What is your Wellness score?

When we speak of wellness, we are speaking about more than just diseases. Wellness is an active process of becoming aware of and making choices toward a healthy and fulfilling life. Wellness is more than being free from illness, it is a dynamic process of change and growth.

Maintaining an optimal level of wellness is absolutely crucial to live a higher quality life. Wellness matters, because everything we do and every emotion we feel relates to our well-being. In turn, our well-being directly affects our actions and emotions. It is an ongoing circle. Therefore, it is important for everyone to achieve optimal wellness in order to subdue stress, reduce the risk of illness and ensure positive interactions.

Some claim that there are eight dimensions of wellness: occupational, emotional, spiritual, environmental, financial, physical, social, and intellectual. Each dimension of wellness is interrelated with another. Each dimension is equally vital in the pursuit of optimum health. One can reach an optimal level of wellness by understanding how to maintain and optimize each of these dimensions of wellness.

Where are you in each dimension on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being no wellness and 10 being optimal wellness. What is your overall wellness score out of 80?

This may be a quick exercise, but it can help you to look at each dimension and focus on the areas that you have scored low on. Remember the goal is to achieve optimal wellness on all of the domains.

What is your wellness score?

DOMAINS SCORE (1-10)

1. Occupational

2. Emotional

3. Spiritual

4. Environmental

5. Financial

6. Physical

7. Social

8. Intellectual/Mental

TOTAL

Dr. Rosmond Adams, MD; MSc (Public Health); M.S (Bioethics) is a medical doctor and a public health specialist with training in bioethics and ethical issues in medicine, the life sciences and research. He is a lecturer of medical ethics and Research Methods.

He is the Head of Health Information, Communicable Disease and Emergency Response at the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA). He is also a member of the World Health Organization Global Coordination Mechanism on the Prevention and Control of NCDs.