Our daily habits, rituals, social, spiritual, financial life contribute to wellness in many ways. How we approach each aspect of our lives and whether those decisions are contributing towards stability and balance, or instability and stress is something worth reflecting upon.

I recall someone from my close circle, they came from a strong financial background. During a financial downfall, they maintained the same standard of living even though things were slipping out of hand for a long time now. They did not have much of a reality check and they failed to foresee the consequences of spending beyond their means. The situation got worse in no time. Do you think financial stress can affect your well-being or wellness?

In another scenario, I knew a colleague who always had interpersonal struggles with everyone. Though he was appreciated for his technical skills, his people skill was lacking. Everyone had ill feelings towards him and would avoid talking to him unless it was unavoidable. His colleagues often felt uneasy when he was around as they had to be extra careful of their words and information that they were sharing. Do you think this could affect your wellness at the workplace?

So, when we talk about dimensions of wellness, it is not a single factor but intertwined factors. However independent we may feel and want to live our lives, we are all interlinked with one another. In this part, we will talk about physical and intellectual wellness:

Physical Wellness

Physical health is important for our well-being. Keeping oneself fit physically requires understanding your own body and taking care of the basics. These can be basics like:

  • Diet: Everybody is different considering the age group one belongs to and physical exertion one gets into. Understand the food intake and what you are consuming. Consider how it helps or affects your physical health. Now imagine, you are not taking care of your body i.e., either you are gorging or undereating almost every day or consuming food that you should be avoiding. By being ignorant about health condition or age-related health illnesses, do you think this can stress your body and in turn affect your overall health?
  • Sleep: It is crucial for physical and mental wellbeing. Quality sleep is paramount. Understand how much sleep your body requires and try to get sufficient sleep on most days. Understand how a lack of sleep, non-activity, stress affects your body.
  • Fitness routine: To keep physical and mental health in check, it is necessary to engage in some fitness routine like walking, jogging, yoga, dance, meditation, etc. Try to spend a minimum of two hours in a week for the fitness regime.

Intellectual Wellness

Intellectual wellness is about challenging yourself and opening yourself up to new things and increasing your knowledge or refining your skills.

  • Growth: Consider which area you intend to focus on to enhance your skills. Think about the amount of time you can invest on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to keep upgrading yourself. Developing or learning skills can be anything like learning to take good selfies, trying your hand at culinary skills, learning to drive or swim, learning parenting or leadership skills, etc.
  • Confidence: Develop confidence by training up the abilities that are your strength. Find out ways to strengthen it, demonstrate your best skills often either by practicing or teaching it. Confidence is non-static in nature; hence we need to keep focusing on areas of improvement on a timely basis. Intellectual growth allows us to work on rigid thought processes and see things beyond our perspective.


Hence, wellness does not cover just a single concept of being healthy and fit. To achieve wellness, there are multiple dimensions that should be considered and not neglected to achieve a more wholesome life.

In our next issue, we will be discussing more on other dimensions of wellness.

If you or someone you know feels that there is something you need to speak about with regards to wellness, please feel free to approach our in-house counsellors, Ms. Harshali Kotekar and Ms. Glenda D’Silva.