Wellness: Are We Missing the Point?

“Wellness” is a big buzzword right now, but what does it actually mean to be healthy? Anyone who has ever thought to themselves: “I should exercise more” or “I should eat healthier” knows that wellness is no easy task. Sometimes we just don’t feel motivated to make healthy choices. On the other hand, wellness is tricky because it is difficult to know how healthy is healthy enough. How do we know when we are doing enough to lead a healthy lifestyle? If you have ever found yourself asking these questions, I would invite you to re-examine your ideas about wellness.

In the pressure to live a healthy lifestyle, we often forget that wellness is an opportunity to improve our lives. Wellness should help us feel better. What this means is that wellness looks different to each person. Some people will be marathon runners, but most of us won’t. You don’t have to be running five days a week, or even at all, to build a healthier life. As a matter of fact, you don’t have to do any one specific thing to be healthier. You can pick and choose the healthy habits that make you feel good.

If you’re the person who feels like making healthier choices is a burden, maybe it’s time to ditch your ideas of what you think you should be doing. Wellness is about improving your own life. That means you don’t have to do what someone else does in order to be healthy. Adding healthy habits and focusing on self-improvement should be exciting, and the lifestyle you create should be one that makes you happy.

If you’re the person who wonders if your habits are healthy enough, I would remind you that health is flexible. The purpose of having healthy habits is to improve your life, not to make you constantly doubt if you’re performing well enough. For example, if you choose to eat the healthiest diet and exercise like it’s your job, that doesn’t necessarily make you healthy. If you obsess over everything you’re eating or beat yourself up when you skip a workout, you’re missing the point. Wellness shouldn’t make you feel guilty. It shouldn’t stop you from celebrating with your friends every once in a while because you “can’t afford the calories.” The effort you put into your health is a great investment, but don’t become so rigid in your regimen that you forget other aspects of health, such as your mental health, social well-being, and sleep. Health is about so much more than how long we stay in the gym and what we eat. It’s also about emotional well-being, treating yourself with kindness, building social relationships, and even feeling spiritually connected.

Wellness can be a celebration of our lives. We are grateful for our bodies and everything they do for us, so we want to take care of them. Try these three tips to craft a healthier and happier life.

-Callie W.