Why do we need to reinvent Wellbeing?
For too long, Wellbeing has been used as a catchphrase by alternative health movements, rather than appreciated as a true solution to the medical challenges of today. It’s time to change this.
As I approached my forties, my body started to feel the negative impact of a life so disproportionately focused on work. It was a warning sign that I’d lost my way, but it took me time to come to terms with it. For years, I had understood that my purpose was to lead Edifecs, a healthcare company I started from scratch in the basement of my flat in Bozeman, Montana. At this point, I knew I had to enact some kind of change, but I was not prepared to stand down or entirely give up the value system that had brought me this far. So I tried making more space for Wellbeing within my routine, detoxing and practicing yoga every day.
But the benefits of these changes were short-lived, because they were not holistic. They were isolated practices, rather than the interconnected parts of a lifestyle that was the polar opposite to the one I was leading then. It was a slow and winding road, but I ultimately came to terms with an important fact: that the job that causes you to burn out is not the job you were destined for.
It was then that the idea of Wholistic Wellbeing, as I advocate it today, really came to me, and shed light on the path I was destined to take all along. It wasn’t enough for me to incorporate the odd bit of meditation into my daily routine. I had to completely recenter myself and re-evaluate my priorities, to make Wellbeing the heart of my purpose rather than a helpful hobby.
As soon as I did this, I became aware of the flaws and shortcomings of the Wellbeing sector. The industry narrative was stuck in a sick care mould, rather than open to a more holistic vision focused on healthcare more widely. What’s more, companies would use the words ‘wellness’ and ‘wellbeing’ interchangeably, though the two are really quite different. Wellness describes a healthy lifestyle beyond acute illness, whereas Wellbeing covers broader dimensions of holistic health: my personal vision includes Physical, Emotional, Financial, Professional, Social, Community and Planetary Wellbeing.
With Wholistic Wellbeing, I want to transform the prevailing reactive approach in healthcare to one that is proactive, focused on prevention in addition to treatment. The pandemic has thrown into relief the need to reinvent healthcare through Wholistic Wellbeing. The fact is that a preventative approach — as opposed to a curative one — would have saved countless lives by improving the livelihoods of people in the first place. Issues like obesity and heart disease, known to massively inflate the risk of hospitalisation from contracting COVID-19, and which can — in the great majority of cases — be prevented by healthy lifestyle choices, would not have been so widespread if our society had been focused on preventing these outcomes to begin with.
The urgency of the situation has only been heightened by COVID, which has caused a steep if predictable decline in all aspects of Wellbeing. Even Planetary Wellbeing has taken a toll after what seemed like an improvement between March and June of 2020, as the record number of natural disasters occuring this summer shows only too clearly.
But now that we have more people talking about this than ever before and acknowledging the need to act, reinventing Wellbeing with a holistic approach and seeing Wholistic Wellbeing applied in the healthcare sector should be our top priority.
How should we go about this? Firstly, we need to improve the dialogue between Wellbeing research and global policymakers to see scientific advances reflected in societal improvements. Our leaders need to engage more intelligently with Wellbeing and reform the economic and cultural approach to healthcare through advocacy, strategy, and partnerships that favour a holistic and preventative model.
Secondly, we need to invest in Wellbeing data in order to track progress in an objective and scientific way. Though Wellbeing is fundamentally experiential, we still can — and should — assign criteria and metrics to measure success in areas like financial security, physical health, community engagement, or even the ecology. The growing role of Wellbeing data in indexes and rankings for cities shows this is well underway, and policymakers would do well to use such data as a starting point when they implement public Wellbeing schemes.
The point is not to make happiness something compulsory and help governments single out the people whose Wellbeing is flagging in one or more areas. It’s not a question of freedom versus duty. Rather, it’s about creating a conversation and getting people listening in order to turn the current failings of modern medicine into societal successes.
My vision of Wholistic Wellbeing is all about creating a caring and compassionate society, respectful of difference, vulnerability, and fragility — whether it’s that of a person or of the planet — and with the will to change for the better. While our current healthcare systems are too static to embrace the transformations they so desperately need, Wholistic Wellbeing offers a vital solution. Now society needs to start viewing it as such.
