, an increase in ailments, and chronic diseases. Poor health can result in low energy levels, unhappiness and dependency which result in depression.

Your overall wellness determines the kind of life you’ll have. Aging is inevitable, but your physical wellness can be maximized through daily self-care.

Physical Aspect Self-care Tips

To enjoy the best life possible, you need to care for yourself through proper nutrition. You don’t have to be obsessed with healthy foods. But wholesome foods should form the basis of most of your daily meals. If you are short on time think about prepping meals in advance so that you always have nutritious meals on hand.

Because, if you don’t eat nutritious foods regularly, your body will become frail from a lack of essential vitamins and minerals. Or you could become overweight if your food and drink intake is high in fat and sugar.

To ensure the best diet for good health:

Eat plenty of different colored vegetables, legumes/beans.
Eat 2 pieces of fruit daily
Add wholegrain foods and cereals that are high in fiber
Choose fish, eggs, tofu, lean meats and skinless poultry
Eat nuts and seeds
Choose reduced fat milk, yogurt and cheese
Drink plenty of water

Exercise is also very important for your body, mind and soul. If you don’t exercise, your bone density diminishes and your muscles weaken. This leads to poor body posture, poor mobility, weight gain or osteoporosis.

Incorporating 20-40 minutes of physical activity a day can be as easy as:

A daily brisk walk
Using the stairs instead of elevator
Walking to corner store instead of using the car
Parking your car in the spot furthest away from your destination
Standing up instead of sitting
Walking around while on the phone

Look after your physical health through good nutrition, daily exercise, and put a stop to substance abuse. Making good choices will help you stay healthy now and into your future years!

2. Mental Aspect

What is health and wellness about in relation to mental health? Your mental health is how your mind processes information gained through your life experiences. It encompasses your emotional, psychological, and social well-being.

Mental health affects how you think, feel, act, connect with others, and how you handle stress. It can leave you feeling lonely or isolated, and unable to perform daily tasks. Poor mental health can also affect your moods, sleep patterns, your weight and your relationships.

Poor mental health can be caused by:

Biological factors such as genetics, brain chemistry or medical conditions
Life experiences through trauma or abuse
Environmental factors like problems at work or with personal relationships

Mental Aspect Self-care Tips

Concentrating on your troubles, ailments, or your hurts makes you unhappy and keeps you feeling depressed. Instead you can improve your mental health by practicing wellness and self-care.

Eat healthy nutritious foods
Get enough sleep
Focus on positive thoughts
Be honest about how you feel
Be conscious of your intentions
Accept that some things are out of your control
Train your brain to stop the fear response
Relax your body and mind to reduce stress
Exercise regularly
Maintain a good work-home life balance
Get help

When you look after your mental health, you’ll be able to work productively, cope with stress and connect with others. A positive mental attitude helps you to reach your full potential to enjoy life!

3. Emotional Aspect

Mental health is how your mind understands information gained from life’s experiences. Emotional health on the other hand, is how you cope and express your emotions that result from your life’s experience.

People who are emotionally healthy feel good about themselves and are enthusiastic about life. They aren’t overwhelmed by emotions such as fear, anger, love, jealousy, guilt, or anxiety.

Emotionally healthy people build lasting and satisfying personal relationships. They feel comfortable around other people. Because they’re in control of their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, they can cope with life’s stresses and challenges.

People that experience poor emotional health, suffer! They suffer from depression, stress, mood changes, excessive fears, anxiety, grief, guilt, eating disorders, or from poor body image. As a result, they experience tiredness or problems sleeping. In extreme situations they withdraw from friends and activities.

Major changes in life such as divorce, loss of work, or becoming ill can affect your emotional health. In order to combat poor emotional health, you need to administer emotional wellness through self-care.

Emotional Aspect Self-care Tips

Emotional self-care is accepting your negative thoughts, habits and mistakes and trying to improve on them. It’s understanding and respecting your feelings, values, and attitudes while appreciating the feelings of others.

You can improve your emotional wellness by:

Valuing and respecting yourself
Avoiding self-criticism
Taking care of your body with nutritious foods and exercise
Surrounding yourself with caring people
Learning to deal with stress
Quieting your mind with meditation
Setting realistic goals
Reducing boredom by trying new or different things
Contemplating the good things that you want for yourself

4. Financial Aspect

What’s health and wellness about with relation to your financial status? The health of your finances is based on your wealth and employment status, combined with your spending and saving habits.

Financial wellness is critical for your overall health and wellness because it can help lower stress levels. Whereas concern over finances can result in high stress levels, anxiety, high blood pressure or depression.

Financial stress can lead to severe health problems which result in expensive medical bills. These bills then eat further into your finances and can cause even more stress!

Poor money habits can result from bad financial decisions based on your desires, rather than what’s good for your future. Good money habits on the other hand, give you the ability to foresee any risks and organize your finances to your advantage.

Financial Aspect Self-care Tips

There are many ways to improve your financial health, these include:

Switching banks to get better interest rates on deposits and/or loans
Linking your savings account to a fortnightly direct deposit
Designing and sticking to a practical budget
Managing expenses of fixed and non-essential items
Comparing insurances policies for a better deal
Applying for credit cards with reduced interest rates
Investing and saving wisely
Creating an emergency fund
Having a retirement plan
Regularly evaluating your financial situation or risks

Bad monetary habits can quickly get you into financial trouble! Financial wellness on the other hand, can help you spend wisely, and save for the future. As a result, a solid financial plan can help you to reach your financial goals faster!

Social wellness enables you to enjoy being with, and establishing relationships with other people. Rewarding relationships allow you to interact respectfully with others. Satisfying relationships are desirable as they contribute to your sense of belonging and self-esteem.

Social wellness also helps to lower rates of anxiety and depression. It increases the feelings of being loved, accepted, empathy, trust and safety. A healthy social life staves off feelings of loneliness and reduces stress while increasing your sense of happiness. As a result, people who have strong social ties tend to live longer. They also are healthier in their mental and physical wellbeing.

Social wellness is about developing personal relationships with people that accept you. It’s NOT about how many “friends” or “followers” you have on social media. Instead, social media can have adverse effects on people who rely heavily on it. This is because negative social media feedback can lead to depression, anxiety, inadequacy, loneliness and self-harm.

For your mental wellness’ sake, it’s important to distinguish between real friends and fake friends. Real friends allow you to be yourself. They value you for who you are, and they accept your shortcomings.

Fake friends or toxic people only want to be with you to make themselves feel better. For your mental wellness, keep away from all toxic people regardless of whether they’re online. If people make you feel bad about yourself, then ditch them as soon as possible and move on.

Below are some tips to help you build healthy, meaningful relationships and increase your social wellness:

Respect and love yourself
Forgive yourself and others
Listen effectively
Develop understanding for others
Be assertive, not passive or aggressive
Learn to give and take feedback
Engage with people from different cultures
Treat people with respect
Balance your social and personal time
Ditch toxic people from your life or social-feed

6. Intellectual Aspect

What’s health and wellness about regarding intellect! Intellectual wellness contributes to your mental health and overall wellness. It’s based on your education, creative abilities, knowledge, skills and life experience. An enriched mind gives you self-confidence and a sense of purpose which helps you lead a full and happy life.

As we age, our brain loses some of its mental functions. We start to experience more instances of forgetfulness. We also take longer to remember details and to learn new things. These brain glitches aren’t memory loss, they’re just a normal part of aging.

To keep yourself in the best mental health, you need to exercise your brain. An active mind heightens your ability to solve problems, improve memory, make decisions, be independent, and to analyze and comprehend new situations.

Intellectual Aspect Self-care Tips

You can increase intellectual wellness by:

Learning new things
Exploring new ideas, opinions and beliefs
Reading to enhance your enjoyment,
Increasing your knowledge or skills set
Exercising regularly
Joining a social group
Getting enough sleep
Limiting alcohol consumption
Eating nutritious foods
Playing an instrument
Doing crosswords, puzzles, jigsaws, or Sudoku.
Volunteering in your community

Intellectual wellness involves opening your mind to novel ideas and enriching experiences. When you expand your horizons, you’ll experience the variety and riches of the world around you. This increases your tolerance and respect for others. It gives you a sense of dignity and belonging, all while enhancing your memory!

7. Recreational Aspect

Recreational activity is anything that you do for fun and enjoyment either indoors or outside. Enjoyable activities such as spending time with family and friends help build self-esteem. They also reduce stress, and increase positive emotions.

What is health and wellness about in relation to recreation? Recreational activities can help you improve your communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and coping skills. Recreational activities can also help you to improve or acquire additional knowledge or skills.

What’s more, physical activity through recreational activities can help you to build a stronger body, and help you to control your weight. You’ll look better, have more flexibility and you’ll reduce the chance of illness and disease.

People who regularly partake in leisure actives have lower stress levels. This is because being active increases energy levels, self-esteem and confidence. At the same time, it reduces tension, anxiety, boredom, as well as physical and mental fatigue.

People who regularly participate in leisure actives are more optimistic, and have improved decision-making skills. They also have a higher level of independence which become more important with age. Recreation and leisure activities give you a chance to socialize with others. This in turn promotes a sense of joy and wellbeing!

Recreational Aspect Self-care Tips

Outdoors recreational activities that can greatly improve physical health and increase life satisfaction include:

Walking and jogging
Biking
Swimming and surfing
Personal sports and team sports
Hiking and camping
Fishing
Canoeing, kayaking or rafting
Rock climbing
Horseback riding
Skiing and snowboarding

Any activity that you enjoy can be seen as recreational. Indoor examples that help you appreciate life and create a sense of accomplishment include:

Social dancing
Scrap booking
Painting or drawing
Making jewelry
Listening to or playing music
Reading
Cooking for enjoyment
Tai Chi and yoga
Playing games or puzzles
Visiting museums and art galleries

People who frequently participate in leisure activities are noticeably happier than people who don’t. As a result, they tend to live longer and have fuller lives!

8. Spiritual Aspect

What is health and wellness about in relation to spirituality? Your spiritual wellness contributes to your overall health and wellness by connecting you with a higher power. This higher power can be based on your beliefs, religion, values, morality, goals and lifestyle.

You don’t need to be religious to experience spiritual wellness. You experience it whenever you use wisdom to make good choices in your life. Spiritual wellness allows you to be honest and fair. It gives you the courage to forgive yourself and others, and to be a caring human being.

Spiritual wellness helps you to sacrifice yourself, your time or your money for the sake of others. This sacrifice could be for the good of your children, family, friends, religious beliefs, charities, community or for your country.

Spiritual wellness allows you to see and experience the beauty and goodness of the world and the universe. It enriches your soul by allowing you to contribute your unique gifts, skills, and talents to work that is personally meaningful and rewarding.

Finally, spiritual wellness gives value and meaning to life by allowing you to love others. It helps you to be grateful for what you already have. Because when you’re grateful, you then have everything you need to be happy!

Spiritual Aspect Self-care Tips

There are many ways to improve your spiritual wellness and enrich your life. These include:

Praying or taking part in organized religion
Reading inspiring articles
Spending time in nature
Practicing meditation or yoga
Pondering the meaning of life
Volunteering in your community
Helping others via donation of time, money or resources
Connecting with your church or other religious body
Appreciating music and the arts
Focusing on your skills and hobbies
Being grateful for all that you have

What’s health and wellness with regard to spiritual wellness? Spiritual wellness helps you feel more connected to a higher power and to other people. It helps you to use wisdom to make choices which are consistent with your beliefs and values.

9. Environmental Aspects

What’s health and wellness about in relation to environmental wellness? The natural, social, and built environments that you live, work and play in effect your life, health, safety, security and freedom.

Your environment also affects your mood, productivity, sleep patterns, and your ability to relax. Enjoying time outside in clean natural settings has a positive effect on your physical and mental well-being.

A polluted environment on the other hand, will harm your health and well-being. We therefore need to do our part to protect our planet!

However, your environment is more than nature, it’s also the people in the community in which you live, work, and play. It’s a place or space where you feel safe. A place where you can freely and confidently connect with others through your beliefs, interests, sport, or hobbies.

A positive communal environment can be a powerful, resilient force against discrimination, harassment or crime. It can help you feel a sense of safety, security and freedom. The freedom to choose the things that are truly important to your health and wellbeing.

The environment you live, work and play in should be a place where you’re treated fairly and with respect. It should be a place where feel safe from injury, violence, harassment or discrimination. A place where you can be productive and have the freedom to be yourself.

Environmental Aspect Self-care Tips

A clean, healthy environment comes about by establishing a sustainable lifestyle. This can be done by protecting natural resources, eliminating pollutants and minimizing waste by:

Riding your bicycle, walking or using public transportation instead of driving
Recycling and composting
Planting a garden or trees
Using natural cleaning products
Conserving energy by turning off unused lights
Reducing your personal carbon footprint

The environment you live, work and play in should be free of any active threats to your safety. A safe environment helps you feel physically, emotionally, and socially comfortable. It can be attained by:

Associating with people who are caring and thoughtful
Staying away from toxic people, substances and events
Being assertive in protecting yourself, your beliefs and your rights
Getting appropriate training for any work you undertake
Obeying warning signs and safety protocols
Using the right tools for each job
Ensuring your employer provides a safe hazard free work environment

Summing Up: What Is Health And Wellness About?

The past is history. But the good news is that your present and future health and wellness lie in the choices you make each day! You don’t need to be perfect, you just need to regularly make good health and wellness choices.

Health and wellness are available to everyone. It’s up to you to make the right daily choices that will enhance your happiness and your life. Do this by:

Eating healthy and nutritious food
Leading an active lifestyle
Organizing your life to reduce stress levels
Increasing spiritual and intellectual opportunities
Enriching your life through community involvement and diversity
Tracking your finances
Maintaining a healthy work-life balance

What is health and wellness about? It’s about becoming the best person you can be! When you look after yourself, you can live a life that is rich in well-being, love, knowledge, adventure, and diversity!