WELCOME TO THE GOOD LIFE NOW

Dare to create your own best future

 

Total Wellness: Physical, Personal, financial

 

 

This site, The Good Life Now, is dedicated to the proposition that life is good, and the time to live the good life is NOW.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LIVE THE GOOD LIFE?

To live the good life is to enjoy total wellness. 

Wellness is an on-going lifestyle that begins with taking responsibility for the quality of your life.   It means achieving individual well being through balance and making healthy choices.

§         Wellness begins with a commitment to adopt those choices, in varied life areas, that lead to high levels of well-being and life satisfaction.

§         Wellness involves the integration of body, mind, and spirit to produce a balanced lifestyle.

§         It involves a sense of becoming, changing, improving, and growing. It requires taking positive control of your life in those areas you can control.

ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION TO ALL THE VARIED ASPECTS OF WELLNESS?

Physical Wellness requires applying your knowledge, behavior, and attitude towards achieving personal fitness and health goals.  Balancing nutritional practices, getting regular exercise and adequate sleep, and paying attention to the warning signs and symptoms of your body are all important to physical wellness. Physical wellness includes environmental wellness.

Environmental Wellness requires an awareness of the state of the earth and the effects your the physical surroundings have on your well-being.  It means maintaining a way of life that maximizes harmony with the earth and minimizes harm to the environment.  It’s being aware of the immediate environment of your own home and avoid as much as possible toxic chemicals and substances such as cleaning supplies and hygiene products that can adverse effect your health and health of the larger environment.

Personal Wellness involves several aspects:

Spiritual Wellness is about finding your place in the universe--the quest for meaning, value and purpose resulting in hope, joy, courage and gratitude. Spiritual Wellness begins with the evaluation of personal beliefs and values, and a commitment to live consistently with them.

Emotional Wellness is striving to meet emotional needs constructively.  It is maintaining good mental health, a positive attitude, high self-esteem, and strong self-image.  It is the ability to respond resiliently to emotional states and the flow of life events. 

It is taking responsibility for your own behavior and emotions, and responding to challenges as opportunities.

Intellectual Wellness is having a curiosity and strong desire to learn.  It is valuing many experiences, staying stimulated with new ideas, and sharing.  It is responding to challenges and opportunities to grow, making plans, developing strategies, and solving problems.  It is the ability to engage in clear thinking and recall, and to think independently, creatively, and critically.

Life Planning Wellness includes the process of discovering and maintaining a balance between personal, social, and vocational goals.  It involves taking advantage of opportunities to learn skills that will enhance satisfaction and enjoyment in your life.  It is the awareness of your own strengths and skills in addition to the time and financial commitment necessary to pursue the lifestyle of your choice. It is having a sense that your work is worthwhile, or that your are doing it in a worthwhile manner and for worthwhile reasons.

Social Wellness is having positive interactions with and enjoying being with others.  It is having comfort and ease during work and leisure situations and communicating feelings and needs to others. 

It involves developing and building close friendships and intimacy, practicing empathy and effective listening, caring for others and for the common good, and allowing others to care for you.  It is recognizing the need for leisure and recreation and budgeting time for those activities.

Financial wellness is having the financial means to achieve the highest possible quality of life in the shortest possible time.

At its most basic it means being free of money worries. Beyond that it means having the money to achieve your most important goals in all the other area of your life.

Three simple but powerful concepts form the basis for financial wellness:

Temporary lifestyle modification. If your lifestyle has not promoted financial wellness, it needs to be changed. Giving up some things in order to reduce and eventually eliminate debt is essential. The name of the game is not “fake it 'til you make it”; it's “give up a little now for a bigger payoff later”. It means learning the power of delayed gratification.

Residual business income. The idea is to build an income stream that will help to manage the debt load and then provide a source of income whether or not you work. There are a dozens of ways to do this, from investments to starting your own business. Residual means that you build something that continues to pay in the future as a result of your present efforts.

Debt elimination.  Debt is a trap. Eliminating debt is a priority. More than anything else being debt free gives one a sense of financial wellness.

Wellness entails a conscious commitment to positive choices and principles for optimal functioning in all these areas, physical, personal and financial.  Now that you know what wellness is, see Guidelines for Wellness for tips on how to achieve it.

Guidelines for Wellness