Well… How’s my wellness actually?

I have spent the past week using the two different scoring mechanisms I identified to evaluate the current state of my wellness across the different dimensions. While at first the assignment of wellness scores seemed simple and straightforward, I found myself wanting to think again. I felt that my first pass at scoring was simply a representation of the strongest ideas I had about myself in each dimension.

Upon a second reflection, I identified that some of these ideas I had about myself were built on societal categorizations (such as sporty girl) rather than true honest reflection about my everyday life. I also felt as though some of them were outdated and ideas that I had been carrying for quite some time. By shedding these categories, my brain took a giant leap forward into the present and I was finally able to think like a scientist based on the truths of my everyday reality.

Thinking Critically

In addition to this critical rethinking exercise, I followed and reflected on some other, valuable trains of thought. 🚞

• What would it take to rate myself a 10 in any one of these dimensions? My answer to this, I felt, was a testament of my intellectual wellness because honestly I believe I will never reach a 10 in any of these dimensions…and that’s great! To me, I always have something more I want to learn and improve in myself.
• What comes first, a low score or my desire to improve a specific dimension? When I first read about the wellness categories, I already had a notion about which I was not well in and in which I’d like to improve. I wonder whether this pre-existing notion led to me giving lower scores than were fair to myself or whether I already was scoring these in my head and thus they became the focus.
• Is it just me or are the dimensions that I most needed to improve upon the ones that I have the slightest clue about how to do it? 
• How might I use my strengths to improve upon my weaknesses? Could I use my stronger intellectual wellness or emotional wellness to strengthen my social or occupational wellness? Certainly it must be possible

My Scores

After taking the two different assessments and comparing the results, I found that my lowest categories were the same in both but the order of my top 3 strengths varied. Additionally, the assessment with questions did not include financial or environmental wellness so I was only able to rate those based on my own perception of myself. 

Something that I found particularly interesting about the assessment with questions is that even after giving myself a rating, it asked me the priority (low, medium, high) for each category. Is it not most logical to improve the scores that are the lowest as a higher priority? For me, this made the most sense but I suppose that for people who have a more even spread of scores across the board or are particularly interested in improving one category then prioritization is a handy tool. With prioritization, we are making an active choice to forego some improvements in favor of others, for now.

Where to go from here…

As a product manager by profession, I view this part as the stage where I make quarterly OKRs. Where improvement in a specific dimension is the objective and the specific SMART goals I create to help accomplish it are the key results. Something I worry about as a risk is that by focusing on certain areas, in my case Social Wellness and Occupational Wellness, I may neglect and actually harm other dimensions. Thus it seems only right to have an objective oriented towards keeping those strong and alive. 

A visualization popping in my head for this are the islands for the beautiful Pixar movie Inside Out. Each island is one of the wellness dimensions and it is visually represented by the key activities I pursue in each. I visualize my physical wellness island with a big salad being constantly mixed, a person power lifting a barbell and some zzzs coming up to represent a good nights sleep. 

Next up in this journey is taking the notes that I’ve written about what I’d like to improve in the next 90 days and turning them into more action oriented SMART goals. 

I’m enjoying this journey of striving well!