Is 2023 the year to take responsibility for your own health and wellness?
Is it time to create your own health insurance plan by investing in yourself?
Creating a personal wellness plan can help those suffering from anxiety or depression, or anyone just wanting to get and stay well. Taking responsibility for your health and wellness is extremely empowering.
What is a Wellness Plan?
A wellness plan is an ever changing, multi-faceted plan for your life. It is a plan that sets up your long and short term wellness goals in significant life areas.
Each area has realistic goals and the focus is on developing healthier habits and behaviours to give you an improved sense of well being. Once you decide goals, you break it down into activities and action steps to achieve them.
What are the Benefits?
A wellness plan helps you achieve personal goals and improves your well being. You may become more confident, happy, enjoy life more, become clearer in your thinking and finally reach your potential.
Once you start achieving your goals and seeing how they all work together, you will get a greater appreciation of how your own choices impact your life. You will discover what’s unique about you and how to motivate yourself to create healthier habits.
A Wellness plan can also help you identify your personal triggers and strategies that help you cope. It can teach the early warning signs and allow you to avoid a relapse by implementing coping mechanisms early.
What Areas should be Included?
- Physical – A lot of people start with their physical wellness. Remember to set goals and action items that make sense for you and are achievable. You could also include preventative health care steps here.
- Nutritional – Improving diet is an important area for most people. Food choices have an enormous influence on your health.
- Emotional/Mental – This section is for ways you can better manage stress and adapt to life’s challenges. Self care steps are often put last when life gets busy and bills pile up. Goals may be to get a better quality sleep or have a more positive outlook on life and activities could include yoga, meditation or massage.
- Financial – Whether you are working out how to live within your budget or saving for retirement, financial wellness plans are very important and can relieve a lot of unnecessary stress in your life.
- Intellectual – Keeping your mind fit and active is just as important as your physical health. Goals could include learning a new language or be simpler, like reading a book each week.
- Environmental – Setting up your environment positively can have an enormous impact on your wellness and life. How can you remain calm and focussed whilst at home, work or when out in public?
How to Start and Maintain your Wellness Plan
Start with an outline. Write a mission statement about your purpose. Just something simple that has meaning to you.
You then need to think about the various areas you want to include. Write them down and leave space to complete both long term and short term goals. Then add activities for reaching those goals. Set manageable goals so that you can achieve the small steps first and see how they will become bigger milestones in time.
This isn’t a plan to be compared with others. It is individual to you and you only. Keep it somewhere you can review daily. It is a guide to support you, get you through the tough times and help you congratulate yourself when you are achieving your goals.
Your wellness plan is a work in progress. You need to review it regularly and adjust when necessary. Be patient with yourself and remember set backs are a vital part of the learning process.
Keeping a wellness journal is also a great way to notice important behavioural patterns, acknowledge accomplishments and keep you motivated. Capture the highlights, challenges, achievements and feelings in your day.
Another way you can stay accountable is to get support from friends or family members. That encouragement can make an immense difference in helping you stay on track with your goals.
Taking the First Step to Wellness!
A Wellness plan is a significant step in taking responsibility for the changes you want to make in your life! These steps are new lifetime habits and patterns that you are making to ensure a healthier and happier life. Good luck on your wellness journey!
Here’s an example of a basic Stay Well plan from Beyond Blue.