How to Achieve Wellness and Happiness in Life

by Raymund Tamayo

Wellness and happiness: two words that seem to be so far-fetched in this modern, taxing, hectic, and synthetic world that we live in. 

It’s as if one has to spend his life living in constant pursuit of these two things because they are impossible to attain.

For many people, this is what an acceptable life should look like: 

• work as hard as you can
• sleep for only a couple of hours
• entertain yourself and eat as much as you can to compensate
• make as much money as you can to be able to buy medicine, food, and entertainment
• to help you keep working as hard as you can. 

The Rat Race. It is a never-ending mindless cycle of consumption. And it abuses our bodies, souls, and spirits.

It’s stressful just thinking about it. Really.

But life doesn’t have to be that way. 

Admission and Decision

The first thing to do to achieve a life of true wellness and happiness is to admit that it is needed and that it requires change. 

Without admission that there is a problem, things will just go on and on without a solution.

Pride, indifference, and denial are like blindfolds that cover the eyes from the truth. 

By taking away these mental and emotional blindfolds and accepting and recognizing what is in the heart all along, one is freeing himself to walk towards a life of wellness and happiness. 

With humility and acceptance, an emotionally blind man is given the gift of sight and now able to walk in the path of his own choosing.

The moment a person confesses that there is something wrong, then that is the time his life begins to change. 

A goal is not reached just by thinking about it. One has to actually step his foot forward to grab it.

Making a resolute decision after an admission is the next thing to do. 

Without all the blindfolds, we can now have the conscious choice to steer and align our lives in accordance to our values.

Finding Balance

This may sound so simple and easy, but it is definitely not.

To achieve balance, an individual needs to manage his time in taking care of the six basic areas of life: physical, mental, emotional, social, financial, and spiritual. 

One needs to allow himself to grow in all these areas to be able to live a life of true wellness and happiness.

For example, if you work yourself out every day to the point of exhaustion, you take care of your financial life but overlook your physical or even your emotional and social health as well. 

If you spend all your time playing with your kids, then you might be growing your emotional and social life but might be ignoring your financial and mental health.

Doing everything with balance is the only way to sustain any change. 

A New Perspective

Achieving wellness and happiness at the same time is actually a paradox. 

Why? Because not all the things that promote health and wellness can actually bring happiness and satisfaction all the time.

What does this mean? Because some people have the wrong concept of happiness.

To give enlightenment, here are some things that people mistake as happiness:

• Pleasure. Smoking, drinking, taking drugs, eating badly, and having adulterous sex with multiple partners are pleasures, they aren’t happiness. You can do all these without really feeling happy.
• Convenience. Not everything that makes you smile is easily done. For example, a mother will make an effort and take time to cook a wonderful dinner for her children. She is surely happy, but she did not achieve it without getting tired and inconvenient.

In order to bring about wellness, new sets of habits must be built up and a lot of old ones had to be given up. 

That needs strong willpower.

In order to achieve something so great and wonderful such as wellness and happiness, one has to be prepared to discard pleasure and convenience when needed.

Importance of Will Power

Will power is essential in having a healthy and happy life. 

It is having the mental faculty to intentionally do the things you know you ought to do even when you emotionally don’t want to. 

It is also known by other names such as self-control and self-discipline.

Will power is what makes us delay gratification rather than give in to temptation. 

It gives us strength to keep working even when we feel procrastinating. 

It prevents us from succumbing to that decadent chocolate, extra shot of tequila, or fried animal burger – and to get up early in the morning to run.

It’s a mental supply that we can summon to help us achieve our goals successfully. 

It is like a muscle, with a limited supply of strength. 

We only have so much of it and it runs out as we use it. 

It can get tired of overusing, but as with muscle, we can increase our will power by training it.

I will talk about finding balance when it comes to the physical area of life in my next post. Bye for now.