Longevity logo

Aligning My 8 Wellness Dimensions

Prioritizing Overall Health & Wellness

By Mark SmithPublished 3 years ago 22 min read
1
The 8 Pillars of Wellness

Back in 2014 I was a confused, lost and unambitious 18 year-old fresh out of high school, entering the real world with a severe lack of direction, no purpose, no goals, no drive, no determination, nothing.

I had fallen into a deep potted hole of obscurity and chronical depression. No friends, no connections, nobody to pull me out of that hole. I was grinding at a University in my hometown of Southern New Jersey as a utility worker for 5 years (until I was layed off April of 2020).

During this 5-6 year stretch I had to deal with a mulititude of conflicts with my personal life and stuff outside of it. Deaths in the family, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, scams, financial setbacks, distant family members, loneliness, failed friendships, just to name a handful.

Surprisingly these negative elements were not the anchors that were keeping me from excelling in life.

It was my HEALTH and WELLNESS.

The two things I was for the last 22 years of my life, was ignoring. I had hit a wall in June of 2019 and I felt so much toxic energy in my place of work (at the time I was a casino worker). I tried to workout, lose weight and eat healthier, although that is very important. It wasn't going to solve my wellness deficiency.

I had to look past physical wellness and dive alittle deeper into why I never felt entirely well. In July of 2020 I came across this book called the Wellness 8, I was immediately hooked by the name of the book because I felt it was speaking to my pain points.

It opened up a new perspective of how I look at health and wellness, its really not just about doing 100 pushups a day or having alot of money...its about achieving incredible health, increased wellness & continual well-being.

In 2021 my goal is to align my 8 wellness dimensions. 2020 was about idenitfying these dimensions, but for a fresh start of a new year I look to execute action taking on prioritizing all aspects of my health and wellness.

Me from June 2020

Allow me to share these 8 Wellness Dimensions and how I can better my overall well-being with alignment and hopefully share with the Vocal community.

Beginning first with Emotional Wellness...

"Our attitude toward life determines life's attitude towards us." - Earl Nightingale

Everything starts with how we think, particularly with how we think about ourselves. We as humans tend to have two mindsets, a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.

To put it bluntly people with the former mindset are people who are less likely to succeed in life because they put too many limitations on themselves while people with a growth mindset are constantly attracting opportunity and success in they're life.

Emotionally well people have a mindset of growth, possibility, and positivity. For me I use to always be in my feelings and act out of emotional without applying critical thinking to the circumstances that swayed me, I was often playing the victim, blaming others without taking accountability in my own self.

Strangely enough, emotional wellness has a lot less to do with your feelings than with your thinking. That may not sound right, but it is.

Your way of thinking is what creates feeling.

In order for me to enhance this dimension cause the old me was very fixed in his own limitations, I created an emotional checklist to look at every now and then: (or goals to achieve emotional wellness in 2021)

  • Optimism- Hopefulness and confidence about the future. A logical outlook on life.
  • Mindfulness- A state of consciousness characterized by a nonjudgemental and attentive state of awareness in momentary experiences.
  • Emotional Intelligence- They way in which I process emotions and how I identify, express, understand, and regulate them.
  • Gratitude- Being inherently grateful for something outside the self and stems from a personal positive outcome; or being appreciative of what I have.
  • Dialouge- Being aware of the self-talk that goes on in the internal and assuring myself of positive things and uplifiting myself.
  • Moving on to Environmental Wellness...

    "Change your thoughts and you change your world" - Norman Vincent Peale.

    Your environment is the surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives and operates. In order to change your environment, you first have to know why your envirnoment is holding you back.

    It could be clutter around your house, your closet is junky, the kitchen has lots of dirty dishes. Maybe the reason you can't focus is because stuff around your work area is unorganized and you need to switch some things around and tidy your whole house up so you can regain a sense of concentration of what you're doing.

    Sometimes the environment you're in could play a negative role in how you treat yourself and others, if you are around alot of people who like to be judgemental towards others, you could mimic that behavior without you even knowing it.

    If you find yourself around alot of people with a poverty mindset, you will adapt that behavior, you'll start to buy into that mindset that you are always broke. It honestly pays to change your environment and surround yourself with more organic and lively things, things that bring out your best qualities.

    There would be times throughout my life where I would be that one blossomed flower that had the right seeds planted, enough water and plenty of soil & sunlight but I was around other flowers that were rotten and were not nurtured.

    That one flower that blossoms isn't growing to its full potential with the rest of the other dead looking flowers. If I want to reach my fullest potential I had to get away from the other rotten flowers by moving to a different garden with flowers on my level of growth.

    I couldn't work on self if my environment had too many distractions from toxic family members, fake friends, bad influences and hostile workplaces. In order for me to gain a sound mind I had to leave my house and go out to a trail somewhere in nature and enjoy the fruits of mother earths creation.

    My envirnoment didn't care for the best version of me nor the people in it.

    I burned bridges, cut some ties and weeded out the negative people and put myself in a better position environmentally to where I can start thriving. If I still can't find better people in my life, then that just means I have to keep working on self and get to a more advanced level to where I attract the type of people that match up to my energy.

    I rather become a mature redwood tree than a stumpy seedling. I plan on to make my surroundings the best I can, appreciate nature alot more and surround myself with high quality individuals in the next 11 months.

    Next is Financial Wellness...

    Now who doesn't want to be financially well (Umm is that a trick question)

    A person's attitude toward money and possessions determines to a great degree their wellness and their happiness. - Jeremy Reynolds

    Our financial wellness is determined how well we budget our money, how we spend it, how financially disciplined we are with it and most importantly how much we make of it.

    Money is related to time, the management of money like the management of time affects how much good you can do in the world.

    Given the choice between more time and more money, which would you generally pick? A direct flight to Hawaii to gain a couple of extra hours on the beach or a better-paying, high stress job that requires many late nights at the office and a lot of out-of-town travel.

    The answer comes down to what choice is really important for the long term. Attaining wellness in this area is difficult because for the majority enough money is still not enough money to keep us secured and happy. I often feel we need to speak of money in a different language compared to before on how we spoke of it and perceived it different.

    I use to be very bad and irresponsible when it came to money, every time I came into a hefty budget I was so quick to waste it on materialistic stuff, stuff that wasn't needed, ordering takeout all the time and spending it on video games.

    Going from paycheck to paycheck, I wonder why I never had money to save on a weekly to monthly basis, it was because I simply wasn't saving.

    Entering into my 20s I had to get serious on what my money had to be spent on vs. what I don't need to spend my money on. That became so clear once I got hit with a scam 2 years ago and suffered a hard financial hit.

    As time progressed my main priorities on spending was to limit my expenses and focus more on what neccessities had to be payed monthly. This year I am aiming to create mulitiple streams of income, pay off debt that I owe, stay on top of bills/rent and invest in assets that could possibly make me more money and live prosperous.

    I recently just bought a small jar and everytime I got paid from my job, I would put $100 inside the jar everyweek and even use some of my unemployment benefits to rack up.

    Financial Wellness is about sustaining a living.

    Lets talk about Intellectual Wellness...

    "A mind stretched by a new idea can never regain its original dimension." - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

    The intellectual dimension stands for non-stop learning. Learning not only makes you useful to your team and your customers, but also exciting and interesting.

    You can't really call yourself a "well" person if your mind is empty and filled with dusty old ideas from the past that are simply not effective today.

    Alot of us fail in this wellness because we refuse to expand our minds to different perspectives and philsophies. Were so comfortable and smart to what we think we know until someone with a higher IQ comes along and challenges our way of thinking.

    We need to be constantly learning from others as well as from our own experiences and build our knowledge and wisdom from that. I don't believe a leader should lead an organization without constantly learning, the same goes to a student with a degree.

    A diploma and a bachelors degree does not lead to intellectual wellness, your ability to absorb information and a constant sponge for knowledge does.

    Keep feeding your brain.

    I use to think I was the smartest kid in my class because I made honor roll and consistently made decent grades...until I wasn't. Once I hit high school, the level of education got harder for me and I started to get lazy with school work.

    Its not that I didn't want to pass senior year, it was the education that was being fed to me, made me lose interest and it just wasn't clicking. I started to wake up to the truth that perfect grades do not define your intelligence.

    I had a ridiculous amount of pressure on myself because I sucked at middle school level algebra and grades were taking a dip but once I graduated, none of that mattered.

    Real life began to happen and my life experience began to shape my frontal lobe and store information in it.

    I was interested in attending college for a bachelors degree and my major was health science but the problem was I very broke and couldn't afford a college tuition. I took a refreshers course in english and failed two placement tests.

    By 2019 I had a realization (I've had too many of those) that college wasn't happening for me and I had no desire to make it a reality because I slowly started to grow this independence about myself.

    I told myself that self-education is the new norm and by that time I had learned so much about life and myself in 5 years than I ever did sitting up at a classroom for 7 hours a day and 12 years of wasted potential. Credit to me for trying to make it work.

    2020 I established already that I love to learn and research, by reading books, building a book collection, taking a plethora of courses, watching webinars, studying different practices, watching youtube videos & etc, all to build up and enhance my intellectual wellness.

    My goal remains the same in 2021...keep learning non-stop to sharpen my skills and creativity.

    Lets discuss Occupational Wellness...

    Start a part-time business and make as many mistakes as you possibly can while you still have your daytime job. - Robert Kiyosaki

    The best advice I can give with attaining occupational wellness, probably not the best because I'm still working towards a long term career path and a business that creates residual income for myself.

    Figure out what what your talented in and what your skills consist of, but importantly make sure what your doing is making you happy and fulfilled.

    Do NOT quit your 9-5 unless you know your ready to launch that business or its already thriving and it's bringing in a stabled income. If not, use your time and money from being a stock associate at Walmart and put some of that money into building your own empire.

    Part of becoming occupationally well is about loving what you do for a living whether its making a couple thousand a month or six figures a year, you should feel like you are carrying out your purpose in life.

    Sometimes a Plan "B" is not so bad but be honest...you need Plan "A" to come through.

    For the past 6 years I was bouncing from gig to gig, from being a cashier at Shoprite...for 3 weeks. My 1st real successful job being a Utility worker for 5 years that produced a "just getting by" type of income. Dishwasher and Buss boy at restaurants, and an overnight casino worker.

    Neither of those jobs were fulfilling to me, it was mentally draining and I was miserable about doing work that I didn't like doing. Clocking in to work everyday was never appealing to me but I know I had to do what was hard in order to keep my apartment and keep bills afloat.

    The more frustrated I became with the 9-5, the more my mind started to wander of the possibilities I can create with becoming self-employed and escape the time clock.

    In order to go that route I needed a strategy, a blueprint to get me to here to there and where I can find and implement the knowledge and resources to start my own business. It's easier said than done, for me at the time I was looking a for the "get rich quick" scheme.

    I started to explore different career paths such as real estate investing but after a year of building that niche, I was required by the state to be a licsenced REI.

    Last year I started looking into the health and fitness coaching industry, took a 4-part course for 3 months and passed the online academy but that was the year I needed to live in my truth, the truth was I was still out of shape and not fit enough to be a health coach. How can I give someone else advice on how to diet if I can't even diet myself, I didn't want to become one of those.

    My mission for this year is to not play around or diddle with a career or occupation, it's to stay committed towards that career goal. I had hard time finding my true passion as it never came easy to me.

    This year, however, I plan on making a successful and lucrative career out of becoming a professional copywriter and blogger. This time I know for sure this is my calling and I know this is what I'm meant to do. I just gotta keep building momentum and committ to it.

    I have not doubt I will for now on be working on my own terms and calling the shots.

    Let's dive into our Physical Wellness...

    If the body don't move, the body gets weak.

    Jim Rohn said it so bluntly -Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live.

    Here's some startling information: The United States spends more money on health care than any other country in the world - around $8,700 per person each year. That's more than double the average of the 34 countries that make up the OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), and far more than second place Switzerland, which spends about $6,300 per year per person.

    Despite the high spending, Americans are not anywhere near the world's healthiest people.

    Here's an interesting insight about our physical wellness: If you keep spending your money on fast food, takeout and dining every other day, the physical will not only suffer but your financial wellness will lack, why? Cause your spending money on things that do not serve you and push you forward in mastering your finances.

    When you lack in the physical department, you also lack in emotional wellness, how can you truly master your mind and your emotions if you are out of shape? Being out of shape, poor diet and having love handles is what is going to create a deficiency in your emotional wellness.

    If your occupation requires you to move around and stay actvie and fit, you need to be physically in shape in order to carry out your most important work duties and usual business.

    That's just a few examples on how a lack of wellness in the physical can be a detriment to the rest of the 7 dimensions. Think of these wellness dimensions like a domino effect, if one domino falls out of position then the whole construct falls. If one team member fails, the whole team fails, its just that simple.

    Out of all the wellnesses I have covered and broken down thus far, the physical dimension is the one that we almost always never seem to get right.

    The most basic advice I can ever give you in this wellness, eat less, consume all nutrients and minerals, calorie deficent, exercise more and regularly. Lets really focus this year on getting our physical body right!

    2019 vs. 2020

    Picture on the left represented a person who consumed too much toxic foods, wasn't managing his weight, weighed in close to 300 lbs. The guy on the right is a guy who on the left wishes he can be. At this time I slimmed down to 25-30lbs.

    I saw changes in my neck, my face is less puffy and look and feel more confident and more relaxed in 2020.

    This is not a 'final before and after pic' this is simply progression being showned here. I'm nowhere near a finished product when it comes to my physical well-being.

    I still have lots of reps to do, more pushups, more situps, more gym visits, more miles to be ran, study nutrition and much better food choices to be made.

    This is the year that I will become a step closer to the body that I always envisoned myself of having. A body I can show off confidently at the beach during the hot summer. I'm striving to burn off more fat and develop gains. My ideal weight is 190, I'm aiming for more of a lean, swolish type of body frame.

    Up next is our Social Wellness...

    "Love yourself before loving others, because if you don't who will?" - Mark Smith

    I'm going to take this in a different approach, the enhancement of your social wellness begins with the overall makeup of YOU.

    I get it, we live for some type of human connection and bonds that can't be broken. Friends, Family, Groups and Relationships are what create togetherness, we need people that we can rely on and count on whenever sh** hits the fan.

    But what if I told you in order to gain those quality connections, you would first have to map out the person you are inside and out. How you would want to be treated is going to reflect positively on how you treat others.

    Think of social wellness as the cousin of the Law of Attraction, the positive energy you give out is whats going to be reciprocated right back to you.

    If all you do is put out negative vibes and operate in a toxic matter, you are going to attract those same type of people. You are what you attract. Make sure everyday you are evaluating self.

    Become the person you would want to be friends with, become the person you would want to date, become the person you would want to do business with. It's perfectly fine to withdraw yourself from the crowd, that's your time to self-reflect and redefine yourself.

    When you do become the best version of yourself, you will no doubt attract high quality people into your circle that will love and respect you because you implement those same elements about yourself.

    I would be lying if I said I wasn't an introvert, the facts are I wasn't the most spontaneous or positive dude that I am now. In fact after high school, I had went on a social hiatus and for good reason too....I simply couldn't find myself.

    I no doubt want to have the best group of positive, innovative, and influencial sets of minds in my life. Ever since I started to look in my life and pin point what I was doing wrong, I knew I had to switch things up when it pertained to my character and identity.

    I was super pessimistic and so I was attracting more people like that, I was self-limiting like hell and I soon attracted people like that as well. The reason for this goes alot deeper than you think.

    The family I had grew up with, being the baby of my family I wasn't exposed to any real positive role models or mentors that showed me the way or given me a true relationship I can hold onto.

    I was very to myself in school and had few friends and was ultimatly regulated to "special ed" classes that further diluted me from ever having a real chance of developing meaningful friendships. In next 11 months thats something I strive to do, whether its business relationships, friends, or partners that are high valued.

    The minute I changed how I looked at myself and my mindset, I slowly have people in my life now that treat me alot different, I attracted the same like-minded female that is on the same wave length as me. She is someone I can have a relevant and engaging conversation with for 7 hours! (that actually happened)

    Social Wellness for me comes down to the wellness of how you treat yourself. 2021 is the year I create new connections and meet new people.

    Lastly, we have our Spiritual Wellness...

    "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience and Infinite love is the only truth..." -Pema Chodron

    Some people believe you have to be a religious person to be spiritually well. Religion is something that keeps you in a box and being conformative to a whole group of other people's beliefs instead of your own. It's very possible to be a holy person without being bound to a religious creed.

    Spirituality has nothing to do with religion.

    These two often go together but they don't have to, for the sake of exploring our spiritual dimension of wellness, they remain seperated.

    Spirituality includes a sense of connection to something bigger than yourself. It involves a search for meaning. It is a universal human experience, something that touches us all.

    People may describe a spiritual experience as sacred or transcendent or as simply a deep sense of being alive, whole, and interconnected with others and with the world. You will start to identify your sense of purpose and your personal definition of spirituality will likely change with life's experience.

    Once you tap into spirituality, you start to go through a phase where your mind will start to renew itself, you'll unlearn everything that was force fed to your subconscious and wake up to whatever illusion was painted to you.

    The human flesh only serves as our avatar, when we perish the body stays in this physical dimension. Once we start to operate as spiritual beings, we realize how much more there is to life than just school, college, work, paying bills and etc.

    We know our true capabilities and fullest potential as multi-dimensional beings, once we instil faith and trust into the universe and whatever higher power we serve, any thing is possible. Your spirit does not equate or relate to worldly things escpecially if it serves no purpose to it.

    Spirituality has changed my life in so many ways, by all means, I am not spiritual...nobody is.

    I'm just a spiritual being living in this human form.

    However, tapping into it was my biggest breakthrough of last year. It forced me to really dissect and analyse my past trauma and generational curses that plauged me. I was a 22-year old that needed a serious wake up call, most would say "spiritual awakening".

    I didn't need to change my life, I had to completely renew it. I became a vegetarian for a whole month, no meat. I started to value and protect my energy. I realized how important my semen is, so I went 10 months to a year without ejaculation. I learned how to just relax my mind and meditate for 10 minutes and even pray more than I use to. I'm just now educating myself on law of attraction and affirmations and how I see myself now compared to even 2 years ago is a big improvment.

    Out of all the wellnesses I have been trying to enchance the most, spiritual wellness is the top of the bucket list. I wouldn't be the person I am today hadn't not be for these simple but effective changes I have made in my wellness journey. In the coming months I look to master the laws of the universe and law attraction. I'll also be fasting way more and staying present.

    To really achieve spiritual wellness is to align my 7 chakras before the end of the year.

    These are our 8 wellness dimensions and I hope I gave a better and insightful point of view of how important it is to prioritize health and wellness.

    I am making it a mission and a personal goal of mine in 2021 to align and achieve dimensional wellness, when it comes to physical, occupational, spiritual, envirnomental, financial, social, intellectual and emotional. There's no point in me being physically well, if i'm not well overall.

    It's about maintaining well-being in all aspects of health and applying the principals of the Wellness 8 into my life as my fresh start.

    Have a blessed day and hope you all achieve overall wellness this year.

    Mark.

    Ps. This actaully took me a whole week to write but I had enough energy to finish up this morning.

    wellness
    1

    About the Creator

    Mark Smith

    Youtuber, Podcaster, Blogger, Freelancer Writer & Putting the Lord 1st

    Your attitude towards life is what's going to be life's attitude towards you.

    Nature heals the soul.

    I don't walk with the crowd, I walk solo dolo.

    Be YOU.

    Reader insights

    Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

    How does it work?

    Add your insights

    Comments

    There are no comments for this story

    Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

    Sign in to comment

      Find us on social media

      Miscellaneous links

      • Explore
      • Contact
      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms of Use
      • Support

      © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.