Most people think that well-being is filled with wheatgrass cleanses, yoga retreats, vegan diets, colonics and years of meditation; or having to make big sacrifices in their lives in order to attain anything close to wellness, let alone optimum wellness. Because of this, people get so overwhelmed that they don’t know where to begin, or worse, give up before the journey begins.

But well-being is not as hard as most people think, and it can be as simple as a state of mind. While fitness is certainly a part of the journey, the path to well-being starts more simply with a better understanding of who we are.

Let’s face it, none of us is perfect and most people I meet who are considering a better understanding of themselves, for the first time, have no basic idea of what it entails. All they know is that they should be doing it. Whether that is because all of their friends are doing it and they need to “keep up appearances”, or if they genuinely feel like they have come to a point in their life where they are exhausted, depleted and stuck.  It doesn’t matter how you get here, as long as you make that first step. With the world changing at such a rapid pace, what do you need to do to not only stay afloat and survive but to thrive on a daily basis? ‘Is this even possible’, I hear you ask.  

This first step lies in knowing ourselves better. “The better we know ourselves, the better equipped we are to thrive AND the less we fear change, ourselves and others,”  says Gregg Braden in his new online course, “Human By Design”. “We have been programmed to believe that we are living in a world that is competitive, where there is conflict, struggle and the most important thing is “survival of the strongest”.

We are judged by how much we earn and what cars we drive rather than how many people we help and how much time we spent with our children, being happy, simple and carefree. We have been taught that putting ourselves last is a virtue so we are not judged as being selfish or arrogant. But how can we take care of others and their needs, if we don’t feed our souls firstly?  How can we operate at optimum wellness if we have given away all of our energy, ideas, creativity and love in order to “please” other people?

So the first step to well-being is focusing on caring for the internal ‘You’—nurturing that inner voice that says, “I need a time out.” To do this we need to spend some time each day shutting off the outside world and recharging our batteries.

In taking this first step we start a journey to total well-being that combines physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellness.  None of these parts of us is separate from the other, and if we continue to treat dis-ease without considering the whole, we never quite achieve optimum wellness.  Old, bad habits continue to haunt us and we drown in the guilt and shame of not being able to just “snap out of it”.  Or to just “let it go”. (So yes, one day you will make it to that Transformational Retreat, if you firstly prepare to learn to love yourself again.)

Ladies and gentlemen, we are here to thrive, to take back and embrace the power of who we are. To say Yes and actually mean it; to say No and not feel guilty for upsetting someone else’s feelings because of their misguided expectations of us. By being present and IN the present, we can create this world to be a better place by becoming creators of our life, and not living a life where we are only reactive to life happening to us. This is where optimum wellness begins to occur—a place where we feel that we are in alignment to all of who we are.