Not just another New Year’s Resolution: A holistic approach to health and wellness by maintaining a balanced lifestyle for years to come
Written by Marci Mangold, PA-C
As a new year is upon us, many recognize the need to reflect on the past year and plan for a better, less-stressed, more joyful, and healthier year ahead. Often, great intentions lead to New Year’s resolutions in hopes of achieving a specific goal, and we fully intend to keep this new-made commitment to ourselves. However, this rarely actually comes to fruition. Have you kept your past resolutions the entire year? How about six months? Three months? Me neither.
So, what are we to do? Human nature inspires us to grow, learn, change, develop, and adapt to our environment or circumstances; if we do not grow, we become stagnant. If New Year’s resolutions fail, we need a new plan. If we’re serious about improving our health and wellness, we need to commit ourselves to the plan we created. Taking a different approach, consider what would happen if we focused our intentions on a more realistic, obtainable goal. This approach includes examining current feelings and behaviors, then requires altering these behaviors to align with our deeper core beliefs. This enables us to improve our overall well-being by creating a balance between four areas of “fitness” which include physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
Physical Fitness
Physical fitness isn’t just about diet and exercise but also includes preventative screening tests and management of acute or chronic medical conditions. This includes establishing care with a primary care provider (PCP) at a family practice clinic. Women should establish an early caring relationship with their PCP through regular visits, ensure a “good fit” based on personality or practice style, and feel comfortable confiding in their chosen provider. Regular visits ensure proper screening, assess risk for current and future medical conditions, encourage a healthy lifestyle, update vaccinations, and treat acute issues. The provider should explain things in detail, invite questions to ensure understanding, present treatment options, then help you make an informed decision. Recommended healthy life choices include the following:
• Maintain a healthy weight
• Eat a well-balanced diet
• Exercise regularly
• Avoid smoking
• Drink alcohol in moderation
Emotional Fitness
Another area of consideration is emotional fitness, which refers to the ability to control or express emotions and behaviors. Emotional fitness involves personal feelings and attitudes about current life circumstances as well as our ability to self-reflect, empathize, communicate effectively, maintain positive relationships, and cope with adversity. Women frequently find their emotional fitness hijacked by unrealistic expectations imposed on themselves by “societal standards” or “political correctness.” They feel pressured to measure up to others and often allow comparison to steal their joy.
The first step to improving emotional fitness is to deeply examine ourselves and begin to decipher who we want to be and what we want to accomplish. Set a maintainable and measurable goal, keeping in mind that larger changes may require a stepwise approach by using smaller “baby steps” over a longer period. Yes, working on yourself is a difficult process, but it is something that leads to true change and improved emotional fitness. If you are struggling to find your way out of the dark, it is important to know that depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions are real. Please confide in a loved one and seek counseling; sometimes medication may be necessary.
Mental Fitness
Mental fitness covers a wide scope of cognitive processes and involves the focus of our mental energy, fundamental thoughts, and beliefs. This refers to the way we process, store, and understand information and includes our ethics (principles that govern behavior), morals (sense of right and wrong), and values (judgment of what is important). Mental fitness is often demonstrated by our need to be mentally challenged which includes demonstrations of artistic ability, performance at work or school, and the way we manage our household and finances.
Because these activities affect our attitudes, behaviors, and relationships, mental fitness is closely intertwined with emotional fitness.
As nurturers, women often find it easier to take care of others while neglecting their own physical, emotional, or spiritual needs. According to a 2018 U.S. Census Bureau survey about women working year-round, about 70% of all modern mothers work outside the home full-time. How they manage this is a mystery. Ever wonder why you might feel fatigued, unmotivated, or stressed out with no end in sight? Perhaps all this busyness and mental focus have left you feeling depleted and unbalanced. Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate how and with whom you spend your time. Then, prioritize what’s most important and cut out anything that competes for your attention or doesn’t align with your core beliefs.
Are the kids old enough to wash their own laundry or make their own lunches? Could they carpool to activities? Can you afford a housekeeper? Have you considered cutting-back hours at work? Perhaps cooking dinner with your husband or child will provide time to unwind and reconnect. Learning to give up some of that control and “sharing the load” will free you up to be more intentional about the quality of time you spend with others as well as by yourself.
Spiritual Fitness
Spiritual fitness is critical to developing overall wellness and is often very personal. Google defines spiritual fitness as “the beliefs and practices that strengthen your connectedness with sources of hope, meaning, and purpose.” Spiritual beliefs refer to relationships beyond the “self” and include the “core beliefs” of mental fitness as well as the self-reflection and introspection necessary for emotional fitness.
Like an illness, we experience the brokenness of the world through broken lives, broken relationships, and broken systems. However, even among the brokenness, we find beauty in the display of a sunset or the grandeur of a mountain, and this evidence causes us to yearn for something more meaningful, something greater than ourselves, something deeper than our own limited understanding. As women are drawn to explore possibilities and find strategies for building spiritual fitness, we are reminded that this journey is unique to each individual and should be respected as such. Some strategies for growing spiritual fitness include:
• Practicing gratitude and reflecting on life’s blessings
• Serving others
• Practice forgiveness
• Reading the bible
• Attending a bible study or church service
• Prayer and meditation
We have a limited amount of energy to refine and strengthen our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual fitness. These four “fitness areas” are closely interrelated, and when equally balanced, energy reserves are restored and increased wellness is achieved. If we allow one area to occupy a large, disproportionate amount of time or become more important than another area, energy stores are quickly depleted which often leads to illness, fatigue, unhealthy relationships, changes in mood, poor performance at work or home, and spiritual weariness.
Just like intentionally engaging in regular physical fitness, these other kinds of “fitnesses” require constant evaluation of our “life balances” by examining current tendencies, feelings, and behaviors. This is not an easy process, but it is certainly one which is worth your effort.
This article appears in 406 Woman magazine.