5 Ways to Improve Your Wellbeing
As many of you already know, resilience is not just the ability to bounce back in adversity, but an overall sense of wellbeing. It defines how we show up everyday, in the storms as well as the puppies and rainbows of life.
This is great news. Although we can’t control the storms, we can take charge of our own wellbeing. In 2010, Gallup conducted a study on wellbeing and identified five different elements including career, social, financial, physical, and community. Even though these are interrelated, they found 66% of the people studied were doing well in one area, and only 7% were doing well in all five!
You can improve your wellbeing with the following resilience skills I teach at The Resilience Academy!
1. Career
To keep your work meaningful, remember why you do what you do. Identify what gets you excited and engaged and make sure you have something to look forward to every morning you wake up.
2. Social
Seek out people who you connect with in an authentic way, where you feel seen, heard, and valued. Create strong relationships and love in your life with family and friends.
3. Financial
You improve your financial wellbeing by being proactive so that you don’t worry and stress about money. Meet with a financial advisor, track your spending, and know your numbers (where your money is coming and going).
4. Physical
First things first. The single most important lifestyle behavior to contribute to your resilience is rest. Start by getting 7-9 hours of sleep so that you have good health and enough energy to get things done.
5. Community
When we are involved where we work and live, we feel like we are a part of something bigger. Join a community at home and work that has meaning for you, like a neighborhood cleanup crew or a professional board.
You get to determine your own wellbeing in these areas by the choices you make. This will empower and support you to ride the storms until your spring garden is ready to sow.
To live life more free , it may require us to walk through some events with fear. Yes, the fear that may hold us back from experiencing situations outside our comfort level. If fear paralyzes us and we do nothing-fear has won. If we walk through that fear with knees shaking & heart racing and get through that experience. We have won, personally! Growth occurs. Leaving us yet-freed up in another way. We experience victory in that area-never again to hold us back or bind us up. What wonderful truth, that I can do things that I may experience the “feeling of fear”, but I don’t have to let that “fear” force me to be unmovable!
Well said, Elaine! You do a beautiful job of illustrating that fear and courage are not mutually exclusive. You actually have to experience one to have the other.
These are great tips! I would like to post them for our nursing and health sciences students, almost all of whom need to find better balance in their lives and develop a resiliency that will last throughout their busy and sometimes stressful careers. May I have your permission to post them if I provide appropriate citation?
Hi Dana,
Please feel free to share them with anyone you think they would help. We ALL need to improve our wellbeing on an ongoing basis.
I have always turned to nature in some form such as the sound and smell of the ocean, the sights and colors of the woods and the animals who peek out at you as you walk or hike and scuba dive.
I have experienced two major life changes in the past 2 years, The death of my husband of 34 years and then the full retirement from my work as a healthcare administrator and nurse of 49 years, 38 at the same company starting new departments and programs.
The challenges that I fed off of with my work morphed into a very personal challenge in this stage of my life.
Who am I without work or my marriage? What do I want to do now? Who really are my true friends and not just one because I was their boss or peer over the years.
I added scheduled exercise and yoga 4 times a week [I had no excuse it is free with Silver Sneakers and the Senior programs through the hospital and available close to home ] thus meeting a new group of people as I build up my strength and stretch.
I volunteer one morning a week at the Community Food bank , meeting with clients and setting up the computer files. I just do this amount in order to see how it feels to me to work with the other volunteers of this program.
In other words, I am doing small changes and trials so as to not over whelm me with change and slipping back to my “doing it all; all the time.” I also was the caregiver for my husband during his last 5 years so I am very aware that I am burned out and need to not get into that again on purpose. [unless family or a true friend].
All this said , I do have moments or hours of the grief sadness and anger, but with these other small changes have more moments of peace, enjoyment in the moment and happiness along with some silliness and laughter.
Dear Joan,
You certainly have a lot of life change happening now. I commend you for your wisdom to start slow and small as you transition into the next chapter of your life. Of course there is both sadness and excitement in this process. Thanks so much for sharing you wellbeing with us.
Thank you Diane.
You always help my well-being with comments in a useful message.
Thank you for taking the time to read my message Phyllis!
Thank you Diane for sharing such a helpful article. Really taking 7-9 hours of sleep is very important. Some “Gurus” says that 6 hours of sleep is enough but I think 8 hours of sleep is very necessary to set you up for the day.