Wellness: the quality or state of being healthy in body and mind, especially as the result of deliberate effort.
Sometimes we struggle to ask ourselves difficult questions, or we ask them believing we have the answers when we don’t. Up until I had to type out this blog post, if you had asked me whether I knew what wellness was, I'd have said yes. I probably use wellness a couple of times in my daily conversations but truth is I couldn't define it till today, and I had to Google it to know what it really meant.
Could this be the same for you? For me? Could it be that we sometimes subconsciously evade being reflective and just go with the flow? For instance, when asked, "Do you know your identity?", are you quick to say "Yes, I do" or do you take time to consider and be sure that you really know who you are?
I'm not going to scare you off with these questions. I, for one, know how they could be tough to answer. Let me tell you how I evaluate how much I really know about myself and my identity. It's the one thing that has consistently worked for me: journaling.
Journaling is a great way to meditate and be introspective. It's an amazing way to check how much you know about yourself and an even better way to keep up with how you evolve over time. It’s just between you, your pen and paper - or even your phone's notepad. There’s no guilt over how little or how much you know about yourself. With journaling, there's no pretense or a need to perform. Plus, it's an excellent way to de-stress!
The good thing about knowing how much you know, is that you get to know how much you need to know. That's a lot of knows lol. But by being introspective, you might discover you want to do more research about one of your passions, or maybe more study of the Word to know who you really are.
Just before I go; if there's one thing I love about journaling, it's its ability to make you time travel. You reflect today and don’t even realize that it might be an answer for you tomorrow. I have looked back on past journal entries and realized my consistency in a certain passion of mine, how I have evolved in character, how I have grown in identifying who I am in Christ and so so much more.
Just so you know that I didn't look up the meaning of wellness for nothing lol, the definition states that wellness is as a result of deliberate effort, so be intentional about taking care of your mind and get journaling, it's good for you! I promise you'll be glad you did, today and probably even a few years after.