Your health and wellness are important to you as they should be. Unfortunately, many of the recommendations that focus on health and wellness can be rigid and regimented and leave people with little or no room to account for the number of differences they experience If the ultimate goal of wellness is to meet the needs of people who are seeking to support their health, flexibility and creativity must be involved–maybe even central.
It is important to remember that your wellness is about your body, and that means that you must account for the factors that may make your path towards wellness different from others. The most effective way for you to facilitate wellness is by remembering that you are an individual and making a plan that accounts for the variables in your life. Consider these varying factors when you begin to think about and make a plan for your wellness.
Different Bodies
While all bodies are the same in substance, no two bodies are exactly alike. There are factors that you must account for because of inherited issues, circumstances, environment, and several other factors. When you are thinking about what practices you would like to include in your wellness plan, remember to think specifically about your body. For instance, when you are thinking about what vitamins you may include in your wellness plan, make sure you are thinking about personalized vitamins based on your needs. Being mindful of your unique needs is the most positive way to support your wellness goals.
Different Environments
Your environment is another factor that you should consider when thinking about your health. According to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, “A variety of place-based influences affect health, including physical circumstances (e.g. altitude, temperature regimes, pollutants), social context (e.g., social networks, access to care, perception of risk behaviors), and economic conditions (e.g., quality of nutrition, access to health insurance). Your environment plays a significant role in your health and should be factored into any planning that is meant to focus on your well-being. Your environment directly impacts the choices that you have made in the past and will impact the choices you make in the future. For instance, if access to nutrition is a challenge for you, you will need to be creative and proactive in determining how you will include a well-balanced diet into your plan. Your ability to make certain dietary choices will be a factor that others may not have to consider. But this is not a reason to think that your wellness need suffer. This is why thinking creatively and individually is so important; thinking about your body and your circumstances will allow you to plan for any challenges or barriers that are specific to you so that you can think creatively about how to overcome them.
Different Choices
Like everyone’s bodies, everyone’s choices differ as well. Diet, exercise, fluid intake: these are all choices that affect your body and yours will be different from others. That is okay. People have different needs. People are seeking different outcomes. People have different abilities. Therefore, people make different choices. When it comes to your wellness, you must make the choices that work best for your body, meet your needs, and support your goals. One-size-fits-all is not the most productive way to approach your well-being, so you will be better served if you are mindful of the choices that you must make for your body and create a wellness plan that accounts for those choices and supports your body in relation to those choices.
There are indeed some things that are general about health and wellness, but when it comes to exactly how to meet the needs of your body, the specifics matter. Your decisions should be individualized and account for the physical, environmental, and personal factors you experience. No matter where you find yourself, you will benefit from planning based on your body and no one else’s. So, when you are making your wellness plan, take the time to consider your individual factors and make a plan that works for you.