How we feel about ourselves when we wake up in the morning has a ripple effect on our day’s activities, it influences how we relate with others and most importantly, affects how we react to challenges that we face each day. This is all dependent on our emotional wellness and it is vital that we keep nourishing it so as to have a positive and a stress free life.
Emotional wellness is the ability to successfully handle life’s stresses, how to adapt to change and difficult times. Emotional wellness can also be explained as being aware and making choices toward a healthy and fulfilling life through understanding and acceptance of our feelings. According to Healthy Place, an online health journal, for one to be termed as emotionally healthy, one has to be in control of their thoughts, feelings and behavior and is able to cope with challenges regardless of their surroundings.
Emotional wellness is an integration of different aspects and it takes various dimensions that cuts across our lives such as.
- Social: Developing meaningful relations with the others in the community
- Physical: Maintaining a healthy body through exercise and good nutrition.
- Intellectual: Expanding knowledge and skills while discovering the potential for sharing your gifts with others.
- Spiritual: Involves finding purpose and meaning in life through a faith believes and values that maybe attached to a religion.
- Occupational. It includes using your talent or gift to participate in work that is enriching and provides personal satisfaction.
The above dimensions, determines our day to day activities and they play a big part on our well-being and how we feel about ourselves.
Importance of a healthy emotional wellness
Emotional wellness, is critical as outlined by Healthline, an online resource center that clearly captures its significance to our lives.
- Enhances self-esteem. A positive wellness helps our feelings and thoughts and it influences the way we feel. A high self-esteem helps in seeing the positive in every situation and cope with adversity and helps appreciate the good times.
- Boost energy levels. Poor emotional health depletes one’s mental energy leading to exhaustion but having a positive outlook makes you more energized and help you focus and think more clearly.
- Resiliency. If one doesn’t take care of their emotional wellness, it leads to distress thus making one vulnerable to physical illness by impacting on the immune system.
- Meaningful relationships. When you’re equipped with skills to manage your emotions, it’s easier for you to connect with others and show more empathy and compassion. You’re also better able express yourself/feelings and this are the steps to living well and loving yourself.
How do we improve our emotional wellness?
There are various ways in which we can improve or maintain a positive emotional wellness
- Enrich our physical health. Our physical health has a significant impact on our emotional wellness. For us to be emotionally healthy, we need to eat healthy, exercise regularly and most importantly get enough sleep. These will go a long way in ensuring that our emotional wellness is positive. You can access tips on how to prepare and enrich your physical health journey here.
- Being assertive. An assertive person is likely to have a better emotional wellness as it helps in expressing how one feels. Assertiveness, helps in addressing issues that affects our wellbeing, be it at work, home or within our surrounding.
- Socializing. Human beings are social creatures and by connecting with other people it improves our emotional wellness as we are able to share and make us feel good about ourselves.
- Work life balance. Find a healthy balance between work and your other life for improvement of your mental well-being. It is advised that you have rest between activities and make time for things that you enjoy doing.
- Vitamins and supplements. There is range of vitamins and supplements available at MYDawa that when used can uplift one’s general body health since a healthy body leads to emotional wellbeing. If not sure which vitamins and supplements to use, one can seek further advise from a qualified doctor for guidance.
