What is wellness? Definition, types and skills of wellness (2023)

Wellness is the experience of health,happinessand prosperity. It includes having good mental health, high life satisfaction, a sense of meaning or purpose, and theability to manage stress. In more general terms, well-being is simply feeling good (Answer this questionnaire to discover your level of well-being.)

Wellness is something almost everyone strives for because it includes so many positive things: feeling happy, healthy, socially connected and purposeful. Unfortunately, wellness seems to be on the decline, at least in the United States, and increasing your wellness can be difficult if you don't know what to do and how to do it.

These are some of the reasons why I foundedBerkeley Wellness Institute— an organization that translates the science of wellness into simple tools and products that help you increase your wellness. And they are the reasons why I wroteGet Over Your Smartphone: Mindful Tech Habits to Find Happiness, Balance, and Connection IRL, which helps people face new challenges that interfere with our well-being in the age of technology.

Can you really improve your well-being?

Increasing your well-being is simple; there are tons of skills you can develop. But increasing your well-being isn't always easy: find out which parts of well-being are most important to you.youand discoveringasExactly, developing wellness skills usually requires some extra help.

How long does it take to improve well-being?

Typically, when people begin to consistently use science-based techniques to improve well-being oremotional well-being,they start to feel better quickly. In the studies I've done and read, most people show significant improvements within five weeks.

But you have to stick to it. If yousonfeeling better after five weeks, he can't stop there.

Why? Well, you probably already know that if you stop eating healthy and go back to eating junk food, you'll end up where you started. It turns out that exactly the same thing is true for different types of well-being. If you want to maintain the benefits you gain, you will need to continue to engage in wellness-enhancing practices to maintain your abilities. Therefore, it is very useful to have strategies and tools to help you meet your needs.long term goals— for example, ahappiness and well-being planor an activity to improve well-being that you can continue to practice throughout your life.

Here's what you need to know:

Where does well-being come from?

Well-being arises from your thoughts, actions and experiences, most of which you have control. For example, when we think positively, we tend to have greater emotional well-being. When U.Slook for meaningful relationships, we tend to have better social well-being. And when we lose our job, or just hate it, we tend to experience less well-being in the workplace. These examples begin to reveal how broad well-being is and how many different types of well-being there are.

Since wellness is such a broad experience, let's break it down into its different types.

5 main types of wellness

• Emotional well-being.The ability to practice stress-managementyrelaxation techniques,be resilient, increaseself love, and generate the emotions that lead to good feelings.
• Physical well-being.The ability to improve your body's functioning throughhealthy lifeand good exercise habits.
• Social welfare.The ability to communicate, develop meaningful relationships with others, and maintain a support network to help you copesoledad.
• Workplace Wellbeing.The ability to pursue your interests, values ​​andpurpose of lifeto gain meaning, happiness and professional enrichment.
• Social welfare.The ability to actively participate in a thriving community, culture and environment.

To develop your overall well-being, you must ensure thatallof these types are working to some extent.

Think of it like this: Imagine you are in a car. Your engine works great and maybe your transmission works great too, but your brakes don't work. Since your brakes don't work, it really doesn't matter how well your engine runs; You will still have trouble moving on with your life.

The same goes for your well-being. If everything in your life is going well, but youfeeling alone, or are eating unhealthy, other areas of your life will be affected and you may not feel as good as you'd like.

Since each part of wellness is important to your overall sense of well-being, let's talk about how to develop each type of well-being:

Emotional well-being.To develop emotional well-being, we need to develop emotional skills, skills such aspositivity,emotional regulation, youconscience, For example. We often need to develop a variety of these skills to deal with the wide variety of situations we encounter in our lives. When we build these emotional well-being skills, we can improvedeal with stress, managing our emotions in the face of challenges and quickly recovering from disappointments. As a result, we can enjoy our lives a little more,be happierand chase ourgoalsa little more effective.

Here are some of the skills that research suggests contribute to emotional well-being:

• HappinessSkills
• conscienceSkills
• Positive thinkingSkills
• ResilienceSkills

Physical well-being.To develop our physical well-being, we need to know whatdietand shows an exercise routine so that we can implement effective strategies in our daily lives. When we improve our physical well-being, not only do we feel better, but our new health can also help prevent many diseases,heal our bowels, increase our emotional well-being and limit the number of health challenges we have to deal with in our lives.

Here are some of the things that can help you improve your physical well-being:

• eat for health
• detox your body
• Correction of nutritional deficiencies
• remove plastic from your home

Unfortunately, it is possible to eat healthy and still not be healthy. We may accidentally miss out on important foods or nutrients. Or we can overload ourselves with toxins from plastic or processed foods. As a result, we may need to eat extra food, detox our bodies, or prevent these toxins from entering our bodies again. That's why learning about health is essential so we can make the right changes, ones that lead to long-term health and well-being.

Social welfare.To develop social well-being, we need to develop our social skills, such asgratitude, kindness and communication. Social skills facilitate our positive interactions with others, helping us feel less alone, angry, or disconnected. When we develop our social well-being, we feel more meaningfully connected to others.

Here are some of the skills that research suggests contribute to better social well-being:

• practicingGratitude(for example with agratitude journal)
• Building Meaningful Social Connections
• Manage your relationship with technology

It is important to know that building social well-being is one of theto improveways to build emotional well-being. When we feel socially connected, we also tend to feel better, have more positive emotions, and handle challenges better. That is why it is essential to build our social well-being.

Workplace Wellbeing.To develop our well-being in the workplace, we need to develop skills that help us pursue what really matters to us. This may include developing professional skills that help us meet ourlife goalsand help usmanifest things, but it also includes things like living our values ​​and maintaining a work-life balance. These skills allow us to enjoy our work more, helping us to stay focused, motivated and successful at work. When we develop well-being at work, our work, and therefore every day, feels moresignificant.

Here are some of the key skills needed for workplace wellness:

• Maintain balance between work and personal life
• find your purpose

Since we spend a lot of time at work, building our well-being in the workplace has a big impact on our overall well-being.

Social welfare.To develop social well-being, we need to develop skills that make us feel interconnected with all things. We need to know how to support our environment, build stronger local communities and promote a culture of compassion, justice andkindness. These skills help us feel like we are part of a thriving community that truly supports each other and the world at large. When we cultivate social well-being, we feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves andlives happily.

While each of us makes up only a small fraction of a society, it takes all of us to create social well-being. If each of us did an act of kindness for someone in our community, we would live in a very caring community. Or if we all decide that we're going to recycle, we suddenly create a world with a lot less waste. To live in a healthy society, we too must contribute to a healthy society.

Here are some of the skills you can develop for greater social well-being:

• living your values
• Create a plastic-free home
• Making a positive impact on other people's lives
• Kindness

Who benefits most from building wellness?

Not everyone experiences the same benefits when building their well-being. For example, a lot of research suggests that the more motivated you are to develop wellness skills, the greater the impact. Perhaps this is not surprising.

Still other research shows that having skills likegrowth mindsetthe onepositive attitudein fact, it can help you develop your other wellness skills more easily. That's why I often encourage people to develop these skills first; then you will be able to increase the other types of well-being more easily.

Also, developing wellness skills is perhaps most beneficial for people who struggle the most, especially if they've been through something recently.stressful. It may be more difficult to build well-being during this time, but the impact can be greater because there is more room for improvement.

There is no magic in building well-being

Keep in mind that it takes time and effort to develop any new skill set, which includes wellness skills. It's important to be realistic with yourself about what you can reasonably accomplish in a given amount of time. Having unrealistic expectations can cause you to give up before reaching your wellness goals. Therefore, it is essential to create arealistic plan for your well-being, persist and take small steps every day that result in big improvements over time.

If you've read my previous posts, you might be aware that I too have struggled with aspects of my well-being, particularly maintaining my work-life balance. The truth is, we all struggle, and new struggles can and will arise, even if you're doing it right. But the more we work to strengthen our wellness skills, the easier it will be to be resilient, take the necessary steps to recover and move forward.

Increasing your well-being is a lifelong pursuit, but it's worth it.