Wellness is a paramount aspect of living your best life and regaining your identity after a substance abuse disorder. Above all it goes beyond just not being sick and focuses on identifying your ideal well-being. Environmental wellness will be the focus of this post.
There are a number of sub-groups to wellness: physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, environmental, financial, occupational, and social. According to the World Health Organization wellness is, “”a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Furthermore, wellness is about complete balance in life.
Wellness is an important topic to discuss in regard to recovery for a number of reasons. First off, because it can help a person avoid relapse. Figures from the National Institute on Drug Abuse indicate forty to sixty percent of people who go into recovery will relapse within one year. The flip side to this statistic is that as much as sixty percent of people in recovery don’t relapse. Another reason wellness can be helpful is that it offers people recovering with the necessary tools to create a healthy lifestyle. Recovery is a lifelong process that takes place gradually. The further into recovery a person goes the greater their opportunity to build good habits one after another.
Environmental Wellness
Our environment and the welfare of the planet plays a part in our wellbeing. Environmental wellness is being aware of the fragile state of our planet and the impact your routine has on it. In other words, it is knowing the role your ecological footprint has on the world around you living a lifestyle that maximizes the conservation of the environment and minimizes the adverse impact on the earth.
Environmental wellness motivates us to remember to be considerate of everything around us. At its core this form of wellness is all about respect. Respecting all aspects of the planet and all of the species that call it home. This inspires us to find harmony between our lives and the world, encouraging the proper responses to preserve it. However, environmental wellness doesn’t dictate you go out of your way or join a group to honor the planet. Simply put, being environmentally aware means you are conscious of the impact your standard practices have on affecting our world. It isn’t hard to enhance our environmental wellness and it helps to promote a more well-balanced lifestyle.
