Ben Coleman
Perspectives Editor
The Wellness Wheel is something that has been used for self-care for quite a while. Typically, this wheel consists of five to eight areas that should be well-rounded in order to have a balanced lifestyle. The best way to think of these seven areas is like a Venn diagram. Each circle overlaps with another area, before and after. This means that throughout each area, everything in the wheel is synced together. This article will dive into the social, physical, emotional, occupational, intellectual, environmental, and spiritual aspects of personal wellness and how they can help you.
- Social skills – This encapsulates the ability to work closely with others and maintain relationships. This can be anyone from family to co-workers. The magic about this is that it can teach you and others very valuable lessons. Take these social skills as lessons to strengthen and guide you in the next chapter of life and take them as learning moments. These learning moments will only guide you for a better-calculated outcome the next time.
- Emotional Wellness – This helps us understand ourselves and cope with the challenges of things that may arise. Take our previous bullet point about social skills as an example. If we are able to position our social skills to work to our benefit, our emotional skills will flourish as well. Take having a social issue for example. If we have a social disagreement with someone, we can only learn from it and not allow it to break us or impede our thought processes. This in turn doesn’t allow emotional well-being to be sabotaged which can then help us continue to flourish in the next part of our life. Our occupational well-being.
- Occupational wellness – Whether occupational wellness is school, a full-time job, or both, we all have the opportunity to obtain a new sense of accomplishment. This occupational awareness doesn’t just help our emotional well-being, but also our intellectual well-being. I have found that maintaining occupational balance is key in life. As people get into the world after school, they find that they are unhappy with their job. As cliché as it might sound, try, and hone in on something that you are truly in love with. By doing so, you will never work a day in your life. This mentality also helps you formulate a better, more well-rounded intellectual ability in your mind which can prepare you for more life lessons to come.
- Intellectual – Our psyche or intellectual wellness can cultivate new ideas both on the personal spectrum, and the occupational spectrum. Intellectual wellness is a big part of wellness as it can strongly affect all seven areas of personal wellness. Without intellectual, our emotional wellness really suffers. This can strongly affect how we react to social situations inside and outside of our current occupation. Furthermore, intellectual well-being helps us focus on our personal decisions which can heavily aid the things that we love.
- Environmental – In essence, this is the nature around us. This is the same thing that I mentioned in one of my earlier articles this year. I referred to it as Active Meditation. Environmental is our personal understanding of the nature around us and how it can impact our intellectual and spiritual abilities. Being aware of our environment can also help us appreciate and enjoy certain situations that we may be faced with. Sometimes if I am troubled by something, I go outside for a bit and just take in the sights, smells, and sounds. This becomes a large reset for me sometimes because I am able to understand that no matter how upsetting something may be, everything will be fine. I make this connection by looking at how big the outside world is, and how small my problem is. This shows me that it is a minor thing that I am dealing with. Life keeps moving.
- Spiritual – This one coincides directly with our environmental and physical wellness. If our spiritual abilities are at war, it is hard for us to understand the environment we are in, which in turn, makes it hard on our physical abilities. Wellness as a whole in my opinion has a big thing to do with physical abilities. When it comes to our spirituality, many things in our life can change. Spirituality is one of the primary differences in eliminating negative energy and creating good energy. This good energy that is created is recognized by the ones around you, and also the universe.
- Physical – Lastly, we come full circle to our physical wellness and how it is imperative that we take care of ourselves. By us taking care of our physical wellness, we are able to handle everything above ten times better. Physical abilities also help us get through any daily tasks with decreased fatigue or physical stress that we may encounter.
Our wellness is a major thing in us getting through the grand scheme of life. I have found that as time goes on, I have had a shift in how I view things. This is all thanks to my personal well-being and how I take care of myself and view any external factors. I have started to focus and see that everything is a teachable moment. These moments may be hard sometimes, but they show me things that I didn’t know or understand before.
Throughout these last five weeks of school, we hope that you continue to work hard on being the best version of yourself. Be kind to one another and keep soaring, Eagles!
The Candor 