Should You Develop a Wellness Plan?

Anna* told me that she was going to do a dry January this year.

Denise* said she was going to walk 7,000 steps a day every day in the new year.

Laurence* said that he was going to lose 40 pounds this year.

These clients had made New Year’s resolutions, but they hadn’t thought about their new goals as part of an overall wellness plan.

If you did something similar—that is, if you gave yourself a very specific goal for the coming year—you might also want to consider designing a wellness plan around that goal.

What is a wellness plan? A wellness plan is a personalized program to improve your overall health and well-being. This kind of plan takes into account your physical, mental, emotional, social, work or school, and spiritual health. You can structure it in a number of ways. It can be an organized plan or a general attitude, but the goal is to develop an action plan to work healthy habits into your daily life.

A wellness plan is multifaceted

A wellness plan is multifaceted, specific to you and your personal needs and lifestyle, and includes one or more fairly limited plans of action. It doesn’t have to take into account all of the different areas at once, but you can choose to focus on two or three aspects of your physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social, and work or school life.

For example, you might have decided to do a dry January this year. That’s great news and a terrific step toward a wellness plan. But a more complete plan would consider some of the other components of your life besides your alcohol intake.

For instance, if you don’t drink, will you also be curtailing your social life? If so, can you add some new form of interaction with friends or family, something that doesn’t involve drinking?

You might incorporate this social change with an activity that you’ve been thinking about starting; for instance, trying yoga, which would check the boxes of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual boxes as well as the social one? Or you might consider taking that pottery course that you’ve thought about for years. You could use the money you save by not drinking to pay for the course. Maybe see if a friend will join you, and you’ll have addressed social and emotional wellness, since pottery is known to be soothing to our psyches. Surprisingly, it will also be a step in the mental realm as well, since learning anything new gets neurons in your brain firing in new and important paths.

Source: SeventyFour/iStock

When I presented this idea to Anna, who was planning a dry January, she was upset at first. “I was feeling so good about doing something that’s hard, but that I know will be good for me. And instead of supporting me, you’re telling me I have to do more.”

Think small steps

I told her that I wasn’t saying she had to do anything. I was just suggesting that along with this big change, she might think about making a few small shifts in her life.

“We’re talking about small additions or small take-aways. Nothing as big as not drinking for a month,” I said.

She said she would think about it. The next week she asked me if reading counted as part of a wellness plan. I told her I was pretty sure it did. She grinned and said, “Even if it’s a junk novel?” I laughed.

“Even reading junk gives our brains some exercise, and it also provides some rest and relaxation for our psyches. I think it’s a great idea.” I asked her what she was reading, and as she told me, with some embarrassment, about the historical romance series she had started, it became clear that it had been years since Anna had read anything at all.

As Anna realized that adding a pleasurable experience to her activities could be part of a personal wellness plan, she became more enthusiastic about the idea. “You mean what I do to stay well can be fun?” she asked.

The steps of a wellness plan can also be small. In fact, it’s often better if they are. When Laurence told me of his plan to lose 40 pounds, he said that he wanted to do it through a change in diet, not with drugs. I suggested that he start by reframing his objective. Rather than focus on the weight loss itself, I encouraged him to try to make a plan that included the long-term goal of weight loss and some small, short-term goals in different areas of his life. He, like Anna, didn’t care for that suggestion. He wanted a big change that he and other people could see.

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I asked Laurence what he thought losing weight would do for him. He said, “I’ll feel better physically. I’m carrying too much weight for my frame and it’s just harder to move at this size.” He also thought he would feel better about himself, since he did not like the way he looked anymore. “And I’ll feel proud of myself for doing it.”

“So you’d like to feel better physically, emotionally, and mentally,” I said. He nodded.

Laurence thought that losing weight would accomplish those objectives, but although he lost some weight during the first week of his new diet, he told me that he felt hungry all the time. “I’m not sure this is sustainable,” he said.

Think larger picture as well

I told him that I was afraid he might be right. I suggested that we develop a “larger picture” wellness plan, so that he could lose weight in a sustainable way while also adding some activities to his life that met some of the goals he had hoped to achieve with a new diet. Grumbling all the way, Laurence decided to start working out three times a week. There was a gym in his office building, and he thought he could start by using the equipment there.

He also learned from a friend of a good nutritionist who might help him change his eating behavior without putting him on a starvation diet and made an appointment to see her. “I don’t know if I’ll do what she says,” he warned me. I told him that simply seeing her and hearing her ideas would be a positive part of his wellness plan.

Laurence told me that he had decided to make a different kind of social plan once a week. “I think one of the problems is that the only thing I do with friends is go out to eat and drink,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see if some of my buddies want to go to a concert with me. Or to a basketball game.”

Like Anna, he realized that a wellness plan didn’t have to include huge changes. In fact, small changes that come from thinking about your own physical, mental, emotional, social, and occupational, or school, health and well-being are more sustainable and, in the end, more life-changing than the big shifts you might imagine you should be undertaking.

*Names and identifying info changed for privacy.