Spark Courage
Wellness is not just the absence of illness – wellness means to thrive, to have optimum physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.
But what does optimum health and wellbeing mean to you? How do you know what your optimum looks like? Do you know what makes you feel good about yourself and life in general? What makes you happy? And if you aren’t at your optimum state, do you know how to get there?
“Optimum health and wellbeing” mean different things to different people. 25-year-old you will have a very different image to 30-year-old you which will again be very different to 50-year-old you. Being single, coupled, pregnant or a parent will influence what your optimum looks like right here and now.
Generally, the concepts of health and wellbeing focus on your Energy, Sleep, Stress, Work-Life Balance, Weight, Nutrition, General Health (Absence of Illness and Disease) and Relationships.
Parents tend to focus first and foremost on the wellbeing of their children. What we often tend to forget though is that children do not just learn by what they are being taught, but also by observing.
Watching you and how you treat yourself is something they will see every day growing up, and habitually follow in the same footsteps – often without noticing. This makes it even more important for you to look after your own health and wellness and to set a good example of consistent healthy habits for your children.
But to set this great example, you need to know what your optimum is. If you are not sure whether you are currently living a healthy life, or what your optimum should be it can come in handy to ask yourself the following questions:
- How do I want my kids to perceive me?
- Who was I looking up to as a child, and why?
- If I were to look back at my life right now in 5 years’ time, what advice would I give my younger self?
- What is something that has made me feel accomplished in the past?
- Who is in my current support network? Family? Friends? What are they doing to stay healthy, are there group activities that you may be able to arrange?
- Who do I enjoy spending time with, and why?
- Is my current diet healthy and sustainable and suited to raise my children with all the nutrients they require to grow into healthy adults?
- Are we, as a family doing enough physical activity? What are we doing for family time?
- Do I sleep enough (If you don’t, especially with younger kids, there will be a blog coming up on how to get more sleep…)
- How do I currently relax when I am stressed?
- What are hobbies and interests I used to enjoy, but stopped doing since having a family?
- How can I integrate my old hobbies into my current life?
- What is something I always wanted to try, but never did? Do I know anyone who could get me involved?
- Do I wake up with an optimistic outlook every day, and strive to be the best I can?
- Am I ready to make changes to my life right now?
- How important is it to make those changes?
Answering the above questions can be confronting, but also give you some idea of where you are at in terms of your wellness and where you want to be.
While it may be tempting to start making multiple changes towards greater wellbeing at once, this is not necessarily the best idea, and instead I recommend a “1% approach”. Pick one or two areas in your life, and start making small, doable changes every week. The saying “success breeds success” is true. The more goals you start to hit, no matter how small, the more likely you are to rewire your brain to start thriving for more success. Before you know it, the positive changes to your routine have become a new habit. While you may have heard the myth that it starts 21 days to form a new habit, unfortunately this has been debunked by a lot of researchers. While it can happen that quickly, getting comfortable with a habit changes takes around three months or more. Once you have been doing a new behaviour consistently for at least 6 months without thinking about it, congratulations, you have formed a new habit and you have reached the maintenance stage of change.
Once you defined what wellness means to you, and what you would like your optimum (say in a year from now) to be, it is time to come up with a plan. Break your vision down into behaviours that you will consistently be doing in 3 months’ time. Let’s say your vision of optimum fitness is to be able to run 15km without stopping. Your reason for doing this is to have the stamina to keep up with your kids when out and about while also keeping your body in shape. Your behavioural goals for in 3 months’ time are to run 5km without stopping and to be playing a game of footy with your kids every weekend. Now think about what you need to do right now to get started, what can you do next week that will get you closer to your 3-month goal? You could break this down to say – next week Monday, you will go to a shoe shop after work, to get a pair of runners. On Tuesday during your lunchbreak, you will search for runners’ clubs in your area and talk to your friends to see if anyone is keen to join. On Thursday, you will watch a video or talk to a trainer once the kids are in bed to learn about the best beginner running techniques. Friday morning, after school drop off, you will go for your first 5km walk & run following the advice you got on Thursday.
Keep breaking it down, and then build on the small achievable goals when setting the next week’s goals. If you are like me – I do not like the word “goals”. I call them experiments. Experiment with what works, and what does not work. However, keep those experiments realistic and ensure they can be measured so you know whether you achieved what you set out to do.
Before you know it, following your 1% approach, you will be closer to achieving your own optimum wellbeing.
Need some inspiration?
Knowing what wellness means to you is the first step to living a healthy, thriving life. If you have no idea what it means to you to be well, or if you have figured out what being happy and healthy means to you, but are unsure on how to get there, visit sparkcourage.com.au. Book yourself in for a free discovery call, where we can have a chat to see how you can get started on your journey.
