25 Apr Survive or Thrive: Are Health & Wellness Really Within Your Control?

We all know the story of the man who smoked two packs of cigarettes his entire adult life and lived to the ripe old age of 92. It’s not unlike the story of the woman marathon runner who ate wholesome food, stayed out of bars, and died of a heart attack at age 49. Whether hopelessly optimistic or tragic, life is rarely that simple.

For starters, these stories are anomalies, but they’re used throughout modern-day culture as examples (aka excuses) of why we don’t need to go whole hog into a healthy lifestyle. I could die any day, some say, shouldn’t I live the way I want? (Translation: If I don’t get to choose, I may as well do what feels good for the moment).

Second, those stories speak only to physical health, which is a mere piece of the holistic health pie. A hefty slice, but far from the whole thing. Experts define health as the absence of disease or injury. While there are varying degrees of health, we don’t get to choose between health and illness. The child born with leukemia certainly didn’t. Nor did the teenager who was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, or the retired school teacher who entered the devastating world of dementia at age 72.

Determining our health is not like opening up our closets in the morning and selecting the shirt we wish to wear, or the mug we drink our coffee out of, or even the car we drive. We consciously employ those actions with a particular goal in mind. The patterned blouse over the cotton t-shirt communicates something about the image we wish to portray and our desire for comfort. We may choose a different coffee mug every day or stick to the same one because––let’s face it––our coffee just tastes better out of porcelain over earthenware. The car may say something about our socioeconomic status and also our daily lifestyle needs. 

On the surface, health and wellness are two sides of the same coin. Indeed, in mainstream culture, they’re often referred to interchangeably. But there are important differences between the two.

What Are Health & Wellness?

Health is a state––we don’t get to choose it. If that sounds a bit dire, it kind of is. We are not guaranteed a life of good health just because we want it or take particular action towards it. Instead, we are guaranteed precisely the opposite: suffering, illness (at least temporarily and infrequently, but illness nonetheless), and eventually death. Those are our guarantees in life, as far as health is concerned.

Wellness, on the other hand, is an approach. A conscious and continuous striving for health in all dimensions that involves making effective and well-intentioned choices about our behaviors, thoughts, and habits. Indeed, everything we do––or don’t do for that matter––has some influence on our state of health. That’s the good news. It’s also the bad news! Each action has a consequence, and it’s up to us to decide how we want to live, and that really comes down to one salient question: 

How do you want your life to feel? 

Many of us must navigate the waters of a rebellious youth, experimenting with drugs, alcohol, and other risky business, before we arrive at that question. For others, it’s sewn into the fabric of our being––we don’t need to feel bad to know we want to feel good, so the question is a moot point. 

Of course, there are millions of us in between, meeting the Whack-A-Mole again and again until we finally defeat the damn thing, which is to say, we are constantly negotiating between our needs and our desires. That said, most of us confront that question throughout our lives––and that’s a good thing. It means we’re constantly reassessing what it means to be well, and what is required of us to achieve that. 

Wellness then involves discerning need from want, and attempting to align those two driving forces that make up the human experience. As anyone can attest to, that’s not a one-person job; it requires the whole army of the human condition––the mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, environmental, and social dimensions of our personal state of health.

We’re not just striving to prevent disease or illness or injury, we’re trying to find the best way to live, and that demands far more from us than mere survival. It means being socially connected, having access to resources, forming intimate bonds, having adequate material resources, feeling good about who we are, and more––just look to Maslow’s hierarchy.

Arguably, very few of us wake up with survival as our only goal. If that were the case, our only requirements would be those bottom-of-the-pyramid ones: food, water, and shelter. We’d have little need to concern ourselves with the social and psychological factors that influence our quality of life.  

Wellness is an actively pursued goal toward a more pleasant, healthy life, in which we can enact our hopes and desires while being free from disease, illness, or injury. It’s the difference between surviving and thriving, and it’s multidimensional. 

As a Black Pearl Practitioner & Trainer serving Clarington, Durham Region, and the surrounding areas, I’ve devoted my life to wellness. My goal is to help others become more conscious of their well-being, that is, the power they hold to actively pursue a healthier lifestyle. If you want to know more about addressing your personal well-being, give me a call today to schedule an appointment.