What Should be in Your Wellness Strategy

In my last article I discussed how having a wellness strategy is helpful in meeting your wellness objectives and to living a life of health and longevity. To help you get there I thought it would be useful to unpack this a little bit more and go over what should be in your wellness strategy.

If you were to do a search on this topic you would come up with a general list of things you need to do, like make sure you are exercising, eating right, managing your stress, getting good sleep, and taking time for yourself. All great ideas and is definitely what you should be doing, but the bigger question is still left unanswered – what is the best way to implement these strategies into your life? And, more importantly, which one do you want to tackle first? This is where taking the time to make a plan and strategize how and what you want to implement into your busy life comes into play. When you take the time to make a plan for anything in life, things seem to go much smoother, and you have a greater chance of accomplishing your goals.

With this in mind, lets continue with the analysis of building a wellness strategy as you would a financial strategy. The basics in finance are to save more than you make, invest for your time horizon, and protect your assets. Going off these basics, let’s see how we can apply these to your wellness strategy along with some other key items you need to consider as you build out your plan.

Along these lines, the basics of health are to consume less calories than you can expend (burn), move your body throughout the day and exercise to meet your current state of health, and manage your stress. This is pretty straight forward yet, just like the basics in building financial security, it seems so difficult for many of us to implement, much less stick with. However, you do need to get these basics down, or at least started, so that you can improve, or maintain, your well-being.

To get the basics to stick, it is helpful to take a step back and connect with why it is important to you to maintain your well-being, now and in the future. When starting to build a financial plan, most advisors will ask their clients what does financial security mean to them. There is a reason for this. If you can truly connect with what you want to see in your financial future, then it can be easier to make the little, or big changes you need to make today to help you get there.

So, let’s start there. What would a state of good health mean to you? What does your future look like? Most importantly, what do you want it to look like? Then you need to ask yourself, are you doing what it takes today to lead to the life you envision for yourself? For your family?

To get to the level of wellness you want, you will most likely need to make some changes to what you are currently doing. Knowing why it is important to you to make these changes and what you are aiming for will help you stick to any plan you want to put into place. Especially when it gets challenging, or you are not seeing the progress you expected to make. Being able to reflect on and lean on your reason for making these changes will help you get through the tough times that will inevitably come. For this reason the first step in your wellness strategy is to define your wellness vision.

Once you have your wellness vision firmly in mind, you are ready to tackle the next step in building out your wellness strategy. This is when you look to understand and define how you want to approach what you eat, how you move, and how you manage your stress. There are lots of ways to go about doing this, which I will unpack in future articles, so for now I will get you started by encouraging you to take some time to understand what each of these areas mean to you, what you know about yourself when it comes to managing these areas of your life, and what would be the ideal way you could implement any changes you have identified.

For example, let’s say you decide that the area you want to work on next is to eat better. What does this mean to you? Does it mean not going out to eat as much? Avoiding fast food? Making better decisions when you do go out to eat? Getting better at meal prepping? Maybe you have tried several things, but nothing seems to stick long enough for you to see any progress, what do you think is happening? Could you possibly need some help with either meal planning or maybe a full diet and nutrition plan? What would serve you best? I know these are a lot of questions, but they are important to answer if you are going to make the changes necessary to eat better. To get started it is helpful to take note of what you are eating, but don’t stop there. Also start journaling about your thoughts as you reach for food and the obstacles that you see that keep getting in your way to health eating.

Big warning here – be constructive! This is not to dump all your reasons why you can’t follow a nutrition plan so that you have a reason to give up. Quite the contrary. It is for you to take a step back and positively analyze what might be holding you back from achieving your nutritional goals. We all have reasons for not doing something, valid or not, and for every reason not to do so something, there is a reason TO DO something. Your job is to cross over to the can do side and work through your challenges so that you can meet them head on and find a way to overcome them.

Doing this brain work for each area – nutrition, movement, and stress – will assist you in starting to formulate your strategy to overcoming your obstacles and achieving the goals you decide to set. It is tempting and easier to jump into a plan you see on Instagram or that your friend is doing, but before you go there and spend your hard earned money, resources, and time. Truly investigate whether or not this could be the plan that works for you. It might very well be! You will be more successful at it if you do this brain work first.

Once you have an idea of what will work for you in these areas and have started to implement them, it’s time to go to the next phase of your wellness strategy. Many of us like to DIY our finances and our health, and many of us are successful in meeting our goals by doing some investigation on the internet, reading some books, and watching a few, or many, YouTube videos. But what do you do when you have exhausted your DIY prowess and now need some expert help? What do you truly know about your health and all those blood markers your doctor measures each year? What else could you do to tweak your wellness and extend your lifespan?

The next phase of your wellness strategy is meant to help you dig in a little further so you can make greater strides on your wellness goals. In this phase the objective is to define who your wellness resources are, get clear about what is in your wellness accounts and where you are starting from, then to set goals for yourself through understanding what you want to work on first and using a goal setting tool to help you achieve your desired results. You will decide what you would like to DIY and where you will need some assistance, where you will find the information you need, and which type of wellness experts you would like to hire.

Just like you need various people such as a financial planner, an accountant, an attorney, and others to help you with your financial strategy, you can employ various experts to help you meet your wellness goals. Depending on what you are working toward you may want to enlist the help of a nutritionist, a chiropractor, a health and wellness coach, personal trainer, or others to help you when DIY’ing your wellness goals is no longer getting you to the point you would like to be.

This phase is also helpful in identify problem areas that might be important to address, understand where you are starting from and what steps you need to or should take to move you forward, then to connect with what you are ready to take action on and how best to do so. This phase makes you more active and intentional with your wellness, plus will make you a better patient should there be something you need to be paying attention to.

In future articles I will unpack each of these areas further to provide you with some ideas and tools to assist you in designing your wellness strategy. If you would like to get started on the basics, click here to download The Five Steps to Designing Your Wellness Strategy Guide.

So before you go, here is a recap the phases of your Wellness Strategy:

· Define your wellness vision

· Eat well and to meet your energy needs

· Move your body often

· Manage your stress

· Identify your wellness resources

· Know your wellness numbers

· Decide what to take action on

· Set a goal and implement over the next 90 days

The main objective is to be intentional with your health journey. To chart a plan, pack your bags, and push away from shore. Knowing that this is truly a journey that will have ups and downs, good days, and bad days, but will lead to the overall objective of good health and longevity, will help you weather any storms that you may encounter. Taking the time to analyze and plan your wellness strategy will help guide you, it will be the resource you turn back to when you need to adjust your plan or move on to the next step or goal. It can be as fluid and flexible as your life is. It will help you be intentional with your planning and will be your guide in utilizing your resources wisely, saving you time, and money as you set out to achieve your wellness goals no matter what they are.

I truly hope you decide to step out and start your journey!

To your health & longevity!

Kelly