I believe that at this given moment I have achieved a high level of wellness. Wellness, however, is not an objective, absolute term. Rather, wellness is used relatively. Wellness is subjective, encompassing you (me) as a unique, independent being. To describe my wellness, I am going to describe myself using the 6 dimensions of wellness: Physical, Emotional, Intellectual, Interpersonal (social), spiritual, and environmental health.
Usually when I think of health, I think of physical health. Physical health is just one part of the dimensions of wellness, but it is very important. I wouldn’t call my physical health perfect, but is sure is much better than a lot of peoples. My typical day consists mainly of academics and physical activities. I always try my best to try to balance non-physical activities with the physical activities that I enjoy doing so that I can stay fit and healthy. Especially at such a young age (14) with years and years ahead to look forward to, physical health is very important. If I let myself down and stop caring about my body, I will not live as long and as happy as I would have. There is so much to live for in life, and in order to experience everything you have to have the ability to do it.
As I was explaining above, I try my hardest to fit a decent amount of physical activities and exercise into mu day. My common physical activities consist mainly of both aerobic and anaerobic swimming, usually for an hour on weekdays and up to two hours on weekends. I swim as part of the Bear Creek Aquatics every Monday through Thursday, so I have all of the motivation and resources that I need. To me swimming is not only a way to stay fit, it is also a stress reliever () and plainly put something I enjoy being able to do.
In the Health Worksheet 72 I evaluated my fitness level. This worksheet was primarily designed for adults age twenty and above, so the results were not very accurate. However, health and wellness is very subjective, meaning the standards set on one person are not always the same for someone else. Using their guidelines, I scored “Good” in all areas except for flexibility, which I scored “fair.” When I first began testing myself, I thought that I was doing exceptionally well. However, when I looked at the standards to achieve “Excellent” or “Superior” I then learned that I am not as fit as I could (and will) be. I have always been lacking in flexibility, and I hope soon the time and the motivation to stretch regularly to solve this problem. Overall, however, given my age (14) and scoring on a test designed for adults (20), I feel the worksheet adequately described my fitness level.
Physical Wellness also incorporates my ability to care for myself. I believe that I am very proficient is caring for myself, even in a society-free situation. Many of my vacations I take are with my family camping. We always camp tent and bring only the bare-bones minimum as far as supplies. Throughout these trips I have learned a lot of useful survival skills, such as building a fire, cooking, foraging, fishing, building shelter, collecting drinkable water, etc. The fact of the matter is that if I was left in the middle of nowhere with a knife I would probably be able to keep myself alive long enough the be rescued.
In the normal, everyday world I feel that I am on the right path to have the most opportunity for my future, and therefore the best chance of being able to care for myself and even a family of my own. However, this path I am taking is incorporating Intellectual and Interpersonal aspects of my life, so I will explain about how they affect me later. This is just one example of how if one dimension of wellness fails, they all do.
The next dimension of my health and wellness is my Emotional health. I am still a developing teenager, and I know that as day and day passes my emotional side is going to drastically change as new hormones are released into my body and other pituitary changes are under way. There have been days where I have been really emotional over something, and the next day I was looking back and wondering what was wrong with me. As I know, this is typical for developing teenagers. However, as of now I do know that my emotional health is stable.
I am not generally a very emotional person. I am more logic based; I think using Intellect (My intellectual health is great). I do try, however, to be a well-rounded person and take my emotions into consideration whenever they are rushing. I follow my emotions when it comes to love, hate, happiness, sadness, anger, relief, etc. When my logical mind is trying to tell me that I should be feeling one way and I’m not, I subconsciously assess the situation and try to “organize my feelings”. As I have learned, this does not work with a lot of things, such as love interests. In situations like that, my emotional side tends to rule over my logical mind.
I mentioned my Intellectual health in the last section about my emotions. I think that this is my strongest aspect of my wellness. Whenever I am in a situation, I tend to use my mind rather than my muscles! I always think through different problems or situations based on logic: Is it logical for me to do this? Is it logical for it to be done this way? Is it logical that this be done this way? If you ask me “Why”, logic says that there are two answers: “because” or “why not.” This is the main way my mind works, and is the reason I am who I am today.
Using my great mental health, I have been able to enroll at San Joaquin Delta College – before I even graduated High School. I was able to score Advanced in the reading section and Average in the Mathematics and Spelling sections of the entrance exam. I am in the accelerated mathematics class and for every other class I have been able to achieve a 4.0 GPA in my regular high school curriculum, even with the extra weight of college classes.
I am always trying to expand my mental ability. Every day I try to learn something, and even though I have years and years left to live, I wonder how much I will be able to understand before I die. (Then again, logic takes over and tells me that there is no point in knowing everything!) And when I am not learning something, I am putting what I do know to the test. I love a good challenge, no matter how hard or how low the chances are that I will succeed.
The ability to persevere is something that I am well known for. When something is challenging for me and I know that I need to get by, I always try to say to myself that I will get by and that I will do it. I believe in the saying that mind is over matter, meaning that with your mind you can conquer matter. If I am afraid of something, I try to suck it up and deal with it. If I am tired but I know that I must success, I keep on going because I know that there is a way for me to persevere. If I am stuck on a problem, I try to take both a subjective and an objective view on it, and merge the two views together to form one fail proof idea. I implement the solution, and continue this process until I reach the desired result.
Behavior is encompassed intellect. To me, behavior is simply the repeating of patterns. I have a theory that if you were born and remained in “nothingness”, you would only be able to behave based on instinct. Other than that, you would not behave, because you have not seen the way that other people have behaved and so you have not seen, recognized, and mimicked the patterns. When I am in conscious control of the way I behave, I begin to see patterns that come and ware away after time. I act to the best of my ability based on where I am and how the environment around me is. When I am in an unfamiliar environment, I try to pick up on patterns and mimic them. These patterns may be small things, but sometimes can lead to life or death, such as in nature.
My overall intellectual wellness I feel is great. I continue to challenge and expand my mind. I stride to learn something every day, and use it in my life. I do not want to be brain bead someday, not knowing where I am or how to do anything. My mind is the motivation I have in my life, it is my future, and it is my life. Keeping a strong and healthy mind is one of my primary goals in life, and using it comes one step below.
My interpersonal life, my life around other people, is growing stronger and stronger everyday as I learn new things and as I am opened up to the world. As a child and even now still as a young teen, my primary interpersonal life is making and keeping friends and learning how to organize and maintain a balanced interpersonal life in the future.
My support system is a huge and very important part of anyone, including me. Without a support system, all of the dimensions of health begin to crumble, leaving you a mess. Without someone to talk to about physical health, I may either run out of motivation or simply not know what to do if I am hurt or ill. My support system is also very important in emotional problems of mine. If something is really troubling me emotionally, and I can’t solve my problem by myself, I need support from someone. If I didn’t have this support, my emotional dimension would be all messed up and then I wouldn’t be able to think clearly and maintain my physical health, leading to a full shutdown of my regular life. Maintaining an updated support system is mainly a task involving making and keeping relationships with different people. Because people are dynamic, constantly changing day in and day out, our support system changes. As we change, we must work towards maintaining our pervious relationships and even creating new ones as our life goes on.
My primary support system consists of mainly my family and friends. When I take a fall, I have been told that I fall hard, so it is important that I have someone to talk to who will rehabilitate me. Depending upon the situation, I usually talk to different people. When I am in a social problem, I usually seek advice from my closest friends. I can usually rely on them to be serious with me as long as I am serious around them. If I didn’t have my friends, I would be a wreck, feeling out of place and unwanted. They are important to me and I am important to them. If my problem is out of the realm of my friends, I can usually talk to my family about some of those deeper and more personal problems. Although this doesn’t happen very often (I am generally a very open person; I always talk my full thoughts.), when I do seek help from them I can usually look forward towards a solution for my problem.
In order to try to better my social wellness, I always try to make new relationships with people in my community. I always try to contribute use to my peers and community, and I am always there for someone if they are feeling down about something. I like to give back what is given to me, and more often. As I look at it, what’s the point of doing something worthwhile if it doesn’t benefit anyone?
