8 Different Types of Wellbeing – How to Support Optimal Wellness Easily
Wellbeing comes in many different shapes and forms.
There are a variety of ways wellbeing and wellness manifest themselves in life, from physical to emotional.
Wellness can be cultivated just like any other skill. While some forms of health and happiness come from within, others need external nurturing to prosper.
Focusing on wellness in a tangible way can help you live a longer, healthier life.
Health and Wellness
Wellbeing is the state of being well, synonymous with wellness. It is our right to live healthier, happier lives. The word is modern but its ideology spans thousands of years. The current trend is spending money to find wellness, but many types of wellbeing need no currency.
Taking action to care for each of these aspects of wellness can help you treat and prevent conditions that cause us to be unhealthy.
8 Types of Wellbeing
Here are the 8 types of wellbeing/wellness that improve health exponentially. We should watch out for these areas of our lives and learn how to support them in different ways.
Emotional Wellbeing
Emotional wellbeing is about how people can process and cope with challenges in life. Aspects of emotional wellbeing include managing stress, taking note of mental health, and fostering positive feelings.
How to Improve it:
Listen to your feelings. What we do not want is toxic positivity, a state of mind that completely shuts out and ignores negative feelings. This repression of emotion is actually detrimental to health. You are valid in what you are feeling and should allow yourself to feel it.
Learning to express your feelings while maintaining a positive outlook is about balance. Process negative emotions with various activities such as loving-kindness meditations, mindfulness, or focused attention meditation. Take up journaling to write things out and process them.
Environmental Wellness
Environmental wellbeing pertains to the environment around you, both physically and socially. This type of wellness can also include your relationship with nature and personal surroundings such as your home.
It also entails the social environment you cultivate.
How to Improve it:
A positive environment has a very positive effect on your life. In your homes, make sure it is somewhere you want to be. Add plants for a bit of greenery, add art you enjoy looking at, and add your favorite color rug.
Find surroundings that encourage good mental and emotional health. You should feel safe in your home and day-to-day life.
Get rid of toxicity in your life and environment even if it pertains to people. Find ways to change the environment of toxicity, whether it is setting boundaries respectfully or distancing yourself from negativity.
Occupational Wellbeing
Occupational wellness entails two aspects, work, and leisure. The type of wellbeing is about being able to find time for your hobbies while successfully managing work.
Ambitions for occupation, utilization of skills, and activities outside of work are also included in overall occupational wellbeing.
How to Improve it:
Find satisfaction in things you are passionate about, in work, school, and volunteering. Try to increase job satisfaction by being able to use your talents and skills at work effectively. Remember not to overwork, however, and nurture yourself outside of your job.
Take the time to try out new things not related to your occupation, develop hobbies, and do things for fun and peace.
Financial Wellness
Financial wellness is the overall health of finances an individual. Finances include income, the amount spent, the amount saved, the amount invested, and so forth.
Financial wellness is the ability to live within your means, managing your money in a way that allows you to have peace of mind. There are many ways to improve financial wellness, even when times are challenging.
How to Improve it:
Create a budget and try to stick to it. Set aside emergency money that is only to be touched, well, in emergencies. Always try to see if there are ways to increase your finances, from online marketing, eCommerce, looking for jobs with higher income, etc.
Take note of your goals and understand your finances, establishing good habits like saving and investing early on.
Always try to plan for the future when it comes to finances. If unsure of where to start, you can choose ETF stock, which includes fractions of many different companies to reduce risk. Only invest money you are willing to lose and remember, it is about time in the market, not timing the market. This is not financial advice.
Social Wellness
Social wellness is all about interaction with others and the relationships we have in our lives. These relationships can offer a lot, of support, advice, companionship, etc.
Building healthy relationships with the people in your life is vital to social wellbeing.
How to Improve it:
Social wellness needs a sense of belonging, whether it is in your community or in a group of friends, which is highly important. Make a social connection almost daily, whether it’s texting a friend, calling family, or chatting with your roommate for a bit. Create healthy relationships with the people in your life by establishing boundaries and being there for each other.
Cultivate a reliable support system you know will help you in hard times, whether that is family or friends. Reach out for advice and support when you need it.
Remember reciprocity. You help others today and are helped in return tomorrow.
Spiritual Wellness
Spiritual wellbeing relates to meaning in life, sense of purpose. It is about being rather than doing. For some, spiritual wellbeing entails organized religion but it does not have to.
It can include one’s inner peace, morals, and ethics, a sense of meaning in life and purpose, as well as how connected you feel with what is around you, like nature.
How to Improve it:
Take time to discover what values and beliefs are important to you.
Embrace your connection to yourself with activities such as meditation, breathing exercises, walks in nature, and mindfulness.
Physical Wellness
Physical wellbeing pertains to the ability to live a healthy life, accomplishing daily activities without physical stress on the body or becoming tired. It recognizes the need for physical activity, eating healthy food, and getting enough sleep.
For a baseline of physical wellness, you should be able to get through your daily life with little fatigue or physical stress.
How physically well someone is indicated by how well the body can go through life.
How to Improve it:
Simple activities like eating a well-balanced meal, exercising daily, and sleeping well can improve physical wellbeing greatly.
Try to move your body every day. Any movement is good movement. On days you feel low energy, go on a walk or do some yoga stretches. Have fun pushing yourself and try to do more intense workouts, like high-intensity training or even developing strength.
No weights? No problem! There are a variety of body weight workouts you can try to increase muscle strength greatly!
Learn how to do a push-up and how to make push-ups harder here! And check out the pull-up training version too.
Intellectual Wellbeing
Intellectual wellbeing is striving towards continual mental growth, intellectual growth, and creativity in life.
This can also pertain to being open-minded, thinking critically, and developing creative outlets.
How to Improve it:
Read a bit every night about a topic that interests you. It’s ok if you don’t like reading, try an audiobook or even find an educational video.
Always try to learn and listen. Be open to new ideas and be willing to discuss and debate in a respectful, fun way. Journal your thoughts and ideas, expanding on your inner creativity. Play brain games for fun.
The Takeaway
There are 8 different dimensions of wellbeing we should be cultivating and supporting. When one area of wellbeing is out of balance, it can affect the others as well.
Look at physical, emotional, occupational, financial, social, intellectual, environmental, and spiritual aspects of your wellbeing that all matter greatly.
Remember to move daily and get enough sleep. Eat well to give your body the building blocks it needs to thrive.
Take care of your surroundings, care about your mental health, nurturing emotional and social wellbeing.
Find a good balance between work and hobbies, and set financial goals. Forever dedicate yourself to learning and growing as a person. Learn what values matter to you and go outside in nature to connect.
Remember, health starts from within! Take small steps for big improvements and watch how wellness flourishes!
