Get off the Hamster Wheel of Wellness
The thing about wellness is, it requires effort! So how can we engage in ways that don't make us nuts and jack up our nervous system whilst trying to be "well!"
The “health & wellness” industry is gigantic and powerful. On a daily basis you can hear their loud voices saying, THIS is what you need to care for yourself for optimal health! Naming what supplements we should take, what ways to get the best sleep, what foods to avoid and include, which exercise routine is best and on and on and on.
Unfortunately one of the toxicities of these relentless campaigns and messages, in our ‘get ahead and be beautiful’ culture, is that we often end up feeling less than. We’re behind the game and “if only” we could buy this or make time for that or get the right mattress or gym membership, “I could be…” what exactly, healthy & well?
There’s such a deep psychological nature to marketing and no I am not trained in marketing, but I am, in psychology. And as a “wellness” health educator and mindfulness coach, yes, I am loosely in this club. (Ugh) So bear with me here as I offer another perspective on what it means to be positively engaged with your own health & wellness.
Here’s the down and dirty deal friends.
We think primarily about wellness as the pursuit or the action part of achieving a “look good and feel good” state of health. That state of health includes EVERYTHING—your bodies health and your minds, as well as emotionally and if your spiritual, then that too.
No doubt we need to be healthy and thinking about good health, to continue to live the life we want to be living. (And of course to continue the species although that’s a debatable good idea!)
But it can be ridiculously easy to feel like our wellness goals and efforts are just one more column for self-improvement or achievement on our weekly productivity spreadsheet. However, for some spreadsheet loving, highly structured and organized people, it works. If you fall into that category please keep reading—we need you in this conversation!
But what if we strip wellness of it’s “ness” (which heartily implies the action or effort) and work with the word, well. What if we reframed our wellness efforts as the act of living well and feeling well. Asking ourselves each day, how can I live well today?
But before we begin, we have to know what living well and feeling well is. For ourselves. A way for us to know, in the moment, when “wellness” is happening? (So you can mark it down in the spreadsheet of course!)
What does living well look like?
a day without conflict
feeling accomplished at work
getting out each day for a walk in nature
being able to pay your bills and have some left for the “fun in the sun” account.
eggs on toast, just the way you like it
a smile from your kids during the morning rush
or a “thank you” from your spouse after making their favorite meal.
Who says living well is only about your weight or muscle mass, how many hours sleep you got, or how many yoga classes you get in this week?
What does being well feel like?
Is there a happy twinge in your heart
no-pain in your back or body
a belly laugh
an emotional sense of okay-ness or contentedness
is it feeling joy, compassion
not being stressed
having the capacity to parent, volunteer, work and play and rest.
being a good listener —to myself
How can we quantify what wellness feels like when we’re not trying on jeans or looking at our recent cholesterol numbers? And maybe living well and feeling well are the same to you, or they overlap so much it’s hard to know the difference. That’s okay.
We can ask ourselves, “what does being well mean to me?” Often and I do mean often, we get stuck in patterns of negativity or harm simply because we have digested and come to believe the status quo. So here’s your chance, (yes before the New Year and it’s dreaded resolutions) to ponder your relationship to wellness. To find out where it works for you and where it doesn’t.
1. Begin by exploring what living well means to you and what it FEELS like. (write it down, draw it out, or sing about it)
2. Then you can build an inventory of moments when you find yourself feeling well or being well, so you can know what it feels like, literally in your body and brain—to be well.
3. After you’ve got a good sense of what you’ll be looking for, commit to a practice of pausing. Pausing to notice when the good feeling of “wellness” is happening is a big deal!
Then over time you won’t have to think about it, or schedule it, shedding hours and hours of trying to find the motivation for that wellness routine of x,y, or z. It will just become internally motivated and inspired because feeling well and being well are now you’re life, not just an activity to be checked off or fulfilled.
To live a life that we want to live is often one way people define living well to me. Just yesterday a 89-year old who left her husband at 70-years old said, “I was tired of not living my life and even though I was terrified and embarrassed, I knew I had to take that step—for me.”
Maybe now is the time to turn the definition upside down, instead of turning your life upside down to fit into a way of living that isn’t your own. Try to look for the things and the moments that inspire you to be well and live well. Do more of that!
Kari