Wellness Wednesday: {The Wheel of Wellness Pt. 1}

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.  ~World Health Organization

Happy Wellness Wednesday! This is the 3rd week of this made up "holiday" on my blog:) If you missed the first two posts, you may want to check them out:
Wellness Wednesday: {An Introduction}
Wellness Wednesday: {An Introduction pt. 2}

As I said before, we often tend to think of health in terms of physical, mental, and spiritual. I think looking at only a few types of wellness misses the point, though. I prefer this:

The Wheel of Wellness

Source (click for full size image)

I love visuals, and I think this is an excellent way to view health. This model, created by Myers, Sweeney, & Witmer uses the idea of a Wheel to describe wellness. 

A wheel doesn't function well when a part is broken. It gets lose, wobbles, and eventually can no longer function properly. Overall wellness is important, and is made up of many smaller parts. Even if some of these parts are working well, if there's a part that's broken, that will decrease the overall wellness of the whole. 

The important thing to realize is that one area affects another area, so while physical wellness might be excellent, a lack of mental health will begin to affect the physical wellness component. That's why it's so important to work on increasing your wellness in more then just one area!

This wheel is made up of 5 life tasks with a total of 17 different components of wellness (did you think there were 17 components of wellness?!). 

The 5 Life-Tasks include:

1. Spirituality
2. Self-Regulation
3. Work & Leisure
4. Friendship
5. Love

There are 12 components under Self-Regulation (which make up the spokes on the wheel), and many of these components are what we generally think of us health. If you click on the picture above, you can see what each of these factors are. I could spend a years worth of wellness wednesdays talking about each of these factors. I promise I won't. But I am planning on talking about each of them to some extent. And obviously it can't be just one or two blog posts:) 

It's easy to look at the wheel of above, and realize how much work we each need to do in these areas, and feel completely overwhelmed! Remember that wellness is a process that is never complete! Even if we can't get to a perfect level of wellness, 60% of wellness in that area is better then 40%. Of course this type of thinking means you need to let go of the "all or nothing thinking" and embrace the shades of gray, but you'll be more successful in changing behavior if you can do this!

Here's what I'd like to know:

What do you think of the "Wheel of Wellness"?

Does it surprise you that there are so many different components of wellness?