Article: How a Wellness Ethic Can Help You Thrive in a Chaotic World

Vitacost.com

Excerpt:

We’ve all come across people deemed to have a good work ethic. We might even be part of that club. A good work ethic means that things get done, that working hard is a virtue.

But working hard isn’t universally good. It can mean sacrificing health and sanity, focusing too much on one thing, which throws everything else out of whack.

An ethic instead aimed at well-being butts up against a work ethic in ways that many would argue are better for us.

“A Wellness Ethic is a holistic approach to well-being, and it includes a focus on mind, body and spirt, and oftentimes people would leave it at that, but it goes way beyond,” says Mark Reinisch, a life coach based in Charleston, South Carolina, and author of The Wellness Ethic: How to Thrive in an Unpredictable World (Where Stupid Things Can Happen). “It’s important because today’s world is very disruptive. Change is happening at a ferocious pace, and people are struggling to keep up.”

A Wellness Ethic — Reinisch trademarked the term — “empowers individuals to live balanced, purposeful lives, enabling them to feel and share love in all that they do,” he says. It’s “a value-centered devotion to wellness and its intrinsic ability to better one’s existence and society at large,” to quote his definition.

And it spares little in each of our worlds, but for good reason.

“It’s also the annoying stuff: all the things you do to keep your life above water,” Reinisch says. “When you add it all up, your well-being is never perfect. But if you focus holistically and move forward in a positive direction around those elements, you’re going to find that you thrive a lot more, where you get to the state that you nurture the wonderful gift of your existence.”

Reinisch isn’t immune to life’s aching hollow or the drumbeat to work harder. He has walked the walk and figured making light of it in a book would prove relatable.

“I purposely used struggling to bring the concepts to life and to show that an average person, like myself, who has struggled with well-being, can apply the insights and techniques to transform their own life,” he says. “Improving your life should be fun, and reading about improving your life should be fun.”