Personal Wellness

Sections of this topic

    How to Improve Your Personal Wellness: Guidelines and Resources

    Sections of This Topic Include

    What Has Personal Wellness Got to Do With Managing?

    There is an old adage that “You can’t lead anyone else unless you first can lead yourself.” If you are struggling personally — physically, emotionally, spiritually or mentally — then you cannot give your full attention and energy to your job. Instead, much of your being is spent on taking care of yourself, whether you are aware of it or not. That is why many organizations are offering courses in well-being as part of their overall support to their employees.

    There are many aspects to personal wellness. Fortunately, there are also many guidelines and resources to help you in your own development. Research shows it is most effective to develop a personal wellness plan and then get help to implement the plan.

    What is Personal Wellness?

    People used to consider wellness to be just the absence of physical illness. However, as we have learned more about the many other aspects that can affect our happiness, joy and meaning in our lives, that definition has changed. The National Wellness Institute writes ” … there appears to be general agreement that:

    • Wellness is a conscious, self-directed and evolving process of achieving full potential
    • Wellness is multidimensional and holistic, encompassing lifestyle, mental and spiritual well-being, and the environment
    • Wellness is positive and affirming”

    The Institute specifies that there are six dimensions to wellness including:

    1. Emotional
    2. Occupational
    3. Physical
    4. Social
    5. Intellectual
    6. Spiritual

    The Institute advocates a holistic approach to improving one’s well being.

    Take a Personal Wellness Inventory

    Before developing a wellness plan, it is useful to get some “objective” perspective on the condition of your personal wellness. You might take one or both of the following private tests.

    What did you learn about your wellness? What do you want to do about it? It helps to list your goals in a personal wellness plan. Consider the guidelines and samples in the following sections.

    Develop Your Personal Wellness Plan

    Guidelines

    You might start with the guidelines in the following articles.

    If you are interested in getting an even broader context about well-being, here is a comprehensive manual to follow.
    Personal Health Plan Manual

    Sample Wellness Plans

    Now you might list some of the aspects of your well-being that you want to improve into an overall plan. Consider the following examples.

    Various Perspectives on Wellness

    Here are some additional perspectives on well-being — some focus more narrowly on certain aspects, while others are more broad.

    Numerous Additional Resources Related to Personal Wellness

    Each of the following Library topics includes numerous resources in specific aspects of well-being.

    Start an Informal Study and Support Group to Help You

    It is often not enough merely to get some advice about what you should do in order to improve yourself. Otherwise, a lot of us who have needed to lose some weight would have already done that. For example, we already knew that we needed to cut back on calories and do more exercise.

    Instead, it helps greatly for us to have some ongoing support and accountabilities to actually apply the advice that we are given. You can start an informal support group by gathering at least two other people who want to improve some aspect of themselves. Here are time-tested, straightforward guidelines for doing that.
    Procedure to Start Your Own Study and Support Group

    Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Personal Wellness

    In addition to the articles on this current page, also see the following blogs that have posts related to Personal Wellness. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog. The blog also links to numerous free related resources.

    For the Category of Personal Wellness:

    To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

    Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.