The Trifecta of Health and Wellness

Are you doing enough? 

Are you doing enough to build your career? 

Are you investing enough time in friends and family, work and uni? 

Push yourself, do more than what’s expected of you, go above and beyond everyone else. Get ahead. But don’t overdo it. Relax and take time for yourself, journal and meditate, but not too much or you’ll fall behind the other kids your age; they’re all doing more than you. Make a routine and stick to it. Work, study, exercise, see friends, eat well, and then do it all over again, every day for the rest of the year. Book your holidays up with trips, work and activities with friends so that you’re constantly moving forward, but don’t actually relax while you do it, just fill up your time. 

The current social obsession with productivity and wellness is infiltrating every corner of our lives. You step outside and see 50 people finishing a half marathon by 7 in the morning, and calling it just ‘a light easy jog’ on their story. Your ‘For You Page’ will show you twenty-something morning routine videos by midday; ‘How to study effectively before exams,’ ‘Euro-summer must-haves,’ ‘The secret workout split to tone and build muscle,’ ‘Places in Sydney everyone is obsessed with,’ or ‘Why you’re burning out,’ sharing ways to self-advance and improve every aspect of your life. That one friend will post their Strava run on Monday, their coffee with friends on Wednesday and an in-state beach holiday by Sunday, all while managing the load of full-time uni, what seems to be the perfect internship, a stable family life, a somehow unwavering and flawlessly balanced friend group, while journaling every week, with a side of community volunteering and pilates.

I think our world has settled on a set reality of what health, balance and overall well being look like, a vision that I can characterise in three categories, the Trifecta of Health and Wellness. The first is cost versus reward scenarios; this includes things in your day-to-day routine such as school, your job, exercise–anything that requires some form of personal payment, and concludes with some form of long-term benefit. It entails routine and discipline, such as a set sleep schedule, firm and healthy eating habits, days of sobriety and other self-imposed restrictions. The payments may be literal, but usually entail a sacrifice of time, comfort or energy, while the benefits may be financial, or result in a functional and fit body, setting career foundations or merely establishing a routine of productivity, to which other rewards and self-advancements are produced. This category is imperative to the Trifecta, but is subordinate to the second category. 

The second, which I interpret as the one that is largely held as the most valuable to our generation, is social immersion. This includes seeing friends and going to parties, going to coffee, going to Europe over summer, a beach day every weekend and then family dinners once a month to balance it all out. Building and maintaining strong relationships and evening out your work life by connecting with others. This category is distinguished by how it makes you feel; feel a sense of belonging and love, feeling interlinked with a community or friend group, feeling happy, and looking like you feel happy in the eyes of others.

The third category is where we pour our time into ourselves via self-care, characterised by doing anything that is unproductive, doesn’t require intellectual strain and benefits our mental health. It could be a daily walk while listening to a podcast, writing a journal, putting a face mask on and sitting in a bath, reading, watching a movie, playing with your dog, sleeping, all forms of rest. As great as these things are, they are often facets of performance and advancement masked as unproductivity and relaxation. This category completes the wellness triad and creates the impression that there is a flawless balance in lifestyle, as long as each division is fulfilled substantially and equally. 

The Trifecta and cult of wellness is shaped by the relentless pursuit of ambition, and Western social structures of function that generate endless productivity. We are living in a state of cyclical improvement in almost an underlying competition with the people around us, marked by our generation’s imminent fear of death, leading us to make the most of every minute of every day, and get as much as we can done at all times. There is a ubiquitous sense of urgency to do it all, and you have to go to Europe this year because ‘everyone’s going and next year just won’t be the same.’ 

I too have embraced this lifestyle, but what I have begun to recognise amidst my morning reels scroll – that doesn’t last longer than a 20 minute timer as it’s too unproductive – is that I don’t need to be constantly moving. We are missing moments of boredom, moments of silence and slowness, and we don’t have to do it all in a set time frame, and we don’t have to do it all, at all.

We have lost the habit to live deliberately, leisurely, candidly and are constantly stimulated in a lifestyle of cyclical performance. When I exercise the third category and journal or walk while listening to a podcast, I still feel as if I am not truly relaxed, but am merely ticking the self-care box of how I’m being told to wind down. And even when I do enjoy it, I still feel as if each small step of self-care is contributing to a larger, long-term picture of a curated lifestyle in which I am the centre, and of which I am the perfectly balanced, well rounded individual self-operating every action and event–an all-encompassing presentation of excellence. 

You don’t have to put every foot in every door, in every corner of your life and in each category. Our lack of presence in our own lives means in a way, many of us are all living in a narrative of what is expected of us, or what we expect ourselves to be doing at this age and in this time. As a break from the Trifecta, sit outside in the sun phoneless, podcastless, musicless. Break yourself from constant stimulation and productivity, detach yourself from what you think you should be doing. You’re not falling behind if you take a week off work, or if you do nothing on your day off, or if you spend a weekend alone. Indulge in your own creativity and let your mind wander, without any mental pacifiers. Your experience of boredom will shape new realities of creativity and thought, and provide an incubation period for ideas to grow and new realisations to form. 

So although this triad is being pushed onto us, you don’t have to live one certain way, and you don’t have to have the perfect lifestyle balance, or the perfect life. The movement is positive until it becomes obsessive and all-encompassing, until you think you’re weird for not being in a run club. Be ambitious, have a routine, have friends, work hard, rest well, or don’t, but don’t force yourself to believe you are the odd one out for not dividing and balancing your life equally into three categories, or resting or working in a way you think you should. Where you are now is where you should be.

Live how you like, you have time!