What Is All This Wellness Stuff?

By Dick O'Brien M.A.S.c

The holiday season is over. The millennium has come and gone and we are all left with our first steps into the New Year. With the present aggressiveness of the flu season and the numerous reports of overcrowded Emergency Rooms it seems to me to be a good time to reflect on our own sense of personal wellness.

In my mind, personal wellness is simply "how well you are taking care of you." Though it has become the fashionable thing to drink bottled water and attempt abdominal crunches, I do not feel that most people have grasped the simple and basic issues of wellness.

During the holiday season I was watching information television and saw a video in which researchers claimed that 35% of your health was due to your genetics. They also said that 15% of your health would be a result of your health care system and the remainder (50%) is a result of lifestyle choices. This is the message we are not getting. Our family history and our family doctor are less important in most cases then is a concerted conscious attempt to live a more healthy life.

The following are some fundamental principles of wellness that generate some healthy thinking.

Basic Principles of Wellness:

We are dying from the way we live!
(Self-Explanatory.)

Wellness is greater than health.
(Wellness is the spirit, energy and attitude needed for a long and full life.)

We live in an unhealthy, demanding environment in North America.
(Self-Explanatory.)

You are it. It is up to you.
(Don't put your well-being in the hands of the government, your employer, or the weather, put it where it has always belonged - in your hands.)

Beware of the allure of the victim mentality.
(We are less victims of life and more victims of our own thinking.)

Well-being involves awareness and acting on that awareness.
(Good intentions are not good enough - You must actively do things to create wellness in your life.)

You will get wake up calls.
(We all get wake up calls about many areas of our health and well being - too often we don't answer the phone.)

There are consequences to all your choices.
(Every choice we make physical, emotional etc. results in a step to or from our present state of wellness.)

Our motivation for health and well-being is peppered with excuses.
(We have become the masters of excuses and our excuses have become the masters of our lives)

The bitter pill to swallow: we are 100% responsible for the way we live.
(Self-Explanatory)

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