Are There Four Aspects of Health, Wellness, and Wellbeing for Everyone?

Yes, and an imbalance in any one element impacts all, as well as our total state of being.

Health, wellness, and wellbeing in everyone comes with four aspects. Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

It’s extremely important that there be balance between these forms. Yet we frequently do not recognize this, and the price we pay is amazingly high.

What follows is me sharing my work with my personal health, wellness, and wellbeing. This might not entirely resonate with and for you, but you also have the same 4 aspects making up the holistic total of your health, wellness, and wellbeing.

Spiritual and Physical

Let’s start with the spiritual. My spiritual health is good overall. I know who I am, I know where my faith and beliefs lie. If you’ve read any of my Pathwalking philosophy posts you’ve gotten a pretty good look at my mindfulness approach and belief that consciousness creates reality. Yes, there’s room for improvement because there’s always room for improvement. However, this is the place I feel most confidently healthy, and this is where I think I have the best handle on myself.

Note that the spiritual has nothing to do with God, the Powers-the-Be, or any other specific outside force. This is about my self-esteem and the connection between my conscious and subconscious mind. That, in my opinion, is where true spiritual health, wellness, and wellbeing exists.

This brings me to the physical. If you know me in real life, you know that I’m overweight. You don’t develop a gut like mine without years of work. I fluctuate between slightly heavy and obese, and I’ve been struggling with this pretty much my whole life.

Yet I’m not a couch potato, I’m very active. I walk a lot, and fence at least two or more times a week. I sometimes also get to the gym, where I do more cardio and weightlifting. I’m pretty damned strong, flexible, dexterous, and my endurance and stamina are extremely high.

However, I still sometimes eat more than I need, and I consume too many things that are not tremendously good for me. Too much bread, salt, sugar, and the like are part of my diet. However, I’m aware of this, so I’m constantly working to improve on it.

Part of what motivates me — or demotivates me — is the last two aspects of health, wellness, and wellbeing. Specifically, the mental and emotional.

Mental and emotional aspects of health, wellness, and wellbeing

Most people address this under the blanket of mental health. I believe, however, it’s important to recognize and acknowledge that mental and emotional aspects of the self are separate and thus unique.

I’ve suffered from clinical depression for much of my life. To deal with this I do therapy, take an antidepressant, practice meditation, and have worked hard to address this and not let it dictate my life.

Mental health addresses thoughts. Everything everywhere begins in thought. Our thoughts are how we analyze the world around us. Everything we see, hear, touch, and experience is processed by thinking and the mental gymnastics that follow.

Emotional health addresses feelings. Feelings are made up of a what and how. What you feel has a name, like anger, fear, love, happiness, and joy. How you feel is variable and situational. Sometimes anger is red hot or ice cold. Love can be butterflies in your stomach or a fire in your loins.

Mental health and thought can be addressed with reason, rationale, and logic. Emotional health is far more elusive and subjective. Emotions nearly always tie to thoughts, but because of the vastly different nature of thought and feeling, I separate mental and emotional health, wellness, and wellbeing.

All aspects of health, wellness, and wellbeing are linked together

The interconnection of the four aspects can become a vicious circle. Too many negative thoughts and feelings and I get depressed, overeat for comfort, then get annoyed with my body and despondent about my lack of spiritual resolve.

Then I fix it, for a time, until something outside my control happens, Once more, the demotivation can then impact my spirit, I get depressed, overeat for comfort, then get annoyed with my body and despondent about my lack of spiritual resolve, Rinse, repeat.

To combat this and break that cycle, I’ve worked on my spiritual health, first. I’ve developed my philosophy to help me better understand the notion that consciousness creates reality, and from there work on manifesting more things I desire for my life.

Next, I work on my mental and emotional health. I strive to practice active conscious awareness. Mindfulness, as such, allows me to question here and now my thoughts, feelings, actions, intentions, and directional approach (positive or negative). Recognizing and acknowledging that, I gain clarity of my mental and emotional states. Then I can change them as needed.

Once the spiritual, mental, and emotional aspects have been addressed, I’m in a better place to address the physical. That’s because it’s a lot easier to be mindful of what I eat and how much I move my body when the invisible, intangible elements that make up three-fourths of my overall health, wellness, and wellbeing are known.

Finally, the is never one and done. Why? Because of change. Change is the only constant in the universe. Thus, everything, both in and out of our control, can, will, and does change. Flexibility of mind, body, and spirit opens the way to better handling change in its many forms.

Thank you for reading. You’ve got this. We’ve got this. Namaste.

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Thank you for reading. I’m Murray “MJ” Blehart. I write about mindfulness, conscious reality creation, positivity, wellness, wellbeing, and similar life lessons.