Wellness is not about green juice
World Mental Health Day has me thinking about what it means to be ‘well’.
TikTok would have us believing that a person is ‘well’ if they drink green juice and take reformer Pilates classes in pastels. The same five influencers on the podcast circuit tell us we will be ‘well’ if we get sober and drink electrolyte company. All of which are healthy, productive things to do, but we all know deep down they are not the answers to the question of “how can I be well?” And I say this as a green juice drinking, pastel wearing, PIlates doing person (I have also actually also run a marathon… never again).
I’m not saying there is anything wrong with the highly curated, pastel version of wellness that fills up our social feeds. If we are going to glamourise something, it may as well be nutrition and exercise (after all, when I was growing up, Skins had us romanticizing ecstasy and smudged mascara). The issue arises when - after putting away our grippy socks - we consider the hard work to be done.
If we want to pursue wellness then we must pursue peace. Not external peace - but internal peace – a sense of harmony with and acceptance of ourselves. The kind that ultimately renders us resilient to the inevitable highs and lows that come with being human. The ability to be blown around in the storm of life and still find ourselves standing strong when it settles.
If your cat dies and your Fiancé leaves you and you are made redundant all in one week, a green juice won’t save you. What will save you is having done the work. What do I mean by ‘the work?” Well, it looks different for everyone. But generally, the work can look like:
Building up self-esteem and confidence
Nurturing supportive relationships
Understanding your own goals and authentic desires
Learning to avoid comparison
Identifying and halting self-sabotaging/harmful behaviours, habits and thought patterns
Walking away from anything (job, relationship etc) that creates a sense of dis-ease, discomfort and/or uneasiness
Learning to trust the universe
It is the pursuit of the types of things on this list that is the pursuit of wellness. We need to consume ‘wellness’ social content with a pinch of salt. Let it inspire us, motivate us, but not let it delude us into thinking that it is providing us with all the tools we need to achieve optimal health. The maintenance of good mental health requires a robust and personalised toolkit that can be pulled out at short notice. If said toolkit contains only a protein bar and a tube of electrolytes that taste like dishwashing powder (essentially the goodie bag at most pilates networking events), we might find ourselves in trouble.
All of which is to say, drink the green juice, go to the Pilates classes (at my studio, preferably), but make sure you also take a wider view of health and wellness.
Emma x
