WELLNESS

WELLNESS

Wellness is the active process of becoming aware of and making choices to create a healthier life in all of life’s dimensions.

Wellness describes a lifestyle in which the physical, social, intellectual, psychological, spiritual and environmental components of health are integrated.

The well person committed to wellness is continuously striving to achieve the optimum level of health within the framework of his or her own limitations and potential.

The well person takes an honest look at his or her won capabilities and limitations and attempts to change those negative factors in life that are within the individual’s power to change. Wellness behaviours include:

  • Exercising aerobically at least three times per week and engaging in other forms of exercise daily
  • Not smoking
  • Limiting the consumption of alcohol to no more than two drinks per day and seven drinks per week
  • Taking actions to preserve the environment
  • Eating wholesome, nutritional foods
  • Reducing caffeine intake
  • Practising safe sex
  • Engaging in practices of meditation or reflection which enable you to reduce stress
  • Consciously avoiding inappropriately hostile or aggressive behaviours
  • Avoiding inappropriately passive behaviours
  • Balancing work, social and fitness behaviours
  • Our outlook on life, our relationships with other, our general appreciation of the world around us and our respect for the well-being of others are all major elements of the wellness lifestyle. Thus, wellness is not dependent upon age, sex or intelligence but a mindset which will help you attain a sense of well-being.

    Just as certain influences predispose us toward various behaviours or make it more difficult to change a given behaviour; reinforcing factors serve to help us to maintain our motivation to change. Without them we slide backward toward negative wellness behaviours.

    Having a strong social support group to give you positive feedback, having a friend to call when you’re craving that cigarette or rich dessert and knowing others really and actually care about you may actually help you to continue your diet and exercise efforts. The extent to which you perceive yourself as feeling better and the feedback you receive from others following and adoption to a given behaviours may encourage or discourage your continuation of the behaviour.

    While some people participate in a 10km. race for the T-shirt they get for entering the race, others participate because they feel good about the value they place on the exercise and finishing the race is their true reward. Ask yourself, “What did I do for myself today, yesterday and what about tomorrow?” Begin a wellness approach by:

    • Setting realistic goals
    • Adjust priorities
    • Identify your resources
    • Develop a plan and time frame
    • Tale action and give yourself time to make the behavioural change.
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