Struggling With Your Fitness + Nutrition Regimen? Ask Yourself These 6 Questions.
Oftentimes conversations about health focus solely on physical needs; but in order to achieve true vitality, we must look beyond the basics of water, food, shelter, and sleep. Humans have mental needs (creativity, learning, meditation), emotional needs (relationship, sharing of feelings, feelings of belonging), and spiritual needs (need for inspiration, contemplation, beauty, and context). Checking in with the self to gauge whether your emotional, mental, and spiritual needs are being met is a crucial step in achieving total wellness.
Without a solid emotional, mental, and spiritual foundation, even the best, most well-organized nutritional and fitness regimens can become totally ineffective. If emotional, mental, and spiritual needs are not being met, you’ll feel stress and a lowering of willpower. Anyone that struggles with emotional eating can attest to that!
Related Article: Wellness Questionnaire
If you have a stressful job and like to unwind with a glass (or three) of wine each night, you might be negatively impacting healthy sleep and healthy weight. However, if the mental and emotional stress of your job doesn’t change, how can you expect this pattern to? Often, people are too hard on themselves, and understand their coping mechanisms as failures. All humans use coping mechanisms to deal with stress. Getting to the source of those stressors is the key to unlocking true vitality.
If you’ve been struggling with “staying on track,” ask yourself the following questions
Mental Health
Do you have a creative outlet of focus that brings joy to your daily work?
Are your ideas and talents welcome in your line of work?
Emotional Needs
Do you have people in your life with whom you feel close enough to share your dearest hopes and fears?
Human contact is incredibly important to wellbeing — are you getting touched, whether through intimacy or massage?
Spiritual Wellbeing
Do you set aside time regularly for solitude and contemplation?
Does your daily life contribute to a larger vision you have for your life?
If you want true change and balanced health and the journey towards transformation, it starts with this self-reflection. If you answered “no” to any of the above questions, take 20 minutes to journal about what you could do to create more time for yourself. Could you benefit from going to a painting or dance class? Taking more time to connect with loved ones? Thinking carefully about whether your work aligns with your personal values? If you want true change and transformation, begin this journey of introspection and self-reflection.
Much of Western culture teaches us that tending to the self shouldn’t be our priority. However, when we honor our own mental, emotional, and spiritual needs, we unlock access to our wisest, truest selves. This self-acceptance and self-love is the most solid foundation available to us for a lifetime of health and wellbeing.
Time for a more immersive return to the self? Join us for some of the best views in the world at our health, wellness, and stress retreat.
What is Mountain Trek?
Mountain Trek is the health reset you’ve been looking for. Our award-winning health retreat, immersed in the lush nature of British Columbia, will help you detox, unplug, recharge, and roll back years of stress and unhealthy habits. To learn more about the retreat, and how we can help you reset your health, please email us at info@mountaintrek.com or reach out below:
