Words of inspiration from Dawlish-based psychotherapist and life coach Jody Merelle.

At a recent wellbeing event I opened the session by asking participants to think of one adjective to describe how they were feeling. Instead of the positive words I might have been expecting, one person answered saying ‘suspicious’ and another ‘apprehensive’.

When I asked more about these words, one person said that the problem with the concept of ‘wellbeing’ is that it is too woolly.

No-one really knows what it is or what it means. To a large extent he is right. There is no standard, accepted definition of wellbeing – just as there is no standard, accepted method for achieving it.

To my mind though, that is both the beauty and the challenge of working within the realm of wellbeing. While there is a challenge in the concept being hazy in some respects, there is also beauty in working out what it might be for each person and how we can go about achieving it. Half the trick is to spend some time working out what wellbeing means for you personally. This might well have elements in common with other people, but your definition is yours alone. Only you really know when you feel content, happy or emotionally fulfilled.

Perhaps a simple analogy is to think of an electric car. In these days where climate change is at the top of our global agenda, electric cars are cited as being a positive way forward for the future.

However, no matter how good they may be for the environment and how amazing the technology, no one would dream of driving an electric car to the shops if the battery wasn’t charged. Whilst this seems to be a totally obvious point, when we apply the same principle to ourselves we don’t take nearly as much care to recharge our own batteries.

I often hear people say that they have been ‘running on fumes’ or ‘working on autopilot’. They talk about their lives in terms of existence or survival rather than fulfilment and satisfaction. This has been further exaggerated by the impact of the covid pandemic which has both increased stress at work and also reduced our activities and hobbies outside of it.

A simple but effective way of positively affecting your own wellbeing is to start by giving yourself a mark out of a hundred. If 0 represents a situation where you can think of nothing positive at all in your own life and 100 is a state of euphoria where everything is perfect – what mark would you give yourself right now?

Don’t spend too much time analysing the situation – go with your initial gut instinct. Once you have given yourself a score – imagine that you have seven days to go up at least one step on that scale. What is one simple thing that you can do within the next week which will improve your score – even if it is only by one point?

Once you have thought of something, I would suggest writing it down. We know from research that writing something down makes it much more likely that we will also see it through.

From doing this exercise I know that the answers will vary enormously from person to person. I also know from doing it myself that my own answers are very rarely the same from one week to the next.

Our sense of wellbeing evolves and changes constantly. It responds to global events, as well as those closer to home, it is affected by our own mental and physical state, our histories and our personal set of principles and priorities as well as a long list of other factors. So no, there is no one-size-fits-all definition of wellbeing just as there is no one-size-fits-all answer as to how to achieve it.

What is important, is to remember to focus on keeping your own batteries charged in a way that feels right for you. Doing so is not being lazy or selfish and it is definitely not something we should feel guilty about.

If we don’t look after our own sense of wellbeing no one else will do it for us. So pick up a piece of paper, write down one thing you can do to bolster your own sense of wellbeing in the next week and then commit to doing it.

Enjoy your little recharging moment – and rather than treating it as a one-off, try and make your own wellbeing a regular priority.

With so many elements and situations in life which can drain our batteries, it’s never been more important to find new ways of recharging them.