What Is Emotional Wellness?

Happiness is often seen as the ultimate goal in order to live a good and healthy life. But this often just adds unnecessary pressure as it is impossible to be happy all the time. Instead, a goal of emotional wellness is far more achievable and one that can bring a quality to your life that you won’t want to live without.

Emotional wellness refers to a quality of emotional experience that has a positive effect on the way in which you live your life. It is being in tune with how you feel, understanding it, and not letting it overwhelm you. Emotional wellness gives you the ability to handle the challenges of day-to-day life situations without them negatively impacting on your overall wellbeing.

Understanding the signs of emotional wellbeing helps you assess the state of your emotional wellness and allows you to make changes to improve it. A better level of emotional wellness can significantly improve your overall mental and physical health and so is well worth investing in.

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Why is emotional wellness essential?

The way you feel can affect the way you carry out daily activities. It affects your relationships, your work, and your overall mental health. Having emotional wellness can help you effectively manage your challenges and life changes.

It is a way to be in the present moment, where you are more aware of your feelings and observe the different bodily sensations that arise. When you act on your emotions, they become more reliable. When you are present and adhere to a sense of mindfulness without overplaying the past or obsessing about the future, you attain a level of emotional wellness.

Being emotionally well fosters the practice of mindfulness. It encourages intentionality in your actions and reactions. It enables you to slow down and observe your inner state.

Attaining emotional wellness does not mean you will be permanently happy and positive in all situations. Instead, it means that you will be able to shift your mindset to feel better due to being self-aware. When you can do that, you will live a more fulfilling life, be happier and gain the opportunity to reach your potential fully.

As human beings, it’s only natural to face challenges and go through problems. However, it boils down to how you choose to deal with those problems and decide to cope with your challenges. It is like the analogy of the half-full, half-empty cup; the way you see and embrace a situation will ultimately determine how you feel.

Emotional wellness is being able to see the reality of the situation, understanding that you may be facing difficulty, allowing yourself to feel the emotions, but not letting those emotions overpower you. When you embrace what you are feeling, having the tools to cope and focus on the present, such as finding a solution, being graceful, taking a deep breath before reacting, practicing calm and gratitude, can quite literally change the game for you.

Signs of emotional wellness

It is such a natural thing to know when things are not functioning well in your physical health. You get a headache, or your legs can’t hold you any longer, your nose runs, or you can’t stop yawning. But most people are not as tuned into their emotional health. Why are you snapping at little things? Why are you crying over something that makes no sense?

Taking care of your physical and emotional health is vital in being able to live a happier life. But how do you know if you are emotionally healthy?

Here are some signs of emotional wellness that you could take into consideration. Don’t be concerned if one area feels stronger than another; that is totally natural. You can use the signs as a guide to assess your emotional health.

You are comfortable with who you are

Having positive self-talk is the key here. You obviously won’t be positive all the time but liking yourself and encouraging yourself is the way to go. You must be comfortable, even confident in who you are, your values, and your boundaries, and have a good level of respect for yourself.

You’re adaptable and resilient

Emotionally healthy people are generally open-minded and don’t feel emotionally attached to a particular method of doing something. When something happens, you should be able to graciously move forward after you recognise and express your emotions calmly. The way you choose to move forward is the best way for you and the situation you are in. You will not allow an issue to hold you back or drown you.

You have positive and enjoyable relationships

The social aspect of emotional intelligence is essential to emotional wellness. This is when you can respectfully communicate your personal feelings and empathise with others’ feelings without taking on all their emotions. This can be really tough, but very good for yourself and very good for your relationships with those close to you. In turn, good relationships help us balance life’s challenges.

You have a sense of purpose

You feel a connection with yourself, other people, and the world around you. You find yourself having a deeper meaning in life. It helps you appreciate the bigger picture, trust your own decisions and persevere when things get tough. You are more likely to be clear of your goals and have a good sense of how to achieve them.

You take care of your physical health

When you eat well, follow some fitness regime, sleep well and consciously make an effort to look after your physical well-being, you have more emotional balance. It helps to add to your sense of purpose, helps you be more optimistic, motivated, and focused. Emotional and physical health are closely related, and taking care of one, helps maintains the other.

You practice self-care

Self-care might be the most crucial aspect of emotional wellness. Most people don’t realise how important it is to take care of yourself. You can’t pour from an empty cup, can you? You have to ensure that you give yourself the opportunity to emotionally recharge. You have to take time to relax and reflect. Self-care means something so personal to each individual. It could be a spa day, reading a book, or coffee with a friend. The main thing is that it should provide a sense of calm and inner peace. If you don’t practice self-care, you will likely be more easily triggered in a negative way and have little emotional balance.

You have boundaries

After self-care, this is extremely important. Holding healthy, balanced boundaries that are not egocentric will transform your relationships and your life significantly. You should be able to be clear about your boundaries and say “no” to things without feeling guilty or burdened by them. The opinions and validation of others should not weigh you down.

How can emotional wellness be improved?

Becoming familiar with the signs of emotional wellness and developing an understanding of what your own emotional wellness currently looks like is the best place to start. You can notice the areas in which you are doing well and the areas in which you think things could be improved.

You can also check out this excellent Emotional Wellness Toolkit.

How does emotional wellness look in action?

Making a few changes can make a big difference to your emotional wellbeing. Actively choosing to improve your emotional health is a great start and there are other things you can put into action.

An awareness of negative emotions as they arise

The ability to be so self-aware that when an emotion comes up, you know it is happening and what may be the cause of it. If you don’t know what is causing it, you will be more like to figure it out through self-observation and self-reflection. Awareness also allows you to take conscious action to deal with the problem effectively.

Mindfulness in self-judgments

Being mindful of self-talk helps you realise when you are judging and criticising yourself. It allows you to turn that critical inner voice into self-love and kindness towards yourself. A good way to do this is to think as if it were your partner, child, or friend, would you respond the same way? You should treat yourself with the same compassion you treat those you love.

Curiosity

Being emotionally healthy encourages you to be curious about your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. It enables you to wonder why certain emotions trigger you at certain times, and you can pick up on your patterns. It is important to question why you react in specific ways and wonder if it is related to past events and traumas.

Emotional well-being is the emotional quality a person experiences. It can also be influenced by a variety of external, as well as internal, aspects such as demographic, economic, social, and situational factors.

Generally, a person with emotional wellness will have better physical health, fewer illnesses. They will be able to enjoy life and be happier. Their positive energy and outlook on life will be infectious to those around them. They will have the motivation to achieve all that they can, and it will motivate others too.

Conclusion

Good emotional wellness is crucial to your overall health and wellbeing. It is the way we perceive the world around us; it affects our work and relationships. Most importantly, it determines the quality of our life.

If your emotions are getting the better of you, take some time to look at the current state of your emotional health. Are your core needs, like sleep and connection with loved ones, being met? What could you do to improve your emotional wellbeing that could in turn improve your life?