So what does Well-being mean?
There are lots of dimensions that contribute to your overall well-being, these include; physical, emotional, financial, social, occupational, spiritual, intellectual, environmental. If these dimensions are all maintained, supported and kept healthy your over all well-being should be fantastic. Of course, this is easier said than done, its very rare that every aspect of our life is fantastic at all times. But it helps to understand all the dimensions of our well-being and how you can keep them in check, as easily as possible.
The Well-Being Mind Dump…
Get out a timer and give yourself five minutes. There is an example below, be as thorough and specific to your life as possible. Remember, nothing is to big or small to put on there. Make sure to include the good and bad. It might seem difficult at first but keep going until the timer goes off. Once your time is up, go through all of your points, circle everything that YOU CANNOT CONTROL. Now be realistic, some things you actually can control, like ‘not having any friends’, there are steps you can take to make friends, however difficult that may seem. And wanting to be ‘a millionaire’, will technically possible, may be a little out of reach. Once you’ve circled all of the things you CANNOT control, get rid of them. Wave to them, kiss them goodbye, burn them, cross them out, whatever you want to to symbolise you letting go of your attachment to these things. Remember, just because you can’t control something, doesn’t mean it has to control you.
Brilliant! Next, focus on all of the things you can control, write ideas, lists, step by step plans, timescales etc on how you can improve these areas. This can be a tricky step, again be realistic. But you can do it!
Fantastic! Now circle or colour code one note from each dimension of your well-being mind dump to focus on. Make them your current goals! And get going!
Lastly have a look at all the things that you don’t want to change, all the great things in your life. Maybe your doing better than you thought? Take a moment and be grateful.
Hopefully even if your overall well-being is not great right now, you should feel more in control of how to fix it. Make sure to tailor these mind dumps towards you, if you need to focus on just one or two dimensions, do that. Do these regularly to compare your progress.
Now…. Grab a pen and paper!
Below are some Mindfulness Techniques that you may find useful!
