5 cornerstones to your wellness journey, giftofsimple.com
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Five Cornerstones for your Self-Care and Wellness Journey

5 cornerstones to your wellness journey, giftofsimple.com

Five Cornerstones of Self-care and Wellness

Self-care and wellness are synonymous.  We must focus on these five areas of self-care as we strive to improve our wellness.  They are all essential parts of our wellness Journey.  If we truly desire to be well, and I don’t just mean in the physical (not sick with a cold or flu, etc.) sense, then we need to address all of us – our body, spirit and mind.

Wellness could be defined as the state of being in good health.   If we desire wellness, then we will have to pursue it actively.  We’ll have to be intentional in our decisions and the choices we make it a variety of areas in our life.

We could measure our wellness based on how we handle five different areas in our lives.  We need to take actions in self-care for each of these areas in a very intentional way.

God created us as very complex human beings and if we desire true wellness, then we need to use a holistic approach to our self-care and take care of every part of our being.

Physical Self-Care

This seems like a great place to start when talking about our self-care and wellness journey.  None of us desire to be sick and I’m sure each of us does not intentionally put ourselves in situations that will make us sick.  But, surely, we all get sick sometimes.

There are certainly some things that we can do to help us not get sick, aren’t there.  Some that come to mind immediately is by washing our hands often and not touching our eyes, nose or mouth with our hands.  Especially when we have been around other people that may have been sick (grocery stores, schools, workplaces, etc.)

What about eating healthy?  We have ready access to way too many unhealthy foods.  If we desire to be physically well, then making good food choices is an another excellent way to help us in the physical self-care portion of our wellness journey.

Also, another intentional action we can take to help us stay physically healthy is by being active.  That may include taking a walk each day or taking an exercise class (at home or in the gym).

Intellectual Self-Care

Intentionally making the time to learn new things and to acquire new skills is important for our self-care and wellness journey.  No matter our age.  Utilizing our minds to explore new things is helpful in our intellectual self-care.  Expressing our creativity and doing things we enjoy helps us to be satisfied and productive.

What do you enjoy doing that makes you think things through/ use your brain?  Taking a class at a local college or your local library could be both educational and fun. There’s a large variety of classes available in most localities.

Do you enjoy reading books?  If so, read a non-fiction one that interests you.

Try a do-it-yourself project at home.  It may require some You Tube videos or other research to learn how to do the project.

Social Self-Care

We often don’t think about social skills as part of our self-care and wellness journey, but it is.  Afterall, we need to learn how to handle a lot of different social situations.  Different personalities handle situations differently.  There’s not necessarily a right way and a wrong way, but there is often a better way for some situations.  As we take care of our wellness, we need to be true to ourselves and learn how to handle social situations.

Be true and be you, giftofsimple.com

For example, an introvert will need to learn to set boundaries on how often and/or how long they interact with other people.  They will need time to re-energize after being with people for any length of time.

An extrovert, on the other hand, doesn’t need to set a boundary for this, because being with people energizes them.

Instead, perhaps an extrovert may need to be intentional about spending one on one time with people that are special to them, rather than always being in group situations.

As we consider our social self-care and wellness needs we’ll want to learn good communication skills and how to ask for help when we need it.

Spiritual Self-Care

Do you intentionally spend time with the Lord every day?  Having a personal relationship with God is important to our self-care and wellness.  It helps us to understand our purpose.  Rest assured that God has a purpose for each of us and we need to understand what it is.  This will help us live our life to its fullest.

Taking care of ourselves spiritually could involve attending church services, listening to preachers on TV, the radio or the internet.  It should also include personal Bible reading, Bible study and time for prayer.

We all suffer difficulties and disappointments, but we can take these concerns to God and He will help us deal with them.  He will be our strength when we are weak.  Having a quiet time with the Lord each day has great value to your self-care and wellness journey.

Emotional Self-Care

Although this one is last, it is not because it is the least important.  No, taking care of our emotional needs is essential to our self-care and wellness journey.  It is so important that we feel good about our lives.

You need to feel good about yourself in general.  We need to have positive feelings and not negative ones.  Negative feelings bring us down drastically and greatly impact our overall wellness.

As a human being we have emotions. The old saying “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”, is so untrue.  Words do hurt, they hurt our feelings and they impact our emotions and how we feel overall.

There are many intentional things that we can do to help with our emotional self-care.  We need to intentionally accept how we feel about things and determine if our feelings are based on truth. We need to be able to forgive others.  Holding a grudge against someone is going to hurt us much more than it’s going to hurt the other person.

What about the stress that we put on ourselves?  There are things we can do to lessen our stress and there are things we can do to help us manage stress.

5 cornerstones to your wellness journey, giftofsimple.com

Understanding the 5 Cornerstones of our Self-Care and Wellness Journey

If we take the time to understand these five Cornerstones of our self-care and wellness journey, we will have the ability to manage our own wellness.  You’ll be able to grown in the self-care methods that work for you individually.

It is important to understand that each of these self-care cornerstones are interconnected to our overall health.

We are all created different, so it’s only makes common sense that your wellness will be different from mine, and the next person’s will be different also.  But, each of these self-care cornerstones will be a part of each of our wellness journeys.

Our self-care and wellness journeys will have many things in common.  There will also be many aspects of our wellness journeys that will be different.

Develop a Self-Care and Wellness Journey Plan that works for you

Over the next few months, we’ll be sharing ideas about how to intentionally manage each aspect of our wellness journey through individualized self-care management.

5 cornerstones to your wellness journey, giftofsimple.com

I want you to be able to develop a Self-Care and Wellness  plan that will work for you.  To improve your overall health, you will need to have a plan that meets your values; one that works with your lifestyle.  The plan you create will be uniquely yours.  We look forward to sharing ideas with you that will help you make your very own self-care and wellness plan.  Your plan will include intentional actions that you can take in all five of these areas of  self-care.

Be sure to sign up for our email list below so that you won’t miss any of posts.  We’ll be preparing some free printables to share with you along the way.

If you’d like a few tips to get you started, be sure to check out these posts:

10 Changes for a Healthier You

Change Your Habits for a Healthier You

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