Wellbeing what is it?
Wellbeing is the experience of being comfortable in ourselves, feeling happy and healthy.
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Can You Actually Improve Your Wellbeing?
Yes, but increasing your well-being is not always easy: Figuring out what parts of wellbeing we need to work on is a first step.
Integral Therapy identifies 5 Major Types of Wellbeing
• Emotional Wellbeing. The ability to manage our emotions, recognise the emotion, notice how it feels and then use whatever management tools needed to keep the emotion at bay. Management tools could be breathing practices, self-talk, removing self from situation etc. When we build our emotional wellbeing we build our resilience.
• Physical Wellbeing – Making sure to look after the physical body, though exercise and proper nutrition. Different exercise routines work for different people, walking might work for one person and swimming or running might work for another, we take the time to figure out what exercise is doable for me at this time. Taking time to look at what we are putting into our bodies, is it nourishing or depleting.
• Social Wellbeing – the extent to which you feel a sense of belonging and social inclusion. Taking time to connect with others through groups, class, outing etc. A connected person is a supported person in society. When we have a good level of social wellbeing we have the ability to communicate, develop meaningful relationships with others, and maintain a support network.
• Mental Wellbeing – A healthy sense of self, thinking positively, the ability to keep things in perspective, knowing that we are separate from our problems and challenges, paying attention to the present moment. Learning new skills is a great way to maintain our mental wellbeing, this could be gaining a new qualification, learning an instrument, trying a new recipe, anything where we put our attention into learning something new in a non-stressful way. Learning new ‘things’ can boost our self-confidence, build a sense of purpose and help us to connect with others.
• Sense of Self Wellbeing -The ability to pursue interests, values, and purpose in order to gain meaning, happiness, and enrichment. Taking time to be with whatever is important to ourselves. Giving value to our own wants and needs.
How is it to build each type of wellbeing:
Emotional Wellbeing – We might want to build emotional skills like positive thinking and other mindfulness skills. When we have built emotional well-being skills, we can better cope with stress, handle our emotions in the face of challenges, and quickly recover from disappointments. As a result, we can enjoy our lives more and pursue our goals more effectively.
Physical Wellbeing -To develop our physical wellbeing, we what to have a healthy diet, a healthy exercise routine, quality rest / sleep, avoiding harmful habits. When we improve our physical well-being, not only do we feel better, our newfound health can also help prevent many diseases, boost our emotional well-being, and limit the number of health challenges we have to deal with in our lives.
Social Wellbeing – Social skills make it easier for us to have positive interactions with others, helping us to feel less lonely, angry, or disconnected. A good way to start building our social well-Being is to manage the time spent on phones / web and instead working on increasing our social interactions. When we have developed our social well-being, we feel more meaningfully connected to others.
Sense of Self Wellbeing – To develop our Sense of Self well-being, we want to build skills that help us pursue what really matters to us. This can include building professional skills which help us to advance more effectively yet also maintaining work-life balance, doing things that we thoroughly enjoy, and also living true to our values.
Mental Wellbeing – having skills like a having a positive mental attitude or a growth mindset.
There Is No Magic About Building Wellbeing, it takes time and effort to build any new skill set — that includes well-being skills, perhaps create a realistic plan for your well-being, stick to it, and take small actions every day that add up to big improvements over time.
The truth is, we all struggle at times, we have bad days, weeks, months and sometimes even years.. but the good thing is that there is always hope, we can always come back, choose to refocus, choose to rebuild, choose to try again. When we start to give attention to our wellbeing we begin to build our self-awareness – what helps us and what doesn’t help, we get to know and understand ourselves. From this we know what we need and what we need to let go of. We learn to accept things as they are and begin the work of getting ourselves back on track.
Growing your well-being is a lifelong pursuit, but it is totally worth it.
If you would like some support with your Wellbeing please do get in touch with Denise on 086 237 5619
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