—WS

WS,

An important element that can contribute to your overall emotional wellness is to take time to acknowledge what you’ve accomplished before you move on to the next moment.

I don’t think most new students have a real understanding as to the level of commitment it takes to manage the life transitions of attending a large university. It’s usually the first major transition to challenge your emotional health. We can navigate almost any transition by keeping in touch with the factors that contribute to our emotional health.

I have some pointers about how to check your present emotional wellness. My friends from the MSU Employee Assistance Program put together a list of factors that contribute to emotional wellness that I can use to create a mental checklist for you.

Are you living in the present? If not, why not? What is it about this moment that makes you want to relive the past or concern yourself with the future?

Are you determining your own reality? This is a hard one, since we love to let the world determine our reality instead of letting our own interpretation of the world determine our reality.

Do you own your thoughts and reactions? Taking responsibility for your thoughts and how they construct your emotions is an important step in assuming personal accountability for your life. We choose to be happy, sad or stressed. There are forces in the world that contribute to the challenge of our present state, but we need to acknowledge and accept responsibility for our thoughts and reactions in response to these.

Are you allowing rest in your life? Is your life organized in a way that you make time to rejuvenate and enhance it? This could be having a hobby or simply doing nothing.

Are you comfortable accepting that some things will be unknown to you? We want to believe we can respond to any situation. Not knowing scares us. But as long as we have a good sense of who we are, we’ll be able to respond.

Lastly, do you feel you have a sense of meaning and purpose in life? If not, then you may need to reevaluate.

Emotional wellness is a state of mind. How you look at the world and interpret it will dictate whether you choose to worry and stress — which isn’t always negative — or decide to take it as a moment to learn from and go on. You won’t always answer yes to the above questions and that’s all right. Sometimes it’s enough to ask the question.

I wish you wellness and the choice to be happy. Life may not always be good, but just wait a moment. It will change. Peace, love dove.

—Dr.D.

Dennis Martell, Ph. D., is a coordinator of Olin Health Education. E-mail him your questions at dennis.martell@ht.msu.edu.