How To Find Balance In Your Healthy Lifestyle
Spend a few minutes searching for popular “wellness” tips, and you’ll quickly discover that there are A LOT of things you apparently need to do for your health and well-being.
There’s this idea that to lead a healthy lifestyle, you need to be perfect at everything. You have to do the right amount of exercise, eat “clean” organic healthy meals all the time, practice mindfulness and meditation, maintain a close circle of friends and family ties, be successful at work (while maintaining a work-life balance of course), practice self-care, make time for hobbies and interests, travel and have new experiences…
There just aren’t enough hours in the day for all of that!
Luckily, you don’t have to do it all to lead a healthy and fulfilling life.
You can make the most of your life by finding your personal wellness balance. That means doing the things that are most important to you without totally neglecting other healthy habits, but also without turning your life upside down to make time for every wellness activity.
Let’s take a quick step back and examine what a healthy lifestyle really means.
The Components Of A Healthy Lifestyle
A healthy lifestyle has many different components.
In the wellness field, these are known as “dimensions of wellness”. Wellness professionals will usually identify at least 4 and sometimes up to 12 different dimensions of wellness. For this article, I’ll use 5 of those dimensions:
Physical
Emotional
Social
Intellectual
Environmental
Each of those dimensions of wellness are interconnected. You shouldn’t neglect any of them completely, because they all affect each other and contribute to your overall well-being.
But that doesn’t mean you need to do everything and maximize each dimension in order to achieve wellness and a fulfilling life.
This diagram shows a nice, even balance between all the different dimensions of wellness.
But let's be honest. This isn't realistic for most people.
We don’t have to balance all the dimensions of wellness equally. Each person’s balance is different, and you need to aim for a “personal harmony” that feels right for you.
For one person, their physical wellness might be the most important to them, and that’s what they prioritize and devote the most time and energy to.
For someone else, their social or emotional wellness might be the most important, and the other dimensions fall in place behind those.
Your balance might even change over time, as you get older and your responsibilities and priorities change. It might also change temporarily with your circumstances, like when you start having children, need to care for a sick relative, make a career change that demands more time and effort, or have any big life event.
Any combination that includes all the dimensions is a perfectly acceptable way of balancing them for good health and well-being, as long as it feels right for you and fits your lifestyle.
What Happens When You Don’t Address Your Personal Wellness Balance
Many of us are particularly concerned with the physical dimension of wellness. We think we need to rearrange our lives so we can do a lot of exercise and eat a healthy diet all the time.
I understand that mindset. As a personal trainer and health coach, my life and work do revolve around being active and helping others be active.
Of course I think that taking care of your physical health is important. I strongly believe that exercise can have the biggest impact on most people’s overall health and well-being, with healthy eating being a close second.
But do I think that everyone needs to make their life revolve around exercise and healthy eating? No. Do I think you need to lean so heavily in that physical direction that it takes away from the other dimensions of wellness? Absolutely not.
Focusing too much on one dimension only sets you up for failure.
Here’s a common pattern:
Someone will go on a restrictive diet, like gluten-free or keto or whatever happens to be trending at the time, because they think that’s a healthy thing to do. The diet is so restrictive that they can’t go out to eat anymore, because of course restaurant foods are off limits.
So they start cancelling social plans. They stop going out for lunch with their coworkers.
Maybe that person’s social dimension of wellness is very valuable and meaningful to them, and now they’re having to give that up.
Is that person really improving their overall well-being and quality of life? I would say no. And if they’re having to give up something that’s so important to them, are they really going to be able to stick to that diet for the long-term? In my experience, no they probably won’t.
Rearranging your life in the service of one aspect of wellness at the expense of others not only makes you less healthy, it also makes you less likely to stick with it and achieve what you were aiming for in the first place.
To Create Balance, Start By Considering Your Priorities And Values
Everyone has something they do on a regular basis that they prioritize and make time for, no matter what.
No matter how busy you are, no matter how stressed you are or how much effort it takes, you make it happen.
Maybe you go to a religious service every week, or you never miss your kid’s soccer game or dance recital or concert, or you always find time to watch your favorite tv show…
Usually, we do the things that we do because they line up with our most important values, because we really understand and feel the benefits, and because we enjoy them so we want to do them. When a certain action or behavior lines up with the things you value most in your life, it’s easy to follow through on it.
Make a list of the 5 dimensions of wellness. You can extend the list of dimensions if you want to. Some other dimensions that are commonly included are spiritual, emotional, financial, and occupational.
Rank them from 1-5, with 1 being the most important to you.
Take your time here and really consider what you value the most and what you’re willing and able to devote the most time and energy to.
Once you have your rankings, set yourself a goal for each one. Those goals should take your rankings into account.
Since you’ll be the most motivated in the dimensions of wellness that you rank the highest, you should set your biggest or more difficult goals in those dimensions. For the lowest ranking dimensions, make your goals really small and easy to achieve.
An example of a healthy lifestyle:
Physical
Work out 5 times per week
Eat 7 servings of vegetables each day
Intellectual
Read an industry-specific book or publication for 30 minutes each day
Practice learning a new language for 10 minutes each day
Emotional
Meditate every time I stop at a red light while driving
Environmental
Tend to my vegetable garden and compost bin for 30 minutes, twice per week
Social
Call a friend once per week
With this system, you’ll be addressing all the dimensions of wellness that contribute to your overall well-being, but balancing them in a way that doesn’t overwhelm your life and allows you to focus most on the things that are most important to you.
If Your Mental Health Is An Important Part Of Your Healthy Lifestyle
Check out my Strength Training For Anxiety Program! It's a 12-week workout program, guided by an app so you can do the workouts anytime, anywhere. It also includes lessons and worksheets to help you use strength training to manage your anxiety, so you can build mental strength as well as physical strength.