Well-being - it's such a buzz word isn't it? You hear it mentioned everywhere but what does it actually mean?
There are different types of well-being depending on what area of personal development we are looking at. These include physical, emotional, social, financial, occupational, spiritual and intellectual.
Physical well-being involves maintaining good health of our bodies, ensuring a good quality of life. This can include eating well, exercising regularly and getting enough sleep.
Emotional well-being involves a successful approach to working through life's stresses and adapting to change without impacting our mental health. This can include attending therapy, meditation, mindfulness and hypnosis.
Social well-being is about connection. Creating a sense of belonging by contributing to society, making friends, socialising with like-minded people, exploring differences with people who think differently to you. This can include attending regular clubs/classes, joining discussions online or meeting up regularly with friends.
Financial well-being is about establishing a good relationship with money and recognising how you view money. This could include speaking to a financial advisor, having a savings plan, a budget plan or a goals and expectations chart to ensure you are living within your means.
Occupational well-being includes maintaining a good work/life balance, recognising your worth when in employment and knowing when work is causing mental health problems and making steps to address this. This could include factoring in time for you doing things that you enjoy each day or once a week. It could also mean monitoring the time you spend at work, ensuring that you aren't giving more than expected, all of the time.
Spiritual well-being isn't just about religion. It's about having a sense of life-meaning and purpose. Understanding your connection to your culture, religion and your community which informs your values, beliefs and morals, will help you to maintain healthy spiritual well-being. Therapy can help you to work out what life means to you and what you feel your purpose is in life.
Intellectual well-being is about maintaining a good brain function, keeping the grey matter active and challenging it regularly. This can include updating your knowledge, learning a new skill, doing puzzles and mathematical quizzes.
When working with clients, I promote the keys areas of physical, emotional and social well-being as a priority because I believe that once these foundations are in place, the others tend to fall in line and improve.
Take a look at my video to see how I encourage clients to take a holistic approach to well-being:
https://youtube.com/shorts/_-pqsf6DiFM?feature=share
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