Well Words Wednesday: Happy New Year -- A Great Time to Assess Your Wellness!
01 08 2025
A new year is a wonderful time to assess your overall wellness. Our path to wellness is not a static one. Our health can change in response to our development, it can be impacted by our genes or the environment, or it can change due to our own actions or inactions. Just like we have no control over our exposure to certain germs, we have no control over certain circumstances that may arise in our lives. There are, however, factors that we can control. We can create habits that build a healthy foundation.
When it comes to our physical health and equipping our bodies to withstand germs or illnesses, we need to concentrate on boosting our immune system. We can accomplish this by limiting our intake of processed foods and focusing instead on eating healthy, real foods such as fruit, whole grains, seeds and nuts, vegetables, lean meat, and fish. In addition to our nutrition, getting at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise 5 times a week and getting at least 7-8 hours of sleep each night also benefits our physical health. Then, when we are faced with situations such as exposure to germs, an injury, or illness, we have a healthy foundation in place to help us fight off the germs or to heal more quickly from an injury or illness.
It is just as important to lay a healthy foundation for our other domains of wellness too. Prevention and wellness efforts assist us in building habits and strategies to strengthen our emotional, mental, spiritual, and relationship health. We are then better equipped to handle stress and challenges. All our domains of wellness are interrelated, so strengthening one benefits the others. Wellness has huge impacts on our overall quality of life.
What can you do in this new year to improve your overall wellness? Our Wellness Ministry focuses on five domains of wellness: emotional health, mental health, spiritual health, physical health, and relationship health. This year, rather than setting resolutions, I encourage you to assess each area of your health. Write each one down and then rate each one from one to ten based on your perceived level of healthiness, with one being the lowest and ten being the most optimal. This little exercise will prompt you to reflect on each of the domains of wellness and assess its “healthiness” score. Next, I want you to reflect on a positive word for each of your domains that will gently nudge you towards improving the wellness score of that domain over this next year.
I will provide an example:
Greta’s Overall Wellness Quotient
- Emotional Health (Feelings): I give myself a 6. My anchor word for improving my emotional health this year is “pause.” I want to be more intentional about taking a deep breath between a stimulus and my response. I want to pause, identify my feelings, and consider whether my feeling is an overreaction based on a judgement, an unmet expectation, feeling criticized, or a misperception. This will hopefully improve my internal and external responses to emotional stimuli.
- Mental Health (Thoughts): I gave myself a 7. My anchor word for this year’s improvement of my mental health is “wellness.” I want to direct my thoughts, and correspondingly my actions towards wellness. I recently joined Dr. Ann’s yearlong “Healthy Living School: Zoom to Health course, which focuses on the importance of nutrition on our overall health, especially our physical, emotional, and mental health. Another aspect of wellness that affects my mental health is becoming more aware of automatic negative thoughts and challenging their validity.
- Spiritual Health: I gave myself a 6. My anchor word for improving my spiritual health this year is “stillness.” My spiritual health often involves action with prayer, daily readings of scripture and devotions, attending Bible studies, and worshipping (all important), but I want to be more intentional about carving out time in the early morning to be still and quiet, listening for the voice of God. I will also aim to do a daily meditation exercise.
- Physical Health: I gave myself a 4. My anchor word for improving my physical health is “move.” As stated above, my nutritional health is turning in the right direction, but I could do much better with movement and exercise. I get so caught up in reading, researching, writing, and teaching about mental and emotional health, that I neglect my physical health. Even though I love to spend time in the great outdoors each day, walking the dog by the river and through the woods, I am not getting my heart rate up, other than walking up and down a few hills. Increasing my steps and my heart rate by moving more is my intention this year.
- Relationship Health: I give myself a 5. My anchor word for improving my relationship health is “proactive.” I have many interests and hobbies, and it is quite easy for me to get caught up in my own little world. Though I heed or answer the call when others need something or need a listening ear, I am not as proactive as I would like to be.
Because our wellness can ebb and flow due to life’s transitions, external circumstances, or our own neglect, it is important to perform a wellness assessment at least once a year. Sometimes we are so caught up with “doing “life that we become automatic in our responses and actions. Knowing that small changes can make a significant difference, what changes can you make this year that will benefit your overall wellness? I encourage and cheer you on in your decision to join me in journeying towards wellness this year!