By Ivan Baguma

Having unriddled four of the eight much anticipated dimensions of wellness, here are other four equally important dimensions of your wellbeing.

We will start with Occupational Wellness which is a sense of personal satisfaction and enrichment in one’s life through work, seeking opportunities to grow professionally and to be fulfilled in your “job” whatever that may be, preparing and making use of your gifts, skills, and talents in order to gain purpose, happiness, and enrichment in your life.

This also includes: balancing work and leisure time, building relationships with coworkers, and managing workplace stress. For starters that seek to improve and maintain their occupational wellness, you will need to consider setting goals such as finding work that is meaningful and financially rewarding.

This sort of work must be that which matches your values, interests, and skills. Examine your office culture and determine how supported you feel; if you feel a lack of support, then seek out support from others close to you and be sure to engage in recreational activities that can help balance out work stress.

Second is Intellectual Wellness that can be defined as recognizing your creative abilities and finding ways to expand knowledge and skills. The characteristics of intellectual wellness include: creating, stimulating mental activities (academic and otherwise), striving for personal growth and a willingness to seek out and use new information, making sound decisions and thinking critically, openness to new ideas; motivation to master new skills; a sense of creativity, and curiosity.

To be better in this dimension, consider being a lifelong learner by expanding knowledge, find creative outlets that stimulate you, opening up to new ideas, insights, and wisdom. People who pay attention to their intellectual wellness often find that they have better concentration, improved memory, and better critical thinking skills. When you challenge yourself to learn a new skill, language, instrument, hobby, or debate with people who have opposing views you are building your intellectual health.

Financial Wellness is a feeling of satisfaction about your current and future financial situations. Learn to be creative about receiving finances for your skills, talents, hobbies or passions, that is to say, if you are good at something and do it well and with ease, it should not be an excuse for you to do it for free.

Become comfortable receiving finances for whatever service or good you provide in order to remain satisfied and sustained in the long term. Consider making it a point to understand your finances, establish good financial habits and plan for the future.

Finances are a common stressor for people, so being able to minimize worry about this aspect of your life can enhance your overall wellness.

Finally, Physical Wellness refers to recognizing the need for healthy foods, physical activity and sleep. In order to enhance physical wellness, ensure that you stay hydrated, choose healthy foods, rest, explore the outdoors and increase activity levels according to your abilities. It is of great importance to avoid or moderate harmful substances like alcohol, cigarette smoke, sugar, and processed and packaged foods and give priority to their whole, unprocessed, unrefined and detoxifying counterparts. You might as well aim at sleeping more than six hours and at least have thirty minutes of exercise a day. Mindfully paying attention to your physical wellness can actually reduce risk of illness significantly.

Considering all the eight dimensions of wellness, which dimensions do you feel are your strongest? What areas would you like to work on? If you have areas you would like to improve, seeking out support can be helpful, whether it’s from the spirit realm, a spiritual leader, friend, family member, or counselor. What would life be like if you optimized all eight dimensions? Setting goals for yourself in each area can help you feel more fulfilled and optimize your health.

In my successive articles, we shall talk about some of the practices that enhance wellbeing. Perhaps we shall start with gratitude. Thank you.

The writer is a Nutritionist at Dr. Kasenene’s Wellcare Ltd

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