8 Dimensions of Holistic Wellbeing | A Holistic Approach to Wellness

8 Dimensions of Holistic Wellbeing

The definition of wellness is as an active holistic journey to become aware of and make self-motivated choices toward a healthier and more fulfilling life. It is an ever changing dynamic process of evolving, growth and reaching your own fullest potential. It is the conscious and purposeful development of your whole self.

1. Emotional Wellness

Emotional encompasses your wellness motivates self-care, stress reduction, and the development of your inner strength. Being emotionally well means learning to unravel your own emotions and cope with the challenges that life throw at you. Once you are emotionally well, you will start to feel confident and in control of your own feelings and behavior. It’s important you understand both your positive and negative emotions. Another factor of emotional wellness is the ability to learn and grow from the experiences you have. Working through challenges and  obstacles will make you more resilient and help you learn that we can overcome setbacks. Emotional wellness promotes autonomy and decision-making skills.

Emotional wellness will allow you to accept your feelings. This will in turn give yourself an actual chance to decompile and understand why you’re feeling the way you are. This then allows us to decide how we want to behave in response to those feelings. It lets us sort through our emotions, instead of just  reacting automatically. Having emotional wellness can give you the courage to express our feelings without feeling constricted. In turn, emotional expression becomes enjoyable, we learn to work through challenges more efficiently, and we become more capable of building good relationships with others.

Additionally, emotional wellness reduce stress, which is paramount as stress isn’t just common, it can add to your physical and mental illness.

2. Occupational Wellness

Occupational wellness is when you feel satisfied with your work choice. The type of job you choose is pertinent, but it can also cover things like parenthood or volunteer work. This dimension highlights the importance of finding meaning from your work. Occupational wellness involves focusing on work that brings us happiness, satisfaction and accomplishment.

You can achieve this by exploring various careers, managing your workplace stress, balance your work and leisure time, and forming relationships with coworkers. Finding an occupation that aligns with your interests, values, skills, and financial needs will boost this wellness.

Occupational wellness is important because it allows you to express yourself through your work, and is rewarding for you. Another important factor is to help you spot workplace problems or stress, which is practice for conflict management. You will spend most of your life working, so your choice of work should be rewarding.

3. Physical Wellness

Physical wellness is all about maintaining your body in a good condition and healthy. This encourages a combination of physical activity, nutrition and sleep, in order to keep your body in peak condition. You will become aware of your physical wellness, you’ll realize what you are doing right, and what to change. Gaining physical wellness allows us to realize and nurture our personal responsibility for our own health.

Your physical wellness is key because it’s important to care for your body. You’ll find it difficult to feel good, and complete tasks, when you’re not healthy in body. Many diseases, illnesses (mental and physical), and injuries stem from not taking care of our bodies. Physical activity prevents a range of diseases and illnesses, strengthens the bones, muscles and heart, and increases overall energy levels. The benefits of physical activity are endless, enormous and powerful. Consuming a variety of nutrients and vitamins, helps prevent illness and keeps your body functioning at its best level.

On top of this, physical activity and nutrition greatly boost your mental and emotional well-being. Your physical condition directly effects your thinking and emotions. Improving your own physical wellness is a key to improving emotional wellness overall. This will elevate your own self-esteem and self-control. Not only this it boosts your concentration and learning capabilities.

4. Intellectual Wellness

Intellectual wellness can be defined as broadening your knowledge and skillset as well as recognizing your creative talents. This dimension encourages you to perform mentally-stimulating and creative tasks. Tasks include academics, cultural involvement, personal hobbies, puzzles, reading will develop your intellectual wellness. Participating in any mentally stimulating activities that challenge your personal knowledge and skills boosts your intellectual wellness. Choosing to  learn and become a lifelong student and being willing to try new things will help you a great deal. Whenever you challenge your knowledge or skills, you are developing intellectual wellness.

If Intellectual wellness is what you seek to achieve it’s necessary for you to become more mindful and well-rounded. As intellectual wellness develops, you will find the ability to evolve personal resources that beneficially links to the other wellness dimensions, and reach a more balanced life. Participating in this means you become more curious, which in turn will inspire you to try new things and build a clearer understanding of our connection to the world around us. An added bonus of intellectual wellness is if you pay attention you will typically much better concentration, better memory and far better critical thinking skills than people who don’t.

5. Spiritual Wellness

This is the dimension of wellness that you’ll have to master by yourself. Spiritual wellness teaches you to look within, observe, and get to know yourself. The dimension is key, as it allows you to find meaning in your life and define your individual purpose. You will always learn something about your own ‘self’ in the world. You’ll need to find solitude to begin contemplation, or a place for curiosity and playfulness helps develop spiritual wellness. You’ll also find many activities to develop your own spiritual wellness, like self-reflection, meditation, prayer and being out in nature.

Once you are spiritually well, you will know who you are with clear values and a great sense of inner peace.

6. Financial Wellness

Your financial wellness is defined as the steps to learn how to manage your financial expenses effectively. Money plays a big part in your health, learning, and experiences. It is important you must develop money skills, such as tracking your outgoings, drawing up budgets, and setting your money goals. Practicing these financial wellness skills is a must to become financially independent.

When you’ve had to buy anything expensive, you know why it’s important to be financially clever. You and everyone needs money to live on. Financial difficulty can contribute towards stress, anxiety and fear. Learning to reduce your financial worry will increase your overall wellness. Money can directly impact your health, so cultivating good financial skills is a valuable investment in yourself and overall holistic wellbeing

7. Social Wellness

Social wellness can be defined as sense of connecting and belonging with others. This dimension covers making and maintaining a good support system and creating solid connections with others. Understanding good communication skills is key, as well as setting healthy boundaries and being authentic and genuine treating others respectfully. Social wellness also include purposefully taking chances to interact with others especially romantic relationships.

Social wellness is important because it allows us to build healthy relationships and develop a support system. Building relationships helps us develop confidence and become comfortable with ourselves in social situations. Social wellness enables trust, boundary setting and conflict management. It encourages communication, builds self-esteem, and is crucial to building emotional resilience and strength.

8. Environmental Wellness

Definition: Environmental wellness is determined by the surroundings we occupy. This dimension of wellness highlights the link between our overall well-being and the health of our environment. Environmental wellness encourages us to seek positive environments, as well as live in harmony with the planet. Our environments, including our social, personal and natural environments impact our health and how we feel. Environmental wellness encourages interaction with nature and our personal environments. 

To be environmentally well, you only have to put more awareness on our personal and natural environments. By sharing your awareness on the environment, you begin to pay closer attention to how it affects those around you and how you effect it. Then we may realize the things you should keep, and the things that you should change pertaining to it.

Why is Environmental Wellness Important?

The health and integrity of natural ecosystems and the environment effect human health and wellness.

For one, engaging with nature improves mood and concentration levels, decreases stress, and increases overall vitality. It also helps remind us that we are a part of a whole, which can help you feel connected to something bigger than yourself.

Second, environmental wellness means respecting the environment, which is important because we live in it. When we put more awareness on our environment, we start noticing how our daily habits affect our environment. This encourages us to do environmentally friendly things (like recycle), which improves the overall health of our environment, being our planet.

Lastly, environmental wellness includes the personal/social environments you put yourself in. For example, you wouldn’t want to be in an unsafe environment that is cluttered, or dirty because it can negatively affect your health and well-being.

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