June is Professional Wellness Month, a time to raise awareness on the importance of holistic approaches to healthcare as it relates to work-life balance.
Most healthcare initiatives focusing on the health of our bodies, which encompasses physical maintenance and preventing the spread of viruses and disease. However, after more than a year of dealing with Covid-19, people the world over have come to recognize a bigger problem with a lack of wellbeing for the mind and soul. With people going back to work, it's become more and more evident that this issue may also be directly related to work.
We'd like to point to a new, holistic way of looking at a person's overall wellbeing. A 3-in-1 approach that we, at The Wellest., like to call leading a Sustainable Lifestyle.
It begins from the understanding that everything — including our internal systems from body to mind to soul — is intricately connected. This also lies the very core of what The Wellest. is about, and also what "The Wellest Life" podcast touches on in some of its episodes.
It's a belief system that recognizes if one part isn't working properly, all parts will begin to fail — in the case of a person's health, if the mind is unhealthy then the soul will break down and the body will follow suit; same goes if our soul is broken, the others will follow; and so on.
All of us around the world have not only seen this phenomenon happening since early 2020 with the pandemic, but many have felt it to some degree.
Many people felt the imbalance rise up first from their job losses, caused by the pandemic shutdowns, followed by feelings of loneliness and subsequent depression due to the quarantine. Sadly, many felt the deeper pains of invading mental stress from losing loved ones to the virus.
While some illnesses cannot be entirely contained or even controlled, as we've seen with Covid-19 and to a larger degree cancer or even clinical psychosis, one thing we can change is how we face the challenge of illness when it comes to our own health and the wellbeing of those around us.
Interestingly, what people are now discovering, after companies are calling them back into the office, is that the real issue wasn't being home with loved ones. Rather, what we're finding is that people's wellness was not in focus before the pandemic, and that heavy workloads and daily commutes and competitive co-workers and mean bosses are what kept people from feeling whole in the first place.
If we understand that each part of the whole person — mind, body and soul — are interconnected, then we must be vigilant in helping those who seem frail in one aspect or another. Or for ourselves, getting the help and guidance necessary to keep any illness residing in one part of our whole being from spreading and breaking down the rest.