I feel confident that many Brothers are starting this year with the intention of healing themselves, improving their self-care and/or prioritizing their wellness, and rightfully so. Many of those Brothers will develop new thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and ways of being that contribute to their ability to live long, healthy, fulfilling lives. Others will watch experience a cycle of being excited about New Year’s resolutions, followed by thinking deeply about how to actualize their intentions, life happens and eventually, Brothers reach a point later this year where they are wondering how their goals to improve their wellness materialized – it is all too common (I know, firsthand). This post will share a few ideas on how to start your yearlong – and eventually – lifelong journey to personal wellbeing.
But first, I’d like to define wellness and its six dimensions. Halbert L. Dunn, M.D. (1896-1975) defines high-level wellness as:
a condition of change in which the individual moves forward, climbing toward a higher potential of functioning.
The National Wellness Institute (NWI) defines wellness as:
functioning optimally within your current environment.
The NWI, and Dr. Bill Hettler, co-founder of the NWI, developed NWI’s Six Dimensions of Wellness model in 1976. The six dimensions of their wellness model are: emotional wellness, physical wellness, intellectual wellness, occupational wellness, spiritual wellness, and social wellness. The definitions for each can be found here. Since the purpose of this post is to share what your healing could look like, I won’t go into detail during post about the history of wellness and/or definitions of key vocabulary associated with wellness.
What I have learned is that intentionally planning to improve your wellness is similar to strategic planning at work. For me, this process begins with understanding and assessing a current state. Next, there’s reflection on actions that improved one’s current state and barriers that prevented improvement of one’s current state. Then, articulating a vision and/or goals that define what you want to achieve; followed by implementation and action planning.
If I applied the same thinking to wellness planning, it could look like this:
- Assessing my emotional, physical, intellectual, occupational, spiritual, and social wellness.
- Reflecting on the progress I made or did not make in each of the dimensions of wellness.
- Identifying 2-3 dimensions of wellness that is personally important for me to improve.
- Creating a vision and goals for the 2-3 dimensions of wellness that matter most to me.
- Determining how I will measure progress in those 2-3 dimensions.
- Creating an action plan that describes the behaviors (actions) that could improve those dimensions of wellness and dated milestones that Indicate progress along the way.
- Determining barriers that could prevent progress and how I will navigate those barriers.
- Print and post plan in a visible place and begin implementation of the plan.
Perhaps, now, you are wondering how do I assess emotional wellness (for example). The NWI has a resource that assesses each of the six dimensions of wellness. That’s not enough for my Brothers. I also created a survey that assesses emotional wellness based on the resources provided by the NWI. That survey can be found here.
Consider this post a primer. I will revisit it in the future to add more detail to the various sections, but time’s ticking and I want to provide Brothers with support starting their wellness journeys as soon as possible.
If you have questions, suggestions, or just want to connect, leave a comment. Until the next post…
JB