The term wellness seems to show up everywhere, especially when we’re talking about cannabis, but precisely what is wellness? Is it just the same thing as being healthy? It’s more than just a buzzword – come take a deep dive with us and find out why wellness is important and just what exactly it is.
What's the Difference Between Health and Wellness?
Oftentimes the words health and wellness show up together, but that doesn’t mean that they are synonymous.
The World Health Organization defines health as a state of being, saying:
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
Wellness, on the other hand, is a lifestyle. It’s a commitment to making conscious choices that will improve your quality of life and ultimately help you stay healthy, as defined above.
What's are the 8 Dimensions of Wellness?
An effective wellness routine is a dynamic wellness routine.
In order to achieve a peak state of wellbeing, a person needs to address and manage every facet of their health. For example, one can spend all their time on their physical health with regimented diets and tons of workout time, but not necessarily be healthy if that same person ignores their emotional wellness.
Some experts have created a model that maps out eight dimensions of wellness – eight unique interdependent areas of focus. They are: physical, intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, vocational, financial, and environmental. Let’s have a look at each one.
Physical Wellness
Physical wellness, the dimension that focuses on taking care of our physical bodies, is likely what comes to mind for most people when they think about living healthy. The two largest components of this wellness dimension are:
- Nutrition – food is the food that fuels our body. Maintaining a balanced diet nourishes us and promotes overall wellbeing.
- Physical activity – culturally, we’re becoming more sedentary. Getting out and getting active strengthens our bodies and helps reduce the risk of stroke and cardiovascular diseases.
Emotional Wellness
Our interior health is just as important as our exterior health. Emotional wellness involves reflecting on our feelings and maintaining healthy outlets for our emotions.
Once we are able to identify and name our feelings, it becomes considerably easier to manage our emotions instead of simply reacting. Positive thinking can have a powerfully positive impact on our emotional wellness, but it’s important to acknowledge our negative emotions and not just bottle them up.
A large part of emotional wellness is taking the time to relax and allow yourself to destress. Using our stelo™ Relax blend of hemp flower can be a great way to unwind after a stressful workday.
Occupational Wellness
The largest swaths of our waking hours are spent toiling in paid and unpaid work. Since so much of time goes towards our careers and household duties, they can greatly impact our overall health.
Healthy occupational wellness looks like clear, realistic career goals and open communication with colleagues and bosses. It can be helpful to reflect on the occupational tasks we most enjoy doing, which ones we aren’t very fond of, and trying to structure our lives and careers with our passions in mind.
Intellectual Wellness
Learning and exploring new thoughts and ideas is essential to a healthy lifestyle. Intellectual wellness is listening to our most curious selves and engaging new knowledge with an open mind and mental focus.
To improve intellectual wellness, try stopping by the local bookstore or library and picking up a new book on a topic that interests you, or try signing up for a continuing education course at a local college or university.
Environmental Wellness
Our settings are the stage on which the theatre of our lives plays out. On a micro level, environmental wellness can mean cleaning your apartment or making your bed. On the macro level, it can mean recycling and doing your part to ensure our planet will continue to be a healthy environment in the future.
One way E1011 Labs helps promote environmental wellness is by using eco-friendly stelo™ instead of conventional plastic/metal vape cartridges that will sit in landfills for hundreds of years.
Financial Wellness
Like it or not, money plays a crucial role in all of our lives. Financial insecurity can be a major cause of stress for many of us, and too much stress can lead to future health problems.
Improve your financial wellness with simple steps such as starting a savings account, investing, or coming up with a weekly/monthly budget to help curtail unnecessary spending.
Social Wellness
Humans are pack animals that have evolved to thrive in group settings. Social wellness is all about maintaining healthy relationships with our friends, family, and neighbors.
Social wellness is more important now than ever since so many of us have been forced to physically isolate. Luckily, thanks to modern technology, there are still ways for us to remain connected to our fellow humans.
Spiritual Wellness
Regardless of where you fall on organized religion, we all want to connect to something larger than ourselves. Spiritual wellness allows us to find meaning in our existence, and without that sense of purpose, you may find that you have trouble improving the other seven dimensions.
