When wellbeing becomes another performance - a stress factor.

In our pursuit of living longer and better, are we still listening to how we actually feel?

After the summer, September often makes me want to return to a little more structure. It feels good to come back to exercise, get everyday routines and some of the habits that may have been allowed to flow more freely for a few months. I believ that helps us feel better and I believe in growth and in the value of understanding more about what helps us stay healthy and feel well.

Today, we have access to more knowledge and more tools than ever before that can help us "feel better" and live longer. We can track our sleep, recovery, follow our heart rate, measure our training and learn more about nutrition, stress, hormones, the nervous system and healthy aging. The growing interest in longevity has also opened up an important conversation about how the choices we make today may influence not only how long we live, but how well we live as we grow older.

I find much of this fascinating. I want to stay healthy, strong, curious and alive for as long as I can. I want to understand my body and make choices that support me, both now and in the future.

But I also think there is another part of the conversation that matters. In our desire to live longer, healthier and better lives, we can become very focused on what can be measured, improved and optimised. Sleep needs to be better. Recovery needs to be higher. We should exercise enough, eat well, manage stress, meditate, get our steps in and make all the right choices for our future health.

Each of these things can be valuable. But when the list becomes long enough, even wellbeing can begin to feel like something we need to get right. And that is where I think we need to remember something very simple: our bodies give us information too. Our feelings give us information. Our relationships, our energy, our sense of meaning and the way our life feels from the inside all tell us something important.

A sleep score can tell me something about my night, but before I look at it, I can also pause and notice how I actually feel when I wake up. A recovery score may tell me that my body is ready to train, but perhaps what I am noticing inside is emotional exhaustion. A walk may produce very little interesting data, but still give me exactly the sense of space, connection or calm that I needed that day. This does not mean choosing intuition instead of science, or ignoring valuable information. I don’t think we need to choose between the two.

For me, the more interesting question is how we can bring them together. How can we use all the knowledge and technology available to us while still remaining connected to our own experience?

How can data help us understand ourselves without becoming more important than what we actually feel? And how can we pursue health and longevity without turning our lives into one long self-improvement project? Perhaps living well requires both: the information we can gather from the outside and the ability to listen to what is happening on the inside.

This is one of the reasons I created Braveolution around the idea of The Whole You.

For me, wellbeing cannot be understood by only looking at the body, our thoughts, our sleep or our exercise in isolation. We are whole human beings, and the different parts of our lives constantly influence each other. The way we think affects the way we feel. Our emotions affect our bodies. Our relationships influence our health and sense of safety. Our physical wellbeing affects our energy and capacity. And having meaning, direction and things in life that make us feel genuinely alive can influence how we experience everything else.

This is why the Whole You looks at wellbeing through five interconnected dimensions: Mental, Emotional, Physical, Social and Existential wellbeing. It includes how we think and relate to ourselves, how we experience and respond to our emotions, how our bodies feel and function, the quality of our relationships and sense of belonging, and whether there is enough meaning, direction and aliveness in the life we are living.

When I look at wellbeing this way, the question becomes wider than simply asking whether I am doing all the “right” things. I can exercise five times a week and still feel emotionally exhausted. I can eat an incredibly nutritious diet and still feel lonely. I can sleep eight hours every night and still wake up feeling that something important is missing from my life. And I can have beautiful health data while being disconnected from the people, experiences or sense of purpose that make life meaningful to me. None of this makes the healthy habits less important. It simply reminds us that no single habit, metric or practice can tell the whole story of our wellbeing.

This is where the idea of alignment becomes important to me. Holistic wellbeing is not about keeping every part of our lives perfectly balanced. Life is too dynamic for that. There will be periods when work requires more from us, times when family takes priority, times when our body needs more rest and times when we feel ready to challenge ourselves physically or mentally.

Alignment is not perfection. For me, it is about staying connected enough to ourselves to notice what we need, what matters and when something feels out of balance for too long. It is about creating greater connection between how we think, how we feel, how we care for our bodies, how we relate to others and the way we actually want to live.

And perhaps this is one thing the conversation around longevity could bring up and remind us of.

Of course, I want to add healthy years to my life. But I also want to add a happy living life to my years - I want to live and not just survive.

I want strength and mobility, but also curiosity. I want good sleep, but also evenings when I stay up too late because the conversation is too good to end. I want healthy routines, but I also want spontaneity, relationships, adventure, meaning, laughter and experiences that make me feel alive. Sometimes those things will fit perfectly into an optimal wellbeing plan. Sometimes they won’t.

And perhaps that is okay. Because the goal, at least for me, is not to perform wellbeing perfectly.

It is to create a way of living that supports the whole of me, both for the life I hope to live many years from now and for the life I am living today.

So this September, rather than immediately asking myself what I should improve, optimise or add to my routine, I want to start somewhere quieter. I want to ask myself: How am I actually doing?

How am I feeling mentally and emotionally? How does my body feel when I really listen? How are my relationships? Is there enough connection, meaning, joy and direction in my life? What is already supporting me well, and what might need a little more attention? And perhaps most importantly:

What would support the whole of me right now?

Because maybe the art of living well is not only about knowing what is good for us. It is also about learning to listen to your self - The Whole of YOU.

Wellbeing should support our life — not become another performance, and create stress.

Lina Edenfelt Holst

Holistic Wellbeing Coach, Strategist & Educator