What does Health and Wellbeing mean to you?

Health and wellbeing is a pretty common phrase thrown around. Made up of two significant words, Health and Wellbeing. What do these two words mean and why are they used together so much?

As a preamble to the World Health Organisation’s constitution there is a definition of health:

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

Health can be achieved by identifying and addressing areas of a person’s health, for example improving heart health by reducing blood pressure through reducing consumption of processed foods and alcohol, prioritising sleep and managing stress etc.

Wellbeing is related to health of course but is different in definition and can be described as

“a relative state where one maximizes his or her physical, mental, and social functioning in the context of supportive environments to live a full, satisfying, and productive life.”

Wellbeing involves a self-directed and evolving process to achieve full potential and can be looked at more as a dynamic process of living a healthy and fulfilling life.

The topic of wellbeing can be considered very broad when you acknowledge the following:

• Physical well-being

• Economic well-being

• Social well-being

• Development and activity

• Emotional well-being

• Psychological well-being

• Life satisfaction

• Domain specific satisfaction*

• Engaging activities and work

So the phrase health and wellbeing brings the two aspects together to demonstrate that to be truly healthy and fulfilled, you can’t have one without the other.

At Smiling Professionals, we consider twelve pillars of wellbeing, based off the Institute for Integrative Nutrition’s Circle of Life. These are:

• Career

• Creativity

• Education

• Finances

• Health

• Home cooking

• Home environment

• Joy

• Physical activity

• Relationships

• Social life

• Spirituality

During the Smiling Professionals bespoke health coaching programme, these areas are explored with the client. Building awareness of these different aspects of life, as well as acknowledging the links between them and how they influence each other is a powerful process for the client. The idea is to work towards balance, whatever that might look like for an individual.

Working with a health coach through this process of exploration forms an important part of the journey to sustainable optimal wellbeing as the client unfolds their tools, resources and outlook to ensure they are adequately nourished in all aspects of their life.

*Domain specific satisfaction can be described as “an enduring appreciation of a particular life aspect. Like life satisfaction (happiness), domain satisfactions indicate the subjective quality of life as experienced by a given set of individuals. Yet, whereas the former denotes a lasting satisfaction with one’s life as a whole, domain satisfactions are evaluations of specific life facets (domains), such as family life, health, and standard of living. Source here