The social component to wellness is one of the more significant parts of your client’s profile that is most directly under the influence of behavior and personality. In this dimension of wellness, your client takes a direct part in how they shape their world and how they manage lifestyle factors, such as interpersonal communications, meaningful relationships and important friendships for themselves. In doing so, they build wellness into their lifestyle.
For your client, social wellness includes those supportive, intimate relationships, as well as fostering a general connection with everyone within their social group. It’s also about learning how to balance social living with personal life pursuits.
As you evaluate your client’s social wellness, try to assess how the client feels about setting boundaries, taking care of themselves within their relationships and opening up to honestly share feelings about their relationships. Another point of assessment is to determine how your client reaches out to others. One of the best ways to positively reinforce social wellness is to let the client see the value in enjoying people who they spend time with and then to make it more mutually beneficial by coaching them on how to connect with their social contacts on a more intimate level. When your client can focus on their social wellness they will normally feel better, but they will want to also share that feeling with everyone you meet. We all need relationships, and the healthier our relationships can be, the better we’ll feel.
According to research articles published in 2009, the role of social norms in a broad range of areas affects the overall wellness of your client. This research described some of the social components to wellness as an influence on behavior, including gambling, tax compliance, energy conservation, risky sexual behavior, and high-risk alcohol consumption. With these areas or behaviors in mind, you can see your value and importance as a wellness coach in the life of your client.
Coaching the client into a higher sense of social wellness is important in that it helps to maintain and build the positive relationships that are elements within a healthy lifestyle. You may find that your client will draw strength from having positive relationships that are both meaningful and important to them. This type of healthy social wellness should be encouraged, as it supports physical components of wellness, too. As an indicator of your clients social wellness, try performing the assessment included at the end of this section.
We might also see a connection between overall wellness and emotional wellness, since we are talking about how the client generally feels about their lifestyle and themselves. When your client has reached an optimal state of emotional wellness they will begin to feel that they can be the person they choose to be. Also part of emotional wellness, is the comfort of knowing that other emotional components of the client’s wellness are healthy and sound, this includes coping mechanisms for being an effective family member, performing daily activities to the best of their ability, having balance and accepting responsibility for lifestyle choices.
Learn about the Certified Corporate Wellness Coaching Certification Course
If you’d like more information about coach education and online training with a health and wellness focus, consider enrollment in the Spencer Institute Holistic Life Coach Certification and the Wellness Coach Certification. If you are brand new to coaching, we recommend the Life Strategies Coaching Certification.