Components of
Well-Being (preview)
If we think about the evolution of the wellness industry over the years, we can see that it started with physical well-being: diet, exercise, sleep, preventing diseases, etc.
The promise was: if you take care of your physical being, you will have the life you want.
Later, the wellness industry moved into mental-emotional well-being: taking care of mental health, practicing mindfulness, working through trauma and emotional wounds.
The promise here was: manage your mental-emotional world, and then you’ll feel good about yourself and your life.
The good news is that those are all really important areas to focus on for our well-being. The bad news is…
The way these things were taught didn’t help some people make deep, lasting change in their lives.
There is much more to well-being than physical and mental-emotional wellness.
Many of us realize something is missing: we’re left longing for quality relationships and connections to community, and we’re wandering through life without a sense of purpose and direction.
And, we don’t know where to start with those things: How do we cultivate and support our relational and spiritual well-being?
Relational well-being: the quality of your relationships to your closest others, your community, and the natural world.
Spiritual well-being: fulfilling the human need for meaning, purpose and connection to something greater than ourselves.
This course aims to support you in finding more balance across all of* these areas of your well-being, and it will provide you with tools and starting-points for cultivating your well-being authentically.
*Note: I do not cover physical well-being in this course. That is a huge topic and I am not an expert in the physical body. I have done extensive research on physical well-being for personal reasons, and I am willing to talk with participants one-on-one to discuss physical well-being in very general terms (e.g., listening to your body, finding balance between rest and activity, etc.). Beyond that, I can only make recommendations for other kinds of experts or resources to look into.
Areas of well-being that this Series covers:
Below is a brief overview of the primary components of well-being that this course focuses on. Part II is a deep-dive into each of these, including reflection questions for you to understand where you are currently at with these areas of well-being as well as practices to cultivate these areas of your well-being.
Mental-Emotional Well-Being
Relational Well-Being
Our relational well-being is about having positive and satisfying relationships with others, social acceptance and contribution, and sense of community and social support.
Spiritual Well-Being
Mental-emotional well-being is about being able to work with your mind and emotions. Being able to work with your mind and emotions is key to so many other aspects of life. And it is foundational to developing deep, meaningful, relationships with others and our communities (relational well-being), as well as our ability to hone in on our purpose, meaning, and growth (spiritual well-being).
Spiritual well-being encompasses your reason for getting up in the morning and the process of cultivating and realizing your inner potential. It’s about your sense of meaning in life; your sense of growth and development; your sense of connection to something greater than yourself.