Create Your Own Personal Wellness Checklist

As the holidays approach, you’ll spend most of your energy focusing on what’s going on around you, not what’s going on within you. With gifts to buy, family and friends to visit, and events to plan, it’s a chaotic time of the year. And even though it’s the season of gratitude and giving, it’s easy to neglect one very important person—you.

Whether you plan to go all out this holiday or stay home and keep it simple, we encourage you to create a Personal Wellness Checklist as a reminder to take care of yourself. Here are a few easy ways to create your plan to wellness.

Start Where You Are

As you create your personal wellness plan, reflect on your current mental and physical health. To go somewhere new, you need to know where you’re starting from.

Try to discover bad habits you’d like to do without. Or think of good habits you’d like to focus on. Maybe there are negative emotions or thinking patterns that prevent you from pursuing wellness. Or you may find your deepest needs aren’t being met.

Such introspection can be scary or uncomfortable, but it’s worth it. By reflecting on these issues, you’ll be able to set goals you care about and muster the motivation you need to accomplish them.

A Hundred Ways, Five a Day

Start simple to make and implement your wellness plan.

1. List small ways you can help improve your mental, emotional, or physical health. The simpler, the better.
2. Choose five of these actions, focus on them each day, and record your progress—kind of like a daily gratitude list (which can even be part of your wellness plan).

To help get ideas flowing, here’s some suggestions:

Find inspiration:

• Write down five things you’re grateful for
• Find a meaningful quote
• Watch a funny movie or TV show
• Write in a personal journal
• Meditate
• Draw or paint a picture
• Tell someone how much you care about them
• Try a new recipe
• Research an interesting science or history topic
• Read your favorite book or magazine
• Relax with a cup of green tea
• Knit or crochet
• Daydream

Pay it forward:

• Volunteer at a local charity
• Make a crafty gift for someone
• Help someone with a task or project
• Check in on the elderly

Recharge your battery:

• Go to bed early
• Take a power nap
• Stay off social media for two hours
• Chat with a friend or family member
• Clean your house or apartment
• Start your day with stretches or push-ups
• Take your vitamins or supplements
• Play with your pet

Get outside:

• Take a short walk
• Do some yardwork
• Relax in the sun
• Go for an early-morning jog
• Ride a bike around the neighborhood
• Visit a local park
• Fly a kite
• Play bocce ball or croquet
• Go swimming at a local gym or aquatic center

Other Ways to Create a Personal Wellness Plan

The goal is to create a personal wellness plan that works for you. For a more detailed plan, there are plenty of online resources to help. Find one that you can make your own and stick with—one that addresses your unique needs and desires.

If you choose more specific wellness goals, make them SMART ones:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-Bound

This simple, goal-setting principle will help you create achievable goals. For example, one great way to start on the path to wellness is to keep a fitness journal. By tracking your daily success, you can learn to apply goal-setting principles to all areas of your life.

Most importantly, take time to reflect and choose goals you sincerely want to accomplish. Whatever changes you decide to make, you’re taking steps toward better physical and mental wellness. Stay happy, stay healthy.