This voiceover was done in one take with all imperfections included - so you may hear some background noise or me stumbling over my words.
A little note before you dive in: This post is incredibly long. I mainly wrote it for myself to make sense of my thoughts, so if it’s not your cup of tea, feel free to skip right past it!
A lot of what’s written here is a combination of thoughts the book Wellness brought out in my mind along with ideas I’ve been pondering for the past few months and years. It’s a culmination of what I think wellness is for me personally and where the pitfalls in running towards it lie.
Recently, I read the book Wellness by Nathan Hill. It’s the longest book I’ve read in awhile and I was intimidated by the page count. It’s about 600 pages in its physical form, but on my e-reader, with my settings, it was a whopping 1836 pages. Which felt daunting.
But I worked up the courage to start it and I’m glad I did!
This book constantly left me with questioning my own thoughts and life. It made me reaffirm some of my strongly held positions but simultaneously question, “are these ideas true to only me, or would they be true to everyone else, too?”
Through the ethical dilemmas, relationship issues, rants to my husband, text conversations with friends, I kept coming back to one question I wanted to answer:
What actually is wellness and how do we get it?
Not to be cliché, but I think it’s important we start here: wellness is defined as “the quality or state of being in good health especially as an actively sought goal.”
This is actually an incredibly vague definition and leads to my next question: how does wellness differ from being healthy?
Healthy is defined as: “enjoying good health,” “free from disease,” and “showing physical, mental, or emotional well-being,” among other things.
In my mind, when I think of the term healthy I think of predominantly physical traits: Am I in good shape? Am I keeping up proper hygiene? Am I eating well?
But when I think of wellness, I mostly think of mental and emotional facets: Am I happy? Is anything bothering me? Do I feel at peace and grounded?
This is an oversimplification. Our physical and mental health inform each other. If you feel you’re not healthy, not eating right, and not in good shape, it will most likely negatively impact your mental health.
And if you’re depressed, anxious, or having other negative thoughts, it can cause you to be sedentary, not to eat the most nutritious foods, or to not eat at all.
With all of this in mind, I think wellness, to me, means:
To feel so good mentally, physically, and emotionally that those aspects of myself do not often impede my ability to partake in the activities that I enjoy doing or that I am required to do in order to live a fulfilling life.
It’s something that I feel rather than something that I measure with data and statistics. It’s a way of being and living that aligns with who I already am and who I want to be.
It’s feeling at home, connected, and whole.
So…how does one achieve wellness?
Well, this is a little more complicated.
The book and, more broadly, society, explore a multitude of ideas on how we actually achieve wellness. Not all of which can be true, right? Some have to be grifts and entirely false. Or, can all promises of achieving wellness work if you’re the right fit for it?
Some ways in which we try to achieve wellness are through:
Finding a partner in order to “complete” ourselves.
Exercising and working out, sometimes tracking this information diligently
Buying ourselves little treats like coffee, dessert, trinkets, etc.
Partaking in activities like meditation and yoga to center our minds
Going outside and grounding ourselves
Consuming supplements or shifting our diet
Buying items that promise to bring us better energy such as crystals
Trying non-traditional lifestyles like polyamory
Leaning into traditional lifestyles
Devoting ourselves to religion
And there’s so many more than this. But just looking at this list kind of makes my head spin.
How do you know if what you want to try will be effective for you? Just because it worked for someone else, is that enough? What about differing circumstances? Different abilities or capabilities? Different values?
What a lot of these ideas leave out is one very important consideration:
If you’re not in a stable place, feeling well is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, in our current system.
Wellness is so dependent on having a stable and secure life. Wellness is so much harder for those who are struggling financially, for those who have chronic illnesses, for those in terrifying and abusive situations. Being able to have wellness is a privilege in our world today.
And I don’t think it should be a privilege. I think everyone should have an equal opportunity to be well, but that is just not the case.
But because of this, a lot of the ideas listed above just serve as a distraction to the real issues. Like homelessness, the student debt crisis, the climate crisis, the lack of secure healthcare, the fact that so many are living paycheck to paycheck, having clean drinking water, not worrying about putting food on the table, and so on and so forth.
If you don’t have to worry about any of that, your chance at feeling well and I mean, really well, are much higher than someone who’s worried they and their kids are about to be kicked out of their apartment and they have no family to fall back on.
Even if you aren’t fearing homelessness or necessarily worrying about putting food on the table, finances are stressful and can often tear relationships apart and cause extra stress.
And I think to look at wellness fully, this would have to be accounted for. But, it’s a little too complex of a topic that I don’t have knowledge in and honestly have no desire to research at this time.
The rest of this post will be written from my own perspective, someone who does not have to fear about ending up homeless or without food to eat. Someone who is pretty stable financially and not as stressed about money as a lot of others might be.
I will bring up this disparity where it makes sense, but the rest is from my privileged perspective because my purpose for writing this is really to explore my own thoughts and make sense of the ideas swirling around in my head.
And while I won’t be fully exploring this thought of equality and financial stability, there is a thought that came of it that is now sticking out at me like a sore thumb and that needs addressing:
Our current system actively inhibits our well-being.
In a capitalistic society, some people must struggle and live in poverty in order for others to thrive.
A lot of common “wellness” practices prey on this information and keep people in poverty by tantalizing them and using manipulative marketing tactics to get them to spend their last pennies on a silver bullet solution.
Some people at the top understand this and know if they keep the people who are worse off down at the bottom of the financial totem pole that they’ll get to keep their place at the top. Others are blind to their own privilege and go along like everything’s fine and believe that it’s in fact an individual’s fault that they’re at the bottom so they deserve to be there.
Let me give an example of what I mean.
Some people swear by crystals to help guide their energy. And if this person does in fact feel better with a crystal next to them, what ground do the naysayers have to stand on? It’s not hurting anybody for someone to keep a crystal with them, so why do so many people actively try to disprove their results?
Well, because we don’t exist in a vacuum. And depending on how one goes about their beliefs, it can hurt others in the world we live in. It can take advantage of them.
In Wellness, according to one of the characters, one of the main ways to achieve a content and fulfilling life is to think positively. To vision board and to manifest the life you want to lead and one day you will have that life.
One of the main characters, Elizabeth, thinks it’s a load of shit. But, Elizabeth’s entire job revolves around studying the placebo effect and seeing people have tangible results from thinking that a product or supplement will help them when in fact, it’s more on par with a sugar pill.
A rubber skirt that provides resistance to leg movement that will increase your leg strength and help you lose weight? It does just that when you tell someone it will! But, if you tell them that the skirt was designed to restrict leg movement for patients recovering from injuries, instead people will gain weight, think of it as a nuisance, and complain.
It’s all to do with how you think about it.
So what’s different here compared to positive thinking and vision boarding?
I think that can be summarized in one character’s very minor appearance in the story who claims positive thinking has cured her diabetes. Elizabeth is astounded at this proclamation but doesn’t press too hard, at first.
Later, this character admits that the doctors are telling her she has diabetes and she keeps claiming that no, she in fact does not have diabetes, and so will not accept their treatment. If she admits to diabetes, then she has it. If she denies it, she doesn’t.
Oversimplification and quite dangerous.
Based on studies, people who use crystals that are seeing positive results are doing so because of the placebo effect. They believe the crystal will help them, and so it does. Incredibly harmless. And it’s not like they’re claiming the crystal will cure their diabetes (at least, the majority of people who believe in them and use them, do not in fact believe this).
This can be completely okay. But it can also be exploitative in our capitalistic and consumer-based society.
For example, someone gets a crystal and starts to feel better. Their creative block is gone. Their depression starts to ease. They feel less anxious. Whatever it is, it’s helping them.
So they go and tell all their friends about it. Their friends decide to try it and so on and so forth. Eventually, someone feels so strongly about their results, they proclaim it loudly to the world and start selling crystals. Once that takes off, they start selling overpriced coaching programs. They start to get paid speaker gigs to tell the world about their results. They scream from the rooftops of social media about how well these crystals are making them feel.
And they have no scientific evidence to base it off of other than: it helped me so it must help others, too.
These crystals and their promises prey on the struggling individuals whether the crystal influencers know it or not.
These individuals, living paycheck to paycheck, maybe unable to put food on the table, facing possible homelessness, risk their health and financial bottom line on the promise that this crystal will make them feel better. And if they feel better, maybe they can work harder. And if they can work harder, maybe they can make more money. And eventually, they can work their way up and out of poverty.
The problem with this thinking is that these people do not in fact need crystals to be well. They need financial security, they need a promised home, they need stability and safety nets. Who’s going to feel okay living in poverty? Nobody. Crystals will not fix that.
When people’s basic needs are met and guaranteed, they will feel less depressed, anxious, and terrified. They will start to feel better.
And so, the influencer peddling all of these solutions, not only has the privilege to be able to do that but also most often has their needs met. Which means they’re not comparing apples to apples in their promises of a better mood. They’re not on an even playing field. They have the upper hand and are able to profit off of people’s despair.
This is why the naysayers try so hard to disprove their claims. Not because they hate crystals and think people who use them are stupid (I mean, sure, some probably do think that). But because the promise of this simple solution so often takes advantage of those who are struggling and distracts from the actual issue at hand: that the world is an unjust place and if we want people to be able to achieve wellness, the playing field must be leveled.
And you might be thinking, “well, it’s not an influencer’s fault if a person recklessly spends their last pennies on a crystal instead of on food, that’s their own fault.” While, yes, that person made the decision to purchase, they did so out of desperation.
They have been struggling for so long and are sick and tired of their constant struggle no matter how hard they work. So they take a chance. They give in to the marketing tactics that have been thoroughly researched to manipulate people.
The system manipulates us into thinking despair is all an individual’s fault but the system is stronger than any one individual.
Capitalism directly promotes the idea that if we just try harder, do better, be better than others and buy the right products, wellness is within our reach. It takes advantage of despair and the desire of people to be happy and well.
Disclaimer: I don’t have a vendetta against crystals. It was just the easiest example I could pull. If crystals help make you feel better and you think they’re vital to your wellness, while at the same time you are NOT peddling them to an impressionable audience to take advantage of for your own financial gain, you do you.
This entire example is a lengthy lead in to my first major realization:
We can’t actually buy wellness.
Think about it, it’s not just crystals that promise a better wellbeing. It’s meditation apps. It’s fitness software. It’s clothes, meal replacements, books, events, retreats, getaways, vacations, supplements, the list goes on.
If only I can find the right product, the right teachings, the right home, the right partner, my life will finally be complete and I will be well.
Some of what I listed above are not inherently bad or evil. I think vacations can be wonderful. I think retreats can bring positive change to people. I think meditating and working out do help.
It’s the excessiveness, the promise of silver bullet solutions, and the competition that we turn it into that are truly awful.
Feeling down? Buy a new outfit! Maybe three. Oh your clothes are now out of fashion, better fix that so you can fit in! People who fit in are much, much happier. Pick an aesthetic! You’ll instantly attract others like you. Cottage core is a good one. But if you eventually want to switch to goth you’ll have to throw out your entire wardrobe and start over. The price we pay for beauty, I mean, happiness!
Not in shape? Buy this new gadget! Oh and the software requires a subscription, too. But I promise you’ll get the most reliable data and analytics available. They’ll help you get results in the most efficient amount of time. You don’t want to waste months doing it wrong, do you? Better buy this to ensure max results quickly.
Capitalism wants us to purchase solutions to our problems. It wants us to purchase our identities. It wants us to crave the efficiency that these solutions promote. It promises quick fixes to huge, overbearing problems. It deludes us into thinking we can buy our way to wellness. But we cannot.
I think purchasing our way to anything impedes our actual wellness. Giving into consumer-driven desires brings a dopamine spike in the short term, but it doesn’t last long. It requires constant purchases to fuel the dopamine.
Along with that, buying our way to solve problems forces us to live in the future. This is a problem with the positive thinking ideology, as well. Vision boarding can be great and centering, but it can also lead us to feeling like our present isn’t good enough and we’ll only be happy once we secure that future.
The future isn’t real. It doesn’t exist yet. You will never live in the future, you will only live in the present.
A future version of yourself might get all that’s on that vision board, but once you get them, are you making more vision boards? Are you constantly striving for more and not appreciating what you’ve already gotten?
Same for purchasing products. Once you’ve saved up and purchased this thing that will definitely change your life, are you actively using it? Enjoying it? Appreciating it? Giving yourself credit for the work you put in to actually get it?
Or are you now thinking towards the next purchase. The next new gadget. The next vacation. The next whatever it is.
Capitalism doesn’t want us to be content with what we have and where we are. It wants us to think we will only be happy with our next purchase, our next achievement, our next whatever it may be.
Elizabeth falls into this trap in the book. Once she gets married, once she has a child, once they have their forever home and are out of their tiny apartment will she be happy. But it’s just not true.
Wellness does not come from the objects we accumulate. The status we procure. The trophies and certificates we collect. I refuse to believe it because all they do is lead us to thinking, “Okay, I got this award, what should I go after next?”
Social media exacerbates and interlinks with capitalism to delude us into wellness.
Every way in which capitalism and consumerism keep us unwell, social media does as well: makes us think we need to achieve more, deludes us into thinking in the future we will be happy if only we make the right purchases, and gives a megaphone to all the so-called silver bullet solutions out there.
Like the dopamine spikes of our purchases, every like and comment and follow we get on social media gives us a little extra, too. And it’s so easy to post a photo or a status and get at least a little validation.
But social media isn’t real life. The platforms are purposefully designed to keep us on there as long as possible so they make as much money as possible. Their algorithms are smarter than any of us will ever be. It’s not a personal failing to desire social media or be addicted to it, the system is designed that way.
If we scroll too much on social media, we suffer from comparisonitis, FOMO, stress, anxiety, and so much more. Negative emotions keep you more engaged with the platform, they know this, so the algorithms are designed that way.
If you logged on and saw all positive news articles, you’d probably think to yourself “Oh that’s so wonderful! The world is doing well. I can go about my day and not think about it anymore.” *Close*
That doesn’t make them any money though.
So if instead you log on and see disastrous headlines, conflicting opinions, and conspiracy theories, you’ll feel compelled to dive in. What’s happening? How bad is it actually? Do I need to worry about this in my life?
All of a sudden, hours have gone by. Your blood pressure is through the roof. You’ve forgotten to eat because of your anxiety. You need to talk to someone, anyone, everyone about it all. And so it spreads.
But social media is not real life no matter how much Zuckerberg wants it to be.
It actually keeps us less connected and less bonded to others. It can make communication harder. We’re constantly distracted. There’s so much stimulation available, why should we ever put our mind at rest? Why should we ever talk to the person sitting across the table when our phones are right there?
Social media functions similarly to consumerism except the product is content and the price is your time and peace of mind. Both offer temporary dopamine spikes that, when they go away, leave you in withdrawal craving more. Devoting more of your life to chasing that high.
But at least you’re not doing drugs, right? It could be so much worse. But it could be so much better, too.
The internet and technology in general keep us overstimulated and we’re rarely ever truly bored anymore.
Currently, so much is competing for your attention. Mostly ads. And in weird spaces, too.
Recently, my husband and I were driving back from an event and on his Jeep’s little screen that usually shows the current radio station and the song that’s playing, it instead showed an advertisement. Apparently, you can now pay to have your business name and website and probably whatever else you want displayed on that screen to shove more information towards everybody with a modern car.
I used to think this screen was useful because it would show the name of the song and the artist it was by - vital information, right? But then I started to think, do we really need to know everything like that? Could we just live with not knowing simple things like this? Does it add value to our lives?
Sure, it helps the artists so everyone knows it’s them. And it helps people looking to discover new music. But there’s other ways to find this out than have it being shoved at you on a digital screen as it scrolls by and distracts you with its various typos and glitches.
So much in this world is actually distracting us while trying to get our attention.
These ads are distracting us from the people around us, from what we actually need and desire, leaving us questioning if we really need something. They’re distracting us from ourselves.
They make us wonder if we need to try on different identities because maybe who we are is trash. Or, trash according to society at least.
For the past few years I’ve been pondering the question: when is technology enough? Like, do I really need Wi-Fi on my oven? Or a smart fridge? Or AI to write for me? Or a phone with 5 camera lenses?
Where do we collectively say, “Okay, that’s nice, but do we really need that?”
Or do we even say that? It seems like technology is just focused on outdoing what has been done instead of focusing on if it indeed makes our lives better. Isn’t that what it should be doing?
But just like technology, a lot of us have fallen into the idea that we have to consistently be better and do better. We have to outdo not only ourselves from yesterday, but we need to outdo our competition. We have to optimize ourselves. Achieve more. Earn more. Get more.
I think social media and AI and a lot of new technology coming out in the consumer sphere is the antithesis to wellness.
So what’s the antidote to the problems society, consumerism, and social media place on us? Can we be truly well in the face of a broken system?
There are solutions we can implement in our personal lives that give less power to the system in which we live.
If we look at the book Wellness as a reference point, it puts quite a few solutions forward. There’s 3 main ones I want to look at: facing yourself and your childhood, not putting too much pressure on different aspects of your life, and living for yourself instead of others.
Facing yourself and your childhood.
Let’s face it, regardless of how well our parents did raising us, we’re all fucked up in some way from our childhood. There is no perfect parent.
Some of us have suffered more than others. Some have dealt with verbal and physical abuse. Others have dealt with neglect. Some weren’t able to actually be a child and had to take on a caretaking role themselves whether it be for a younger sibling or even putting their parent’s emotions ahead of themselves.
Running away from the ways in which our childhood impacted us and seeking out people who are the opposite of our parents (or so we think) is not a real solution. An outside source will never heal the wounds or fill the void. The healing has to come from within.
And to heal from within, this means we have to face ourselves. Whether it be through therapy or journaling or conversations with friends, we have to dig into our own mind and emotions and get to the root of what’s causing us to feel a certain way.
We have to be self aware enough to realize the unhealthy ways in which we’ve been coping and replace them with healthier practices.
We ourselves are complete on our own, we don’t need a partner or friends or another person to complete us. People come and go but we are always with ourselves and we need to like that person.
I personally think part of this healing is also about uncovering the joyful pieces of our childhood. The hobbies we loved to do but had to leave behind due to scrutiny or others thinking we’re “weird.” The books and movies and music we loved that others shamed us for. The dreams we gave up because they weren’t “realistic.”
When I was a kid, I wrote songs and enjoyed singing but I stopped because people told me I wasn’t good at it and because I knew I’d never make money off of it so what’s the point.
The point is it brought me joy. It helped me make sense of the world. I left it behind for fear of looking stupid or making other people upset. But everyone can learn and not every hobby we partake in do we have to monetize, and in fact, we shouldn’t.
Monetizing our hobbies has become such common practice and it’s sucking the joy out of them in a lot of cases because now you’re not just writing or creating art for the fun of it. There’s now an added make-it-or-break-it pressure.
Putting too much pressure on different aspects of our lives.
This pressure comes in many forms. It comes in the forms of putting pressure on other people, on ourselves, on our jobs, on our friends, on our hobbies.
This pressure can look like sentiments such as:
I’ll be happy once we buy a house and it becomes our forever home. We can make it exactly as we want and I’ll be so joyful. But until then I’m stuck in this studio apartment. I won't even try to make it hospitable because what’s the point, it will never be perfect and it would just be a waste of time and money.
My spouse is everything to me. They fulfill all my social, emotional, sexual, and whatever other needs I have. What do you mean I should talk to other people? That’s the whole reason I got married.
I could buy myself a piano keyboard but then if I do that, I’m a pianist and I have to be good or else that was a total waste. Having a hobby and not being good at it? Absolutely not acceptable. I’ll be a fraud. No one will take me seriously.
The first of the scenarios above is a common theme Elizabeth struggles with.
She has a need to make each aspect of her life perfect. To research the heck out of every topic and stumbling block so that it’s all done properly. To make sure their new home is their forever home. To know, at the age of 40, exactly what the rest of her life will entail and create safety nets and measures to ensure their situation is stable until the day she dies.
Life has so many twists and turns and if we constantly live for the future versions of ourselves, we will never be truly well. Even if your situation isn’t perfect, you can still make the best of it and be happy.
Note: I don’t mean “you can still make the best of your situation even if your partner is physically and emotionally abusing you, just get over it!” What I mean is, “my walls are gray and ugly but I can still make this space feel homey until I can change them.”
For the second point above about making your spouse your one and only support system, this is a trap a lot of people can fall into.
And especially is one we might be seeing more of after the pandemic. Being locked inside with one person to talk to and see on a regular basis could make this become a habit, but it’s a breakable habit.
A spouse is a partner to go through life with. It does not mean you are handcuffed together and everything has to be done together. You still have your own thoughts, hobbies, personality, and life.
If one of you is a thrill seeker and the other is deathly afraid of heights, the thrill seeker can go sky diving with a friend. The solution is not to say, “well, I guess I’ll never go because my partner doesn’t want to.”
A character in the book, Kate, argues that polyamory is a necessity in a modern marriage because we put so much pressure on one person and life shouldn’t be that way. So sleeping with other people and having multiple partners is the solution.
I think for some people polyamory could work, for me personally I cannot comprehend it. It’s not the silver bullet solution Kate portrays. And it’s not inherently a harmless solution either. If a couple tries it and decides it’s not for them, a lot of hurt could come from it.
But what Kate in her argument is missing is the fact that there’s more kinds of relationships than just romantic and sexual. You don’t need to be polyamorous to adequately fulfill your social needs. I think for a lot of people, a single person can fulfill their romantic and sexual needs and that introducing another would cause more problems. But for some, introducing more people could be an absolute need. I’m personally a little skeptical, but who am I to say? I’m not an expert.
The heart of her argument though, that we tend to put a lot of pressure on one single person, can be correct. And it indeed does lead to strained relationships and an overall feeling of not being quite happy and fulfilled.
The third scenario is a personal one.
I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself when it comes to certain hobbies and decisions. I was struggling with the thought of buying a keyboard to learn to play piano because if I invested all that money into it, I’d have to be good or else I’m just burning through money for no real reason.
But that’s just not true. If something sparks joy even if you’re not “good” at it, the investment can be worth it. There is no “I must put this many hours into this hobby and get this good before I know it’s been worth it.” It’s just a feeling of “am I happy I made this purchase and would I do it again?”
And the answer for me is absolutely! I thought about it for months and did a ton of research to ensure I was going to be happy with my decision and that’s exactly the result.
There’s so many ways in life we put pressure on ourselves for no good reason. No one can tell you the worth or value of a decision you make other than yourself. And you don’t have to use an arbitrary measuring system. It can be as simple as a feeling or being able to answer yes to a certain question.
Which ties directly into the next point of…
Living for ourselves instead of for others.
This is an incredibly tricky one because of the connected world we live in. With social media, news, and everything else all within a few taps of our fingers, we can find so many people doing better than we are in a matter of seconds.
We’re constantly bombarded by notifications and news stories of people who set records, who are incredibly young and achieving a million different things and we feel pressured by them. We feel as though we shouldn’t try a new hobby or activity because someone is already the best at it so what’s the point. Or we feel we need to pick something and become as good as we possibly can, not for ourselves, but to prove to the world I am the best in this one area, I’m better than you.
Maybe for someone they decide they can become the best at basketball and so they give up soccer and tennis and all other sports they once loved to focus solely on becoming the best in one, specialized area. Maybe for another it’s living up to their parents’ wildly high and unattainable expectations and giving up a dream in order to do so.
But in doing all of that, we give up a lot. In putting pressure on ourselves and others we overcomplicate scenarios and life honestly doesn’t have to be that deep. Life can mean whatever you want it to mean. It can be as simple as: I want to live life in a way in which I prioritize joy.
And I think that’s the motto in which I try to live to cultivate as much wellness as I can.
Not to mention, living for others directly feeds into capitalism. If you’re constantly performing how well off you are for others, how talented you are, how much better off you are, you’re going to be constantly buying stuff: vacations, new cars, fancy clothes, the hip new aesthetic.
Social media had promises of keeping us connected with others when in reality, it’s perpetuated the idea that we need to live for other’s approval.
In summary: I think wellness is achieved when we don’t care about consumerism, social media, or the opinions of others.
I think wellness is living life behind a curtain. Only letting those you truly trust and love all the way in. Not performing yourself for the masses - figuring out who you are and leaning into your uniqueness. Being yourself to the core.
Looking yourself in the eyes, the good, the bad, and accepting it all as a part of you. Helping out the bad parts to give yourself support and amplifying the good parts to really shine.
It’s knowing who you actually are so you don’t get lost in trends and aesthetics or give in to the fear of FOMO. It’s having a style no one else can copy. It’s pursuing whatever makes you happy.
It’s about seeking out help when you need it. Being open and honest. Getting to the bottom of troubles and figuring out how to stop letting them impact you negatively.
Wellness has to do with self reflection. With pondering the world around you. With controlling what you let in and what you put out. It’s being present in the moment.
It’s being whatever you want to be without following some arbitrary rules.
For me, cultivating wellness in my life includes:
Ignoring the world of social media, and honestly the internet in general, as much as possible because more often than not, it leads to doom scrolling, negativity, and the annoyance of ad pop-ups.
Only purchasing necessities or desires that have been kept on a wish list for weeks or months; only purchasing with intention and not impulse-buying.
Living in the moment and living more slowly.
Letting my mind reach boredom through not stimulating it constantly; by making time to sit in silence, stare off into the distance, or do chores and activities that let my mind rest and work through problems on its own.
Creating as much as I possibly can whether it be art, music, poetry, essays, or any other medium I want to explore; through creating, I can make sense of the world around me as well as my inner thoughts.
Taking time to reconnect and check in with myself.
Putting in effort to effectively communicate with the people in my life and to do it often instead of just when a huge problem arises.
Moving my body and exercising to feel good and build strength and stamina rather than to fit into an unrealistic and unattainable beauty standard.
Eating a variety of nutritious foods that fuel me with energy.
Being mindful and intentional in what I choose to partake in.
Prioritizing people and activities that spark joy in my life and kicking people to the curb who actively try to bring me down over what I’m excited and passionate about.
Remembering there really are no rules for how to live life and as long as I’m living by my morals and ethics, it’s okay to be “stupid” or silly or whatever I want to be.
Obviously, the above does not always happen. There are days where I don’t feel well and I end up watching YouTube videos that I shouldn’t. Where I end up scrolling and reading about topics that make me upset and in which I can do nothing about.
And sometimes I do impulse buy a coffee has a treat. Or I indulge in some chocolate or other sugary, bad-for-me dessert. But I don’t overdo it as that throws my life out of whack.
And maybe the word to keep in mind as a key to wellness is in fact, not moderation, as we so often say, “Everything in moderation.” Let’s face it, moderation is often used to control and discipline ourselves and I can just feel the “ugggghhhh” clawing up through my throat at the sight of it.
Maybe instead that word is balance.
That a balanced life, in whatever that means to each of us, that provides us with energy, good moods, and less worry, is the true key to wellness.
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