Ranking my Wellbeing

                        

As part of this week’s lesson plan I must reflect on where I feel my overall level of wellbeing is at this time in my life.  This means I will rate my physical, spiritual, and psychological well-being on a scale of 1-10 (ten being optimal wellbeing).  I will then develop a goal for each of these areas and an activity that I can implement into my life to assist in moving towards each of these goals.  After spending some time taking inventory of my strengths and needs in each of these areas this is what I came up with:

My physical well-being:  7

When contemplating this number I looked at many different areas that would make up my physical wellbeing.

 

 My weight: 150 pounds (not exactly where I want to be, but within the normal/healthy range for my height)

My BMI:  24 within a healthy range

My Body Fat %: 19% within a fitness level

My Blood pressure: within a healthy range

My Cholesterol level: within a healthy range

My Diet: a very healthy natural diet, consisting of a variety of all food groups

Sleep habits: poor

Exercise: 5-6 days a week (consist of cardio, weight-training, cross-fit training)

Medical Conditions:

 I have hypothyroidism in which I still take medication for.  My goal is to eventually come completely off any pharmaceutical for treatment of this.

Recent bone scan reveals that I have osteoporosis in my spine and osteopenia in my hip, although this is being controlled by my lifestyle choices (diet, exercise, and vitamin supplements) there has been very little change for the past several years. (This is good, because it has not gotten any worse)

I recently have been experiencing some hair thinning and loss, which tells me there is something out of balance within my system.

Although my fitness wellbeing would be rated very high, I have several medical areas that are not optimal but yet are not on the lower end of the scale either.  So I deducted a few points for these issues and gave myself a 7 for physical well-being.

Spiritual Wellbeing: 6

I feel I am a very spiritual person and have much faith.  I spend time daily in prayer.  I teach Sunday school at my church. I am just returning from a mission trip to the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky helping repair homes for the under privileged. Although for some this may sound like my Spiritual Wellbeing should be ranked high, I believe that on a spiritual end we all fall short of optimal.  This is an area for me that I can always grow in and do not believe I will ever be able to rank it as a 10, but at the same time I do feel I am in a good place spiritually. I gave my Spiritual Wellbeing a score of 6

Psychological Wellbeing: 4

This is definitely holding me back on my journey to optimal health.  I struggle quite often with stress, times of negativity, times when I have very low self-esteem, and over all crankiness.  I contribute this to: my busy multitasking lifestyle, my constant inner struggle with what I feel my body should look like, working at a job that I no longer want to be at, and lack of sleep trying to accomplish too many things in one day.  For these reasons I ranked my psychological wellbeing at a 4.   

My Goals and 1 activity to work towards accomplishing my goal:

Physical Wellbeing:

 To figure out why my hair is falling out! This is really freaking me out, and I am not sure if it is an age thing, hormonal, nutrition, or a result of stress. I plan on scheduling an appointment with a local naturopath to have my blood analysis done in hopes of determining if there is a physical reason for why this is happening or is it a psychological reason.

Spiritual Wellbeing:

To spend more focused time in prayer and devotions.  Although I spend time in prayer daily, there are times that I do it while doing other things.  I feel that I need to allot for time just for this task and not try and fit it in while doing other things. I will get up 15 minutes earlier in the morning to read a devotion and spend time in quite prayer without any other distractions.

Psychological Wellbeing:

Oh, where do I begin with this one?? My first goal here will be to decrease my negativity.  This is a goal that I have been working on because I see how negative my son can be and my hopes are that he will learn from my example.  I know that negative feeds negative and at the same time positive feeds positive, so the more positive I have around my son the more positive he will become.  To accomplish this I will refrain from speaking negative remarks, although I may think them, which is not much better, I will work on that next.  I will start my trying to make one full day of no negative remarks and build from there.

Although these goals look good on paper, the hard part comes when you must really implement them into your lifestyle.  I have to say, for me, this is not just a school assignment; it is truly the stepping stones on the journey towards optimal health.  I will employ these goals into my daily life in order to get that much closer to my end goal.

Laurie