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What is wellness?

Wellness is the ability to live life to the fullest and to maximize our potential through the integration of mind, body, and spirit.

Optimal wellness allows us to achieve our goals and to find meaning and purpose in our lives.

The Eight Dimensions of Wellness

from East Carolina University
 

Physical

A healthy body maintained by good nutrition, regular exercise, avoiding harmful habits, making informed and responsible decisions about health, and seeking medical assistance when necessary. To remain well, physical wellness requires that you take steps to protect your physical health by eating well, getting plenty of exercise, maintaining a proper weight, getting enough sleep, avoiding risky sexual behavior, and restricting intake of harmful substances.

Intellectual

A state in which your mind is engaged in lively interaction with the world around you. This dimension of wellness implies that you can apply the things you have learned, that you create opportunities to learn more and that you engage your mind in lively interaction with the world around you.

Emotional

The ability to understand your own feelings, accept your limitations, achieve emotional stability, and become more comfortable with your emotions. Emotional wellness implies the ability to express emotions appropriately, adjust to change, cope with stress in a healthy way, and enjoy life despite its occasional disappointments and frustrations.

Social

The ability to relate well to others, both within and outside the family unit. Social wellness gives us the ease and confidence to be outgoing, friendly and affectionate towards others. It involves not only a concern for the individual, but also an interest in humanity and the environment as a whole.

Occupational

Preparing and making use of your gifts, skills and talents in order to gain purpose, happiness and enrichment in your life. Occupational wellness means successfully integrating a commitment to your occupation into a total lifestyle that is satisfying and rewarding.

Spiritual

The sense that life is meaningful and has a purpose; the ethics, values and morals that guide us and give meaning and direction to life. Spiritual wellness is a search for meaning and purpose in human existence leading you to strive for a state of harmony with yourself and others while working to balance inner needs with the rest of the world.

Environmental

The capability to live in a clean and safe environment that is not detrimental to health. To enjoy environmental wellness, we require clean air, pure water, quality food, adequate shelter, satisfactory work conditions, personal safety, and healthy relationships.

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