Do you love yourself? Do you like yourself? Do you treat yourself with kindness and patience? Do you do things to bring yourself joy and stress relief? These types of questions can help you gauge your personal wellness.
While the Bible says not to be selfish, it doesn’t say to neglect our well-being. I actually firmly believe in order to love other people well, our personal wellness health needs to be strong and it needs to be nurtured. When we take care of ourselves, we are better equipped to love and serve others wholeheartedly. That’s what makes personal wellness so important. So, let’s explore how nurturing your well-being can transform not just your life but your relationships, too!
What Is Personal Wellness?
Personal wellness is a pretty general term, and it can mean a lot of different things. For me, it refers to how you relate to and interact with yourself. It has to do with having a keen sense of self (knowing who you are) and your self-confidence (liking who you are).
Why Is Personal Health Important?
Your relationship with yourself is one of the most important connections in your life. It determines so much about how you experience the world and relate to other people. With a healthy sense of personal wellness, you can navigate the ups and downs of life with a lot more grace and even more resilience.
Personal Wellness and the Bible
In Mark 12:30-31, Jesus teaches about the most important commandments. He says, “‘And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.’”
The first and most important commandment is to love God. The second is to love others as yourself. You can only do that when you love yourself, which is what makes prioritizing personal wellness a priority as a Christian.
When you believe in who God says you are — loved, redeemed, set free, etc. — you can approach life and relationships with confidence and purpose. Living in your God-given identity helps you build a healthy sense of self-worth and enables you to love others more deeply. By focusing on personal wellness, you honor God’s creation in you and are better able to follow His commandments, leading to a more meaningful life.
5 Ways To Build and Maintain Personal Wellness
Building personal wellness is about nurturing your relationship with yourself and making sure to live a balanced, fulfilling life. Here are five personal wellness activities to build and maintain your well-being from a Christian perspective.
1. Learn To Love Yourself
Loving yourself isn’t selfish. It’s actually one of the most unselfish things you can do because when you learn how to love yourself, you’re better equipped to love other people well. It starts by knowing who you are in Christ.
Once you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you are a new creation, filled with the Holy Spirit. That means you have a new capacity for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (the fruits of the spirit). You are forgiven and redeemed.
Embracing this new identity helps you see yourself the way God does — as someone valuable and deserving of love. This helps you be kind to yourself, forgive your past mistakes, and take care of your spiritual and emotional well-being. By loving yourself as God loves you, you build a strong base for all your relationships and life goals.
Start today by writing down three things you like about yourself or are good at. It’s time to begin building up yourself in Christ so you can love God and serve others better!
2. Minimize Comparison and Jealousy
Jealousy is one of the most harmful things we experience in life. Proverbs 27:4 says, “Wrath is cruel, anger is overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?” And Proverbs 14:30 says, “A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.”
Jealousy isn’t just an annoying feeling — it can eat away at your happiness and peace. It can damage your relationships and make you feel miserable. Comparing yourself with other people is a sure-fire way to experience disappointment, hopelessness, and resentment. You can’t be a jealous person and a happy person at the same time.
Unfortunately, social media makes it extremely easy to compare our lives to other people’s for hours on end. I’ve experienced first-hand the negative effects Instagram has on my personal and emotional well-being. That’s why I encourage you to minimize your social media use to minimize comparison and jealousy. Whether it’s taking the weekends off social media or setting a time limit on usage, these small changes can help you feel happier and more at peace.
3. Challenge Yourself To Grow
When was the last time you tried something new? When was the last time you challenged yourself to step out of your comfort zone? When was the last time you felt like you grew as an individual?
It’s so easy to get stuck in our routines and ways of being that we forget we still have a lot of life to live! If you’ve been feeling like your life lacks purpose or meaning, it might be because you’ve stopped growing, learning, and trying new things.
The good news is that you can start today! Right now. Go try something new. It could be something as simple as trying a new food you’ve never had or something bigger, like learning a new hobby. Take that first step today, and rediscover the joy and growth that comes with embracing new experiences.
4. Make Every Moment Count
I really don’t like how much time I spend in front of screens. I work on my laptop all day for my job. I spend way too much time scrolling on social media. I watch TV at night to decompress. This has become the way of life for so many of us, and I’m convinced (and convicted — thanks, Holy Spirit) that it’s doing way more harm than we realize. We are quite literally wasting away our lives with meaningless activities that don’t add value to our lives.
While I am all for decompressing after a long day and relaxing, I think there are better ways to do it than binge-watching the latest Netflix show. Sometimes I like to think about what people did before using the internet and TV. How did they spend their free time? Perhaps we should adopt some of those activities back into our lives and watch how our thoughts, feelings, and experiences change as we make every moment of relaxation count.
Next time you find yourself with free time on your hands, step away from any and all screens and…
- Read a book
- Go for a walk or hike
- Play board games or card games with family and friends
- Engage in a creative hobby like painting, knitting, or craft
- Cook or bake new recipes
- Garden and spend time outdoors
- Write in a journal or start a diary
- Volunteer in the community
- Practice a musical instrument
- Do puzzles or brain teasers
- Meditate or practice deep breathing
- Have meaningful conversations with loved ones
- Explore local attractions or museums
5. Enjoy Life More
It is biblical to enjoy life. It is biblical to have fun. Yes, in this world, we will have troubles (John 16:33), but we aren’t meant to live sad, boring, unfulfilling lives. Proverbs 15:13 says, “A glad heart makes a cheerful face, but by sorrow of heart the spirit is crushed.” And Eccesliates 3:12-13 says, “I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.”
Enjoying life is a gift from God — especially when we’re able to enjoy it despite all the challenges that come our way. To do this, you have to make fun a priority.
If you experience life the way I do, you’ve probably noticed that joy doesn’t come as easily as pain and depression and sadness. It seems like life always gives us a reason to be sad or overwhelmed. But we can still choose joy. We can still choose to enjoy the life God has given us.
Start today by doing something fun! You could go for a bike ride in your neighborhood, have a dance party in your living room, take a day trip somewhere, or try a new recipe and have a themed dinner. We all have different definitions of fun. Tap into whatever yours is and start prioritizing joy more.
Setting Personal Wellness Goals
The best way to accomplish anything is to set goals for yourself. Life has a way of taking up our time and energy, so unless we prioritize our personal health, it’s likely to be pushed to the back burner. Setting personal wellness goals helps you take care of your body and mind. They give you a clear path to follow for better health and make your well-being a priority.
Like with any type of goal-setting, your personal wellness goals should be measurable and attainable. It’s not enough to say, “I’m going to be nicer to myself today.” You have to get specific. For example, a goal could be to write down two things you’re good at, that you like about yourself, or that you’re proud of every day for a week.
Clarity and accountability are key when it comes to accomplishing your goals. That’s why I created the Daily Wellness Planner (DWP). It’s your pocket-sized guide to maintaining balance and well-being throughout the day, conveniently stored in the Notes app on your phone. The DWP is an easy way to build wellness into your week to feel more energized and at peace in your relationship with God, yourself, and everyone else so you can serve God and love others with passion and purpose.
Improve Your Personal Health With Christian Wellness Coaching
If you struggle with self-confidence, self-worth, or appreciating who you are, it can be difficult to prioritize yourself. After all, why would you prioritize something you don’t necessarily like all that much? I get it because I’ve been there. But I’ve also come to understand the key to growing in your personal wellness is realizing you are worth the effort. It’s about taking small, meaningful steps toward self-acceptance and self-care, understanding that each positive change (no matter how small) brings you closer to a healthier, more fulfilled life.
If you want one-on-one support as you build and maintain personal wellness, I would love to be in your corner. As a Christian wellness coach, I’m dedicated to helping you embrace your true self, grounded in faith and spiritual growth.
Christian wellness coaching offers a powerful combination of God’s Word and practical health strategies that cater to the whole person — mind, body, and spirit. Through 1:1 coaching sessions, you will learn to:
- Cultivate a deeper connection with God, learning more about His characteristics to better understand the image in which you were created.
- Build self-confidence and self-worth through a Christ-centered perspective, discovering how you can use your wellness to positively impact the people around you.
- Enjoy life more by challenging yourself to have fun and try new things, not wasting the beautiful gift of life God’s given you.
Imagine a life where you wake up each day feeling motivated, valued, and loved — both by yourself and by God.
It’s possible, and it starts by taking your personal wellness health seriously (while having a good time, of course!). I encourage you not to wait to start living the fulfilling life that’s available to you. Book a free 30-minute mini coaching call and take the first step toward deepening your love for yourself.