I think it’s nearly impossible to be exempt from wellness culture these days. It follows us everywhere – tv, magazines, online. We are inundated with things we “should” be doing, supposedly for our own happiness and well-being. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the pressure to be well, you are not alone.
Wellness Overwhelm
The first part of the wellness dilemma is that it is often simply too much. You should exercise every day, cook healthy meals with lots of fresh produce at home yourself. Are you getting 10,000 steps a day? Did you close your rings today? What about yoga and meditation? Do you keep a journal? Okay, but what about a bullet journal and a gratitude journal and morning pages? And don’t even get me started on beverages – are you drinking green juice and green smoothies and green tea and herbal tea and and your body weight in water? Seriously, I don’t have time for so many beverages.
If, for some reason, you think those don’t apply to you, what about information? Are you caught up on the news? Have you posted enough tweets this week? How’s your podcast feed looking? Are you studying a new language? Are you at inbox zero? And of course, I simply assume you met your Goodreads goal last year.
All of these habits start with good intentions. We want to be healthier, happier, more informed, better. But unfortunately, all this pressure to be “well” is creating an environment for just the opposite. It’s exhausting. It’s self-defeating. It’s demotivating.
Wellness Band-Aids
The other part of the wellness dilemma is that most of these habits are Band-Aids, even if they’re healthy Band-Aids. What I mean by this is that they tend not to solve many of the underlying problems of your health or motivation or happiness on their own. They might help, and they might offer a temporary reprieve; however, sometimes the problems at the root of your dissatisfaction will simply not be fixed by one more meditation app or green smoothie recipe.
Of course, you absolutely need health. Both physical and mental health certainly play a role in your overall well-being. Without a strong physical and mental foundation, it’s hard to have much else. Good health lets you have more energy to do more of the things you find fulfilling. Ultimately, that is what will lead to lasting satisfaction and happiness.
What about your career?
The last piece of the wellness dilemma is that it is in direct tension with other messages we receive. For instance, we should be putting everything we’ve got into our career, working to our max all the time. If we’re not working on our career, we should be working on our “wellness.” And then when you don’t live up to such impossibly high standards, all these “wellness habits” become yet another way to reinforce that you’ve failed. Instead of helping us cope with our career and life stress, wellness can compound that stress and enhance feelings of inadequacy.
Wellness Dilemma = unrealistic expectations + health Band-Aids + tension with other messaging
Alright, so we’ve established the wellness dilemma. The question is then what to do about it. I wouldn’t exactly recommend throwing your hands up, saying forget it, and binging Netflix instead – though maybe that’s an okay first step to get some appropriate distance from wellness. Regroup. Then let’s figure out how to make wellness work for us. Keep reading with The Wellness Dilemma Part II: The Fix on strategies for tackling the wellness dilemma, or check out these ways to get a little calm back in your life.
Updated with links to other posts in this series August 2019.
