In my journey of dealing (with this lockdown), healing and exploring, I realized that WELLBEING is very important.

I hear a lot of people talk about it, and I’ve read a lot of articles focusing on mental and physical fitness. While I agree its importance, I have come to realize that just these two aspects of wellbeing are not enough. There are many scholars in the subject of wellbeing, I am not one of them. What I would like to share, is my personal experience of ‘wellbeing’:

Physical Fitness – Like many, I started with taking care of my health. I had the option to choose between recorded sessions and live online classes. There were different forms of activities to choose from, like pilates, yoga, zumba and spot walking to name a few. I began with following recorded Zumba sessions i.e. dance in exercise form on YouTube. Soon I realized it did not nudge me or excite me beyond a few days. I then enrolled for a live (and paid) online yoga classes with an instructor known to me and it worked like magic. She is dedicated and punctual, which motivated me to attend regularly and respect her time and commitment. There were some sore muscles and some aches but these are some of the sweet pains I have learnt to enjoy. It makes me happy and helps me meet my goal of physical wellbeing.

Emotional wellbeing for Mental Fitness – It was 10 days after I started working from home. My professional community organized an online session on MBSR i.e. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. I took it thinking it’s complimentary, and will give it a shot to see if it works. To my surprise, a 30 min session cleared my head, calmed my mind and created a sense of control in me. It also helped me deal with compassion fatigue. During the time of change, a growth mindset is very important. It results in resilience. You could hide and complain. Or, you could start looking for opportunities and reinvent yourself.

Financial Wellbeing – The falling financial markets and the slowing of the economy are creating financial worries. Still, no one is talking about how to manage the same. Why? After all, you need money to pay for your physical and emotional wellbeing.

Given my background in the personal finance field, I took the GLAD approach and here is how I am taking care of my finances:

1) Goal check- I first started looking at my short-term and medium-term goals. These are the goals that are coming within 2-3 years. I also looked at the emergency corpus i.e. the money required to manage all expenses for the next 3-6months. Lastly, I checked on my long-term goals which were 3+ years away.

2) Liquidity check – Once I calculated the money required for my short-term goals and my emergency corpus, I made sure these were amounts readily available in my portfolio and were not carrying high risks. These are now maintained in the liquid or short-term mutual funds.

3) Asset Allocation Check – I have a moderate aggressive risk-taking ability, so I maintain my equity allocation in the range of 60-75%. I analysed the overall portfolio allocation and allocated my long-term investments towards growth or equity in line with my risk-taking ability. I also rebalanced my portfolio based on the same.

4) DFZ (Decision Free Zone) – Like any other investor I too have an urge to take some decision, markets are falling – let’s add money, falling further – let’s have a stop loss and take out all the money and so on. At times like these, I know I have to pause and tell myself it’s “OK” to decide to not take any decisions for some time. DFZ is a tool I learnt during my CeFT training and to know more about this you can read here.

Social wellbeing – Social Distancing in no way means social disconnecting. To stay connected with my friends and my family I started conducting video meetings by blocking everyone’s calendar. We run Karaoke evenings where the agenda is to, well, SING. This has made me connect with them much more than before. To stay connected with colleagues, whom I do not see as often as I used to, I video call for few mins instead of quick chat messaging. Short 2-3mins call with videos ‘on’ help to build stronger relationships at work too. Of course, you may not always be able to reach them all the time but at least they know you thought of them.

Digital wellbeing – Home has become our workplace and the workplace has become our home. We have somehow stopped bifurcating the official time and personal time. With increased workloads and not much to do otherwise, screen time of every individual has increased a lot. This means we are learning to keep ourselves busy online much more than needed. The instant gratification you get from receiving text messages and other mobile notifications release dopamine in the brain and give you a sense of satisfaction and pleasure. But this can get you into a dopamine-induced loop, where you can’t stop texting because your brain continues to seek that satisfied feeling. We need to take a break from social media, emails, WhatsApp, etc. and do some activities which are completely offline to break free of digital addiction.

Spiritual Wellbeing– Yes, you read it right, Spiritual Wellbeing! I never thought I would do anything like this but the river of life takes its own turns. You could be an atheist or God-fearing or anything in between. I believe in a supreme power, the light that keeps us going. I got introduced to project ‘hope for healing’ by chance. I registered myself as the project expectation was for over two hundred thousand attendees meditating online, together, all over the world, making it a once in a lifetime experience. The meditation aimed at Disintegrating the Global Fear of Coronavirus and blessing Mother Earth for inner peace, love, healing, unity and divine protection. This 60 mins of Pranic Healing experience elevated my inner self and brought me peace. I am trying to now start meditating at least twice a week and see what unfolds next.

My river of life is clean and clear, and fluid and turns the course with every stone blocking its way. My river of life leads me to new turning points. To new opportunities. To new experiences, I am still exploring. Happy to help if you want to try any of the above things I’m practicing. Do leave a comment and I will write back to you.

Holistic wellbeing will help you get fit, to be happy and peaceful.