Studies point to a wellness plan as helping you have a happier, better life.An action plan to help your physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional wellbeing is a wellness plan. It's wise to create a strategy that fits you as experts believe that wellness activities such eating healthy meals, including stress relievers into your daily schedule, and practicing mindfulness will help you lead better life.Fortunately, you can easily adapt your wellness plan to fit your circumstances and maximize your life.
1. Setting Up and Following a Wellness Plan
Identify areas that could use improvement. There are some models of wellness that describe wellness in terms of physical, social, emotional, intellectual, vocational, environmental, spiritual and financial dimensions. Be honest with yourself about how satisfied you feel in each aspect of wellness. That way you can create a wellness plan tailored to your needs.
- Assign a 1–10 rating to every region; 1 represents the lowest grade and 10 the best.
- This helps you identify the area requiring work.
- Remember, though, every area influences another, hence you won't always gain by concentrating all of your attention on one area to the disadvantage of others.
2 Set goals. Once you identify the area or areas that you feel you need to work on, begin setting your goals.
- Write down specific goals you want to accomplish in each area. Create achievable short-term goals that will move you towards increasingly larger long-term goals.
- Make sure your long-term goals are also reasonable and doable. For example, if you are 25 years old, a reasonable long-term goal might be financial security by the time you retire at age 65. An unreasonable long-term goal would be becoming a billionaire by the age of 30.
- Be patient with yourself. Personal evolution does not generally take place overnight, nor is it usually very easy. But it is doable, so don't get discouraged if change doesn't happen immediately.
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3 Keep track of your progress. Make up a chart or a journal in which you can outline each aspect of personal wellness and the goals for each.
- Set aside a calendar designated for tracking your wellness progress. Mark important dates and checkpoints so that you can see your progress. Begin by establishing your baseline of wellness for a particular aspect, write it down, then check in again after a month or two.
- Seeing the positive effects of what you have already accomplished may be the best motivational fuel.
4 Update your wellness plan. As you develop greater personal wellness, you may that certain goals take more or less time than you anticipated. Or you might find that some goals are no longer inside the scope of what you want to accomplish. So make a point to monitor your progress and reassess your needs every 6 months or so. That way you'll keep your wellness plan in harmony with your personal growth and progress.
- The process of achieving personal wellness is dynamic. Your needs, your goals, your environment, and your relationships may all change. You then want to decide how you want to change along with them.
- While your particular situation may change, by keeping these goals at the forefront, you can achieve a greater degree of control of how those changes will affect you. If for example, you set a weight loss goal of 10 pounds in 6 months, at the end of 6 months, re-evaluate that goal. Are you happy with your current weight? Do you want to lose more? If you are happy with your weight, your new goal may be maintenance. If you want to lose more, perhaps your new goal is 10 additional pounds in the next 6 months.
5 Get support. Having the support of others can be crucial to maintaining your drive and motivation. Your supporters can hold you accountable, offer encouragement when needed, and perhaps even join you in your efforts.
- Get professional help and advice where needed. If for example, you want to improve your diet and nutrition to attain physical and mental wellness, you may want to consult with a nutritionist.
- If you are looking for financial stability, talk to a financial advisor.
- Join support groups that address whatever area(s) you might need encouragement in.
- Start a “buddy system” with a friend, spouse, or relative for various aspects of your wellness plan. For example, if you're working on financial wellness, getting your spouse involved can be an important step in getting closer to both relationship wellness and emotional wellness.
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2 Assessing Your Wellness Levels
1 Assess your current physical wellness. Physical wellness encompasses nutrition and physical fitness. Physical wellness also includes your medical wellness. Good medical wellness includes health-promoting medical practices like getting regular medical check-ups and using preventative healthcare. It also involves avoiding smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, and recreational drug use. Helpful questions to consider when assessing your physical wellness include:
- What are your physical goals? Are you interested in seeking out a personal trainer, or is there a coach you may want to consult?
- Are you looking for overall fitness, or are you looking to build your core, your cardiovascular health, your upper body strength, etc?
- Are you looking to build muscle tone, or are you more interested in increasing stamina and endurance?
2 Assess your level of nutritional wellness. Nutritional wellness has to do with how well nourished and supported your body is.
- Consider your current diet and how well it serves your health. Note any areas for improvement.
- Try reading through.
3 Assess your level of mental wellness. Mental wellness is a measure of how you cope with difficult situations and how well you balance your emotions.
- Consider your present mental wellness. Which emotions do you deal with most often? How well do you deal with those emotions? What changes or improvements would you like to see to your mental state?
4 Assess your level of spiritual wellness. Spiritual wellness isn't about religion or personal faith but about how you perceive the meaning of life and your place in it.
- Consider your current level of spiritual wellness: how fulfilled do you feel in your life? Do you lack a sense of purpose or efficacy?
