In life, we often hear the saying ‘You are not an island’. As humans, we’re communal, pack-led creatures who, more often than not, can benefit from a helping hand. By now, most of us have realized the power of teamwork for big pursuits that include work projects and parenting. Discover the essential steps to create a supportive wellness community with our guide, build your wellness village with simple steps.
When it comes to wellness, however, the glamorization of quiet time alone and self-reflection have left many of us doing things alone. This does have its plus points – wellness is ultimately about finding peace and calm within ourselves.
As with anything, though, having people to stand with during your wellness focus can help you to share your concerns and stay on the right track. That said, letting the wrong people into your wellness practice could also end up unraveling it.
To avoid that, it’s vital to build the right wellness village to boost your efforts. Here, we’ll consider the best ways to do that.
4 Steps For Building Your Wellness Village
1 – Focus on True Friends
When you look at your friendship group on the whole, the chances are that there are a few people who don’t make you feel great about yourself. Nicknamed ‘Crazymakers’ in The Artist’s Way, these friends are people who have a habit of derailing your life, either through unnecessary criticisms or intense self-focus.
If you bring people like this into your wellness practice, you’re more likely to experience self-doubt, a competitive approach, and a generally negative experience. To avoid this, keep any Crazymakers well away from your wellness. Instead, start building a village based on things like loyalty, kindness, and giving. True friends like these will always be there to support you, and will happily share in this journey. Best of all, they’ll never put you down or undermine you with comments that leave you doubting your efforts.
2 – Share Your Passions
No matter how close we are to our friends, many of us keep certain hobbies and passions to ourselves. It may be that you’re embarrassed about your love of evening meditation, or that you simply don’t think your friends would be interested in the wellness products you use. So, you keep quiet and speak only about things more obviously related to your friendship.
This can keep friendships on a surface level, and that’s not going to help with the deeper aspects of yourself. Instead, building a wellness village requires you to share passions like yoga practice, meditation sessions, and a general focus on positive affirmations. If you’re sharing with true friends, they’re sure to take an interest in these things and may want to learn alongside you. You may even find that your friends also practice these things in private. As well as deepening your friendships, this could then see you approaching wellness together, rather than apart.
3 – Be Honest, Always
Many of us come to wellness from dark places, and we typically start practicing things like yoga to work through issues we can’t easily share with other people. Unfortunately, trying to tackle something like this solo isn’t often a good idea, even with the best wellness efforts. Furthermore, leaning on wellness practices for the wrong reasons could prevent them from doing any real good. This is where your wellness village comes in, but that only works if you’re completely honest with the right friends about how you’re feeling, and any help you need.
As well as standing with you through your struggles via various wellness focuses, your friends could provide much-needed, healthier wellness-based solutions to your issues. For example, if you’re struggling with your mental health, friends can both help you to build a more rounded self-care routine, and support you in the quest for professional help. Equally, if you’re struggling with addiction, your friends can help you to perfect meditation while also helping you to seek a detox center near me. These are needs we might not think of for ourselves, even with wellness in mind. But, they’ll be much easier solutions to find and follow with the support of your wellness village.
4 – Practice Small Acts of Kindness
As much as your wellness village will offer the kind support you need to find a true place of peace, you can also help your friends and yourself with small acts of kindness. These could include lifting a friend with your own suggestions for their wellness or gifting them something that you know will help with their life or happiness. It could even simply mean showing up as and when friends need you, and sitting with them through the bad things until they’re ready to start helping themselves with a little self-care.
As well as securing the foundations of your wellness village, these actions can make a huge difference to your sense of self. They can help you to feel more kindly towards yourself and others, as well as providing you with selfless feelings of satisfaction. These are feelings you would never achieve if you were tackling wellness alone. Plus, when you know that your village would do the same for you, you can feel safe, secure, and ready to start listening to your body and mind at long last.
Takeaway
Whether you simply start making time for self-care or delve into regular yoga sessions, wellness is something many of us partake in under cover of darkness. Often, this is because we fear misunderstandings or embarrassment. Over time, these worries can be incredibly limiting, as can the simple act of trying to stay motivated alone.
In reality, finding true peace in your life and routine requires as large a village as you might need for something like raising a child. You need friends who will attend those yoga sessions with you, as well as honest confidants who aren’t afraid to point out where you might want to strengthen your wellness focus.
Start building your wellness village with these tips in mind, and you’re sure to see how much better it can be to look after yourself when you’ve got people along for the ride.