Wellness consciousness is an individual’s awareness of and attitudes toward healthy behaviors. It’s about making conscious choices to promote success in a variety of areas including occupational, spiritual, physical and psychological.
Studies have found that health consciousness correlates with healthy behaviors like exercising and eating a balanced diet. It also correlates with emotional intelligence (EI). This psychographic variable may be useful for audience segmentation related to the wellness industry.
Increased Perceptual Awareness
Wellness involves being aware of and taking control of internal bodily processes that are typically unconscious, like your heartbeat, lungs, and gut. New technology and neuroscience allow us to use biofeedback techniques that measure these internal processes directly, giving you the power to take control of what is usually outside of your awareness.
Studies investigating the effects of perceptual load on awareness have converged across different paradigms and have clearly shown that higher load reduces the speed and frequency of awareness. This convergent evidence supports the view that perceptual processing is subject to capacity limits and depends on selective attention.
However, some studies have also reported that the gist of a natural scene seems to be immune to inattentional blindness and that detection of an unexpected stimulus does not suffer from a dual-task cost – results which are at odds with the theory that conscious strategies must be used for perception under all conditions. This discrepancy suggests that the mechanisms underlying these phenomena are complex and require further investigation.
Increased Productivity
The benefits of wellness in the workplace include increased productivity. When employees feel that their well-being is valued, they are more likely to perform at their best and focus on work tasks rather than feeling overwhelmed or stressed out. This can help reduce employee turnover, absenteeism and presenteeism, which can save companies money in direct salaries.
For example, if an employee is feeling burnt out or sick, the company can help them treat those feelings and find a way to stay productive with less stress. They can also provide healthy food or onsite gyms to boost physical wellness. This will help them be more active throughout the day, which can also decrease stress and improve productivity.
Wellness programs can help alleviate employee tension and promote mindfulness practices to reduce stress, improve sleep and alleviate pain. Additionally, leaders who are supportive of their team’s well-being can create norms around logging off during time off, sharing their own methods for decompressing and helping employees get to know each other through group fitness classes or lunchtime meetings.
Better Relationships
Being health-conscious helps you develop a holistic perspective of life, which can improve your relationships. People who focus on wellness have a greater ability to empathize with others and are better at problem-solving. They also tend to be more naturally healthy, which means they have better energy and are more resilient.
Several studies have measured health consciousness by using actual behaviors such as eating habits or substance use, but these measures do not capture the underlying psychological traits of the concept. This study uses a new scale of health consciousness that directly measures a person’s orientation toward their personal health and well-being, rather than a specific behavior.
Results from mediation analyses showed that EI mediates the relationship between health consciousness and a person’s likelihood to belong to the Unhealthy group relative to the Healthy group. Additionally, in all models, increments of health consciousness were related to decreases in the likelihood of belonging to the Unhealthy group and were significantly related to increased levels of health-related behaviors.
Less Stress
Stress levels can have a direct impact on your health. When you are stressed, your body’s fight-or-flight response is activated. While facing life-threatening predators is not common in modern society, daily demands such as paying bills, working and caring for family still trigger this reaction.
You can improve your wellness by reducing the stress in your life and finding healthy coping strategies. Whether it is meditation, yoga or slow deep breathing, you can find a technique that works for you. A therapist can help you identify sources of stress and provide guidance to develop healthier ways to manage it.
Using confirmatory factor analysis, it was found that the scales for emotional intelligence and health consciousness were highly correlated with one another. This means that people who have high emotional intelligence also have high levels of health consciousness and tend to engage in healthy behaviors that promote wellness. This includes avoiding substances and eating a well-balanced diet.
