5 Essential Steps to Create Your Holistic Wellness Plan

Many women today grapple with challenges to their well-being, perhaps stemming from health diagnoses, frustrating unexplained symptoms, or the relentless strain of chronic stress from daily life. These things can make it easy to feel overwhelmed. Creating a wellness plan can serve as a roadmap through these challenges, drawing upon the concepts of holistic, whole health to guide your wellness journey. By harnessing the dimensions of your life, you can take small steps to lay a foundation that enhances your wellbeing, whatever challenges are thrown your way.

This post offers a guide to help you create your own wellness plan, empowering you to move forward and reclaim a sense of wellness. Here are the 5 Essential Steps to Build A Wellness Plan.

1. Discover Your Dimensions of Health

A holistic approach to health takes a broad view, and considers how each facet of life is contributing to or detracting from our overall wellness. Sometimes called the Dimensions of Health or Wellness Wheel, this framework prompts us be mindful about each dimension and its impact on our wellbeing.

Consider how the following are supporting or detracting from your health right now. How have they been impacted by your current health challenges? How might you harness each dimension to support your overall wellbeing?

• Sleep and Rest
• Physical Environment
• Nutrition
• Mental & Emotional Well-being
• Fulfillment & Purpose
• Physical Activity & Fitness
• Financial
• Relationships & Community

2. Visioning

Next, take some time to brainstorm how you want your wellness to look moving forward. Using the dimensions of health above helps you come up with ideas about what wellness looks like for you and see more clearly the areas you want to work on. Keep in mind this will change and can be revisited.

• How do I want to feel? What changes could I make?
• What does being “well” look like for me?
• What does healing mean to me?
• What is working for me right now? What is challenging me?
• What type of support do I need? Do I have a healing team? Friends and family support?
• What self care practices feel supportive or would I like to explore?

3. Consider Your Values

Values help us understand our foundation. They act as a compass to propel us forward as well as a place to return to and remind us of what is important. Make a list of key elelments you value in life. This will be tied into your wellness plan and help you feel aligned with any changes you are trying to make on your wellness journey:

• What matters to me most right now?
• What do I want my health for?
• What brings me joy and happiness?
• What brings me a sense of purpose?
• What values am I honoring as I think about my vision for wellness?

4. Choose a Focus

The Dimensions of Health, Visioning and Values steps are a discovery process that help us understand what the state of our wellness currently is, what we want it to look like and what underlying factors will help us get there. You might feel overwhelmed by the number of aspects of wellness you’d like to address, and that’s okay. To make this process feel doable and less overwhelming, it’s best to choose a focus and start small. Here are some prompts below to help you figure out where to start:

• What feels like it would be most supportive to me right now?
• What would make the greatest impact?
• What can I do most easily or realistically right now?
• What changes to my well-being would feel purposeful?
• What possibility for my wellness do I feel most excited about now?

5. Set a Goal: Let’s Get Started

Once you have an idea of what you want to focus on, the next step is to set a goal to work towards. One method for developing goals is to follow the SMART goal structure:

• Specific: What exactly do I want to do? When? Where? Why?
• Measurable: How much/many do I want to do?
• Attainable: What actions will I take to implement the goal?
• Relevant: Does this goal matter to me? Is it realistic in my life right now?
• Time–Bound: What is the time-frame to accomplish this goal?

Here is an example:

My Goal: I want to spend more time outdoors exercising. Now, let’s make it SMART!

• Specific: I will get outdoors more by walking for 30 minutes at least 3 days a week to start, in my neighborhood or at a local park.
• Measurable: I will keep track of this by noting in a journal the days I walk and how I feel afterwards.
• Attainable: I will schedule walks after I’m done working for the day. If I can’t walk after work, I will walk during lunchtime.
• Relevant: Being outdoors helps me to de-stress and feel more calm, and I really enjoy walking.
• Time-Bound: I will implement this over the next 30 days, starting with Monday, Wednesday and Friday walks and adjust if needed.

You can apply this framework to any goal you may have for your wellness. If you find you are hitting obstacles to achieving your goal, review how attainable or realistic the goal is for you right now. Is it too much? Can you break it down into smaller steps? Do you feel truly connected to your goal? Or do you need to alter the day/time you’ve scheduled for yourself. You can always review the steps again to see if you need to re-focus and find something that feels impactful or more doable.

Conclusion

Following the 5 Essential Steps to Build A Holistic Wellness Plan offers a practical framework for making impactful changes to your well-being, forming your wellness plan one goal at a time. By reviewing the dimensions of health, creating a vision, aligning with your values, selecting a focus and setting attainable goals, you create a path uniquely tailored to your needs. As you explore possibilities for your wellbeing, you reclaim a sense of agency over your health, even in the face of challenging diagnoses or symptoms.

I hope this post helps you embrace the journey you are on and explore what is possible for you. Interested in one-on-one support to create your wellness plan? Click here to explore how we can help you craft a tailored wellness plan just for you!