Wellness is not just the absence of illness.

Organisations and their people may make the common mistake of boxing the idea of wellness into physical and mental wellness.

This explains the buzz around words like mental health and physical health. Think of how you get pep talks around getting enough rest off work, or encouragement around a better work-life balance, with emphasis on your ability to take time off work to relax so that you do not get overwhelmed and final burnout. No doubt, these are necessary conversations that will steer up actions to improve the health and wellbeing of the people who put in the work for various organisations.

Wellness, as it is today, transcends beaming the light on physical and emotional/mental health alone. For organisations and their people to experience wellness, the conversation needs to cover intricate aspects of our lives and personality. Wellness is an active process of creating awareness and making decisions that will help you live a more balanced and fulfilled life.

The wellness wheel is a fine illustration that illuminates wellness from eight dimensions, providing users with the opportunity to evaluate how well or badly they are doing in these different dimensions of wellness. This article explores the eight dimensions of wellness.

1. Physical
2. Spiritual
3. Intellectual
4. Environmental
5. Financial
6. Occupational
7. Social
8. Emotional

Physical

This dimension of wellness is about being aware of and making decisions that support your physical body to stay healthy and function optimally. This component is where things around exercise, diet, sleep, hygiene, and medical checks come to play.

To assess your physical wellness, you should ask questions like;

Am I eating right?

How many times do I exercise/workout

Do I get frequent check-ups?

Spiritual

This dimension deals with the decisions and actions that allow you to understand your purpose and find meaning in life. Exploring the spiritual dimension of wellness may be seen by some as a religious act, while others see it as a way of gaging deeper insights into their environment/world.

Spiritual wellness helps you understand your values and belief and how they impact the life actions and decisions you make. Take out time to meditate and connect with your purpose.

Intellectual

The intellectual dimension of wellness focuses on identifying intellectual abilities and expanding knowledge and skills. Think of the feeling you get when you walk into a business summit knowing you are on top of happenings in the business space. You feel super confident, don’t you?

Here you are seeking to improve skills like creativity, problem-solving, learning, curiosity, and critical thinking.

Environmental

The environmental dimension of wellness doesn’t only speak to our surrounding and how it impacts our well-being, but also looks at how we select, design, and connect with the spaces in which we carry out our daily activities.

For example, a number of organisations now create office spaces and designs to enhance creativity and relaxation. Ensure your environment is clean, free from distractions, and has the elements that support the sparks you need for your daily activities.

Financial

This dimension looks at the financial awareness and actions we take and how they impact our sense of current and future financial satisfaction.

As we walk through life, we usually would take three major financial actions, investment, expenditure, and savings.

To obtain complete wellness, it is important to thoughtfully select which actions we should take more and pay attention to how previous actions have impacted our current financial satisfaction.

Spend within your limit. Invest more. Make saving a culture.

Occupational

This dimension of wellness has to do with the personal satisfaction we get from work and other endeavours. It is important to strive to be the best at what we do. Become your competition, seeking to always improve and achieve your dreams.

Social

This dimension of wellness explores the quality of our relationships – at work, with friends, with family members, with mentors and mentees, with colleagues and bosses etc. The emphasis is on how we create, interact in, and develop such relationships.

Your support system plays a pivotal role in your well-being. There are times when everything fails and all you have is people/someone to lean on or talk to.

Emotional

This dimension covers everything around your feelings and emotions. To be emotionally stable, you need to be in charge of your emotions. To be in charge of your emotions you need to first understand your feelings.

Your ability to manage change and cope with stress is directly related to your emotional wellness. Master your feelings. Learn how to express them.