Wellness Assessment

1. Personal Health Assessment

After examining aspects of health and wellness on more large-scale levels, such as globally and nationally, these next two lessons will focus on examining your own levels of health and wellness, with the ultimate purpose of selecting a health behavior that you’d like to change or adopt by creating a SMART goal.

In the lesson, titled “Health and Wellness”, you encountered the eight dimensions of wellness. Consider your current habits and future goals for each dimension with the following questions adapted from a wellness guide from the Department of Health and Human Services (SAMHSA, 2016). Using these questions as a guide to journal or brainstorm on your own is a helpful place to start narrowing down what your SMART goal might cover.

1a. Physical Wellness

This dimension is about recognizing your body’s habits and needs to stay physically healthy.

• Are you getting regular physical activity and making it fun?
• Are there ways you could improve your nutrition habits by setting small goals for small changes each day, week, or month?
• Are you getting 7–8 hours of sleep a night whenever possible and avoiding screen time within a few hours of bedtime?
• If you use tobacco, alcohol, or other drugs, are you mindful of the triggers that make you want to use substances, and do you have a plan that can help you avoid them? Have you tried tools that could help you cut down or quit?
• Do you visit your doctor, dentist, or other health care provider for routine care and monitoring?

1b. Emotional Wellness

This dimension is about dealing with life’s challenges and stressors and managing your emotions and feelings.

• Do you allow yourself to be open to and acknowledge your feelings without judgment?
• Have you found and developed safe relationships with people or groups where you can express your feelings and thoughts?
• Do you see challenges as opportunities for growth, such as learning from mistakes, or taking responsibility for your actions?
• Are you learning to manage stress in ways that work for your lifestyle? For example, do you write thoughts in a journal, listen to music, or talk to family and friends when you need to?
• Do you welcome and cultivate positive, empowering thoughts and emotions?

1c. Environmental Wellness

This dimension is about keeping our surroundings safe, clean, and pleasant.

• Are you recycling whenever possible and buying recycled products?
• Are you consciously trying to reduce the amount of waste you generate and throw away?
• Do you limit the resources you use at home, such as water and power?
• Are you spending regular time outdoors?
• Do you organize your living spaces and/or workspaces from time to time to get rid of clutter and add things that make you happy?

1d. Social Wellness

This dimension is about the connection, care, and support derived from our positive relationships with other people.

• Do you set aside quality time to spend with family and friends, whether in-person or through phone calls, video chat, etc.?
• Have you made a date with friends for a movie, dinner, coffee, or other social activities?
• Are you making time to go to places where you can meet new people, such as places where people would share your interests?
• Are you open to meeting people from different backgrounds?
• Have you found support groups in your area to connect with on important issues?
• Have you considered volunteer opportunities where you can meet others?

1e. Intellectual Wellness

This dimension is about developing and expanding our knowledge, skills, and perspectives.

• What would you like to do or learn? Have you considered creative arts such as drawing, pottery, or photography? What about learning about nature or attending lectures or musical performances?
• Have you considered teaching a class or leading a workshop based on the skills, knowledge, or experiences you might have?
• Do you enjoy reading for leisure? What kind of topics interest you?
• Are you interested in improving your language skills or learning a new language, whether one-on-one, through a group class, or through online resources?
• Do you enjoy taking part in discussions, intellectual conversations, debates, or other ways of gaining an enhanced understanding of issues?

1f. Occupational Wellness

This dimension is about seeking out responsibilities that give our lives accomplishment and fulfillment while not making us feel like we are taking on too much.

• Are you involved in a career, an educational path, or volunteer work that fits your values?
• If you’re employed, does your work offer personal satisfaction and stimulation and allow you to contribute your talents, gifts, and knowledge?
• Are you in a career—or pursuing a career—that you look forward to and that gives you a sense of accomplishment and pride?
• If you’re employed, do you have an open line of communication and overall positive relationships with your employer and coworkers?
• Do you schedule time for leisure to have a balanced life and regular relaxation?

1g. Spiritual Wellness

This dimension is about the purpose and meaning we derive from life based on personal beliefs and values.

• Are you taking the time to determine what values, principles, and beliefs are important to you? Have you considered talking about them with others?
• Have you learned about other religions and beliefs, and are you respectful of them? Are you open to exploring different belief systems?
• Are you using your spirituality to drive your actions and thoughts and give a better meaning to life?
• Have you looked for a group in your community that deepens your spiritual practice and helps you connect with others who share your beliefs?
• Do you take the time each day to meditate or reflect on your spirituality?
• Do you take the time to appreciate the beauty of nature when possible?

1h. Financial Wellness

This dimension is about our level of understanding and satisfaction with our finances.

• If you’re employed, does your current job allow you to meet your obligations and have the resources to do the things you enjoy?
• If you’re employed, are you working in a field you are passionate about? Or are you looking at doing something different that seems more personally gratifying?
• Are your savings in line with your life goals, such as taking a vacation, owning a home, or retiring? Have you opened a savings account or another kind of account that works for you?
• Do you have a weekly or monthly budget so you can plan for expenses such as rent and groceries and still have a little left over to enjoy?
• If you have debt, would it be helpful to figure out your total debt and make a plan to pay it down in a manageable way?

Life demands, stress, crises, or trauma can impact or alter our routines and habits. This can lead to emotional (anxiety or depression), social (crankiness, isolation, or anger), or physical (tiredness or agitation) imbalances. Establishing new, better habits that support our wellness goals and values can be challenging, but worth it. Developing healthier routines and habits in our lives can lead to positive feelings (emotional); relationship satisfaction (social); increased energy (physical); inspiration (emotional); and the feeling that we are using our creative talents, skills, and abilities to engage in activities (occupational, intellectual, and spiritual).

While working toward every dimension of wellness in one way or another is a great goal for improving the overall quality of life, goal-setting works best when it does not try to take on too many changes at once. Hopefully, your reflection on the questions for each of the eight dimensions of wellness provided some specific ideas on things you can do—at your own pace, in your own time, and within your own abilities.

2. SMART Goal Framework

Have you ever said to yourself that you need to “eat healthier” or “exercise more” to improve your overall health? How well did that work for you? In most cases, probably not very well. That’s because these types of statements are too vague and do not give us any direction for what truly needs to be done to achieve such goals. To have a better chance of being successful, the acronym SMART is a useful and well-known framework for setting goals.

2a. Specific

Making a goal specific is about ensuring that it has a focused and clear path for what you actually need to do.

EXAMPLE

• I will drink 8 oz of water three times a day.
• I will walk briskly for 30 minutes, five times a week.
• I will reduce my soda intake to no more than two cans of soda per week.

Do you see how these goal examples are more helpful than just saying you will “eat healthier” or “exercise more”? These goals provide direction regarding what action needs to be taken on a regular basis.

2b. Measurable

Making a goal measurable enables you to track your progress and ties in with the Specific component. Notice that the aforementioned examples all have actual numbers associated with the behavior change that let you know whether or not it has been met.

think about it

Some of the dimensions of wellness may seem more easily measurable than others. It’s relatively straightforward to come up with Specific and Measurable examples for the amount of money you might save regularly (financial wellness), the amount of sleep you’ll get each night (physical wellness), or the number of books you’ll read each month (intellectual wellness).

However, sometimes—but not always—dimensions like spiritual or emotional wellness can pose a challenge in setting SMART goals. It could be tough to fully quantify and measure a deepening sense of spirituality, a significant reduction in stress, or an increased willingness to share your feelings. But, this does not mean these dimensions should be avoided for SMART goals. Rather, it means that your goal journey will be served best if you link the dimension to some type of behavior occurring regularly. For a spiritual wellness goal, this might look like regular weekly time spent in meditation, worship, or journaling.

So, if you were setting an emotional wellness goal for yourself, what regular behavior could you link to make the goal most successful?

2c. Attainable

In some SMART goal models, you may also see the A standing for Achievable. Having a goal that is Attainable and Achievable means ensuring that the goal is within your capabilities and not too far out of reach. For example, if you have not been physically active for a number of years, it would be highly unlikely that you would be able to achieve the goal of running a marathon within the next month. Weight loss is another common goal area where people may not always be aware of what is achievable or attainable, resulting in goals that are probably out of reach without extreme measures. Someone may set a goal to lose 20 lb (9.1 kg) by the time they have their vacation a month from now, without the knowledge that a safe and sustainable rate of weight loss is about 1–2 lb (0.45–0.91 kg) a week.

IN CONTEXT

One way of looking further at SMART goals is by categorizing a goal as either a product goal or a process goal. Product goals focus only on the end result, which is typically something numerical, and success is defined by reaching that result. Weight loss is a common product goal that people set, where a SMART goal example might be to lose 20 lb (9.1 kg) in the next 3 months. However, because the goal is focused on only the scale’s number, a product goal like this may be less desirable for setting up long-term, positive habits.

Conversely, process goals focus on the journey and the regular consistent actions that are taken. Success is more defined by personal growth and insight over a raw number, which provides a sense of confidence and accomplishment. A weight loss goal could be transformed into a process goal by tracking a behavior like regular exercise.

In sports, winning is an example of a product goal. The numbers that show that someone was the best competitor or beat the other team are the end results. In contrast, process goals in sports might focus on aspects like improving technique or honing strategy through devoted practice over time. One meta-analysis of multiple studies on sports confirmed that process goals had a larger effect on performance than product goals (Williamson et al., 2022).

2d. Realistic

Realistic qualities describe having a goal that is something you will be able to continue doing and incorporating as part of your regular routine and lifestyle. For example, if you made a goal to kayak twice a week because you love the peaceful feeling of being out on the water, but don’t have the financial resources to purchase or rent a kayak or are not close enough to a body of water for kayaking, then this is not going to be realistic.

Realistic qualities also involve making your goal relatively conservative and forgiving. While it can feel positive to set very ambitious goals and think about how we would be at our best, starting even smaller than you may think is a wise step. It’s much better to build on small successes and gain confidence than to work on your goal for a week and realize it’s not realistic in terms of being sustainable for the long term.

In some SMART goal models, you’ll see the term Relevant. While this can also encompass the goal being realistic, a Relevant goal is based on personal relevance—that it’s important to you and not undertaken because someone else wants you to do it or because you feel a sense of pressure or obligation.

2e. Timely

A goal that is Timely, or Time-oriented, has a target date or deadline by which the goal needs to be met. This will keep you on track and motivated to reach the goal while also evaluating your progress. The foundation for large-scale goals is based on small, consistent behaviors or habits. When considering the Timely aspects of goals, habits can take some time to change. A goal where the deadline is just a few weeks away may not truly cement lasting habit formation. However, a goal where the deadline is years away can seem so far in the future that it’s easy to lose interest. A 3–6-month target date often works well as a happy medium.

Understandably, many types of health goals are ones where the ideal is to have them become a regular part of our daily habits and lifestyle. It would be counterproductive to set a 3-month goal for at least 7 hours of sleep each night and then go right back to sporadic sleep hours once the Time-oriented target date is reached. However, all SMART goals do need a Time-oriented aspect as this inspires persistence toward the deadline. Reaching the deadline does not mean stopping the behavior in many cases; rather, it becomes an appropriate time to celebrate progress, reflect on what worked, and perhaps set a new goal if the previous one was reached.

Disclaimer: The use of any CDC and United States government materials, including any links to the materials on the CDC or government websites, does not imply endorsement by the CDC or the United States government of us, our company, product, facility, service, or enterprise.

REFERENCES

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (2016). Creating A Healthier Life: A Step-By-Step Guide To Wellness. Publication ID: SMA16-4958 store.samhsa.gov/product/Creating-a-Healthier-Life/SMA16-4958

Williamson, O., Swann, C., Bennett, K. J., Bird, M. D., Goddard, S. G., Schweickle, M. J., & Jackman, P. C. (2022). The performance and psychological effects of goal setting in sport: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 1-29. doi.org/10.1080/1750984x.2022.2116723