The Six Steps Toward Wellness

July 20, 2011

The Six Steps Toward Wellness – WWR 230

Posted By: Ronnie Marsh

Don’t you just hate it when someone answers a question with a question? For example, if you ask a number of healthcare professionals what it means to be “well” they would likely ask, “What does it mean to you?”

So, what does it mean to be healthy? It means that we need to look at multiple aspects of our life through various viewpoints and find the balance that helps us accomplish important things. In other words, we need to answer a question with a question! To determine what wellness is, we must determine “what matters to you most?”

The six blind men
When I was younger I heard a poem by John Godfrey Saxe about six blind men who went to “see” an elephant. Each one described the animal from his unique perspective, so all of the observations were different. As it turns out, each one was right in his observations about the elephant as he experienced it, but wrong in his perception of the elephant as a whole.

With this background, the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted a Canadian observation that to define what health is, you must first look at what health is not. Health is not the absence of disease. Wellness is not the absence of illness.

It is more – much more!

Health is having the physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual and financial resources to do the thing or things that are most important to you. These are the six aspects of wellness. Any one person could blindly stumble against one of these aspects of health and decide – blindly – that it was all that matters. And they would be as erroneous as one of our six blind men. As it turns out, health and wellness are the cumulative balance of these six aspects of health and wellness at any given moment in time.

So, health begins with determining what is important. That is your purpose. (Actually, your purpose is not so much about what you are doing; rather, it is more about who you are as you do what you are doing!) We need a positive reason for living in order for any long-term commitment to wellness to be successful.

The steps
Stephen Covey noted that the most successful people in the world “begin with the end in mind.” We must also begin with our sense of purpose – the end – if we are to be successful in our first steps toward wellness. Once you are clear about your purpose, the first thing you need is the physical strength to complete the necessary tasks associated with this purpose. You need physical health, which is built through the physical Essentials:

Breathe deeply
Drink pure water
Sleep peacefully
Eat nutritiously
Enjoy activity

Next, you need the safety of consistent finances. Now, I am not saying that you need to be rich or that you need any specific amount of money. But, to be healthy, you need a consistent income to put a roof over your head, provide medical and dental care, give you transportation and pay for Essentials 1-5.

The third step toward wellness is social: you must have people around you who love you, support you and call you to be the best possible example of who you are. They must make it safe to try because they make it safe to fail.

The fourth step of our wellness journey is that you must stretch yourself intellectually and fully grasp the scope of your sense of purpose. You must master the details of your journey as well as take a global perspective so you can see the “entire elephant,” rather than master a single aspect.

The fifth step in our journey is spiritual because it clarifies the motive for us to embark on the Journey in the first place: the motive to reach our full potential – becoming who we can be at our best, every moment of every day of our healthy life!

The beginning of our wellness walk, our journey of health, is also the end of our voyage. Step six is also step one: purpose. Our purpose should demand of us that we become 100% of who we can be in a physical, financial, social, emotional, intellectual and spiritual sense. It is our motive that drives us onward toward realization that purpose is not what we do but, rather, who we are as we do what matters most.

The obesity epidemic
Can we apply this logic to the obesity crisis? Let me answer a question with a question: Are people really lazy and self-indulgent or are they merely unclear and un-motivated about their purpose? Purpose demands that we have the wellness we need to meet our destiny. A great purpose demands great health. Great health demands attention to the 10 Essentials for Health and Wellness as well as the other steps we have discussed. Clarify your purpose. Implement the necessary steps. Claim your future!

We have heard it said many times: Health is a journey, not a destination! So, there is no end to our trek as long as we hold dearly to our sense of purpose.

Take Control of Your Health

Decide what you really, really want
- Write it down
Now, decide WHY you want it
- Write it down
List your goals
- Write them down
Use the Leanologysystem to achieve the healthy body you need
- Decide why you want to lose weight
- Decide how you want to lose weight
- Recruit your wellness team
- Plan a strategy – then ACT!
Plan a strategy including the six steps above
- Use the 10 Essentials to structure your wellness journey

The Six Steps Toward Wellness