7 Secrets to Success Your Wellness Journey is Missing!

Chavah Wellness provides general educational information on various topics on this website as a public service, which should not be construed as health care advice. These are my personal opinions only. See my full disclaimer here.

If you’re ready to take your wellness journey to the next level then you’re in the right place! Over ten years ago I started my wellness journey, and along the way I learned some really crucial lessons that transformed me from wellness-for-now to wellness-for-a-lifetime.

I’ll warn you, these pillars are not food-rules of what to eat and what not to eat. They are in fact, mindset maps that will redefine how you see, approach and overcome the challenges of your wellness path. The journey is made in the mind, despite what you eat or don’t eat, and will ultimately define the strength and length of your success. 

If you’re prepared to build a legacy of wellness, in your own body, and for your family, then stick with me through this blog and we’ll cover Seven Pillars of Wellness, or Secrets of Success, that can define your journey for the healthiest version of you. 

The Pillars of Wellness are my own set of codes I live by to help me stay in line with my wellness values. They are also the things I repeat to my clients over and over! Why? 

Because many of the trip-ups and blockades I hit in my wellness journey led me back to these primary sources of wisdom. When you want to know how to build a LIFETIME of wellness, then you build with these pillars. 

They’ll motivate you, sustain you when you’re tempted to give up, and they’ll pick you back up when you’ve fallen off the Christmas cookie bandwagon. (Anyone else been there?? Both hands up for me!) 

Trust me, lean into these nuggets of knowledge and you’ll see your journey start to transform beyond what you were able to do on your own. If you’re ready to level up your wellness game and reach into the realm of success, then let’s dig in to the 7 Pillars of Wellness. 

Pillars of Wellness: 

1. Consistency is Your Superpower 
2. Catalyst for Change 
3. Joy in the Journey
4. Mind the Motivation
5. Get to the Core
6. Run the Race 
7. Talk the Talk

Pillar of Wellness #1: Consistency is your superpower

Oh man! If there is one pillar that I could pick from the rest as crucial to your health, one that stands head above shoulders and goes the extra five miles for you, that would be consistency. 

That’s because a habit you keep is worth a thousand habits that you start but fail to establish. Just go back one more time and reread that. There’s so much weight in that statement. 

There were so many times that I tried to start a habit or reach a goal, and I made it so big that I couldn’t carry it past several weeks. It didn’t fit in my lifestyle, so eventually it faded out. 

We’ll talk about reasonably-sized habits soon, but consistency is the foundation you build on. It’s a launching pad for building . . . well, anything! 

You can start a habit over and over. For example, you can workout for three months every January. But are you really building strength, or just losing a few pounds that will be back by next year? 

To be consistent, even in a small thing, is to lay a foundation and then build on top of it. To create a structure that will weather storms and stand strong through your lifetime and leave behind a legacy of wellness. 

Our bodies are built on consistency. It’s not hard to realize actually, I mean we demand the ultimate level of consistency from our bodies. Lungs: Breath, always. Heart: pump, don’t miss a beat. You get it. 

Our bodies run on the ultimate level of consistency, and they thrive the best when we give it back. It’s not about keeping a consistent weight throughout our life, it’s about nourishing our body day in and day out. 

Consistency is also not about perfection, it’s about what we do the most of, even if it’s just showing up at 10% capacity some days. 

The mind also thrives on consistency. It literally builds connections, like roads and super highways, in the brain based on what we do most often. This can be for better or for worse. 

If you worry about things all the time: superhighway path. On the other hand, if you workout consistently: also a highway. That’s a path your brain will take again and again that reinforces what you do, how you think, and what choices you make. 

If you want to build your wellness, make it consistent and your brain will eventually reinforce your thought patterns and ability to show up for yourself. The brain is so amazing to me! 

Lastly, your spirit thrives on consistency too. Imagine that you read your Bible once a year. Or, you read it daily, if only for five minutes every day. 

When tragedy strikes, which version of you will know a verse that will bring you comfort and strength, or know how to lean into God at the most difficult moments? Our spirits are built on consistency. 

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus”.

I believe God’s Word is encouraging us to be consistent in a way that benefits our spirits, builds superhighways of faith in our brain, and gives us the strength to persevere when we feel like giving up. 

Consistency is your superpower! And a habit you keep is worth a thousand habits that you start but fail to establish. That leads us to Pillar #2. 

Pillar of Wellness #2: Catalyst for Change

If a habit you keep is what builds your superpower of consistency, then your catalyst for change is a super small habit. Like a teeny-tiny habit. 

That’s right, a completely unimpressive, “It’s so small I’m embarrassed to share it” habit. Have I lost you yet? Stick with me, there is truth and science behind this catalyst for change.

One of the greatest mistakes people make when they want to make a change is going Way. Too. Big. 

Think about it, how many New Year’s resolutions have you heard? People go from not working out for five years, to a goal of working out for an hour Monday through Friday. 

Or, from binging sweets all the way from Halloween to the dawn of the New Year, and then they’re going to only eat salad. 

Or, someone has a wedding, or a cruise, or a school reunion coming up, and they decide to lose twenty pounds in six weeks. 

These are all giant leaps of change and they are usually unsustainable.

 Even if someone reaches their goal, what are the chances that they stick to eating healthy, continue to workout, or keep the weight off? 

These giant leaps of change are like jumping up fifteen levels at once. If you want sustainable change, you have to level up where you’re at.

It’s time to level up your health. You find a wellness coach and you’re ready for change! What’s the first thing they recommend? Level up by implementing one small change. 

Remember our motto? A habit you keep is worth a thousand habits that you start but fail to establish. 

Teeny tiny habits, or as author James Clear would call it, an atomic habit, is the best thing you could do for yourself. 

That’s because your mind is programmed for consistency and it’s programmed against change. Literally, your mind will resist change, and it will completely self-sabotage a change that is way too big! 

I will mention one caveat here. A serious diagnosis could require you to do a quick 180 on your lifestyle. While it will be difficult, it is possible because your life now depends on it. Give yourself some grace because you’re making a giant leap all at once and it will be challenging. Also consider seeking out a Wellness Coach who can provide much needed support in your journey. 

One of the giant hurdles that most people face when they create really big goals is not that they actually can’t find time to go to the gym, or they get bored of meal prepping, or that they get tired of fitting into their smaller clothes. 

No! The underlying struggle is in the mind. Most people get tired of fighting themselves to stick to a plan that takes that much constant brain power. 

So how do you overcome this? You create a small goal. You take one step up the stairs of wellness and you level up where you’re at. 

This is different for everyone, and it will be different for you based on where you’re currently at in your life. Sometimes it’s creating a new habit, and sometimes it’s getting back to one that you left behind. 

It’s NOT important, I repeat, it’s NOT important that you do a habit perfectly. It’s only important that you do it consistently. This will ultimately override your programming and help you build change that lasts! 

Overall, I know this pillar was probably really hard to hear. It’s kinda depressing, and super unattractive to start so small, but remember the encouragement from Zechariah 4:10 that tells us, “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.” 

Don’t be discouraged! Rejoice that you’re doing good work, and trust the process. 

Speaking of which, now that you’re primed for powerful change, your next question might be: Where do I start? The next best step is the one you’re ready for! 

What change is at the top of your mind? When you think, “I know I should. . .”, or, “If I could just do ____ differently”. That’s your clue. Start there. 

The next piece of advice required to build longevity in your wellness goals to find joy in the journey, and that leads us to pillar #3.

Pillar of Wellness #3: Joy in the Journey

The next worst mistake I see people make in their wellness journey is that they hate the changes they’re making! They’re miserable and they’re counting the days until their diet is over, or they lose the weight, or they can be “done” with the change. 

But hello! Remember how we’re trying to build wellness that lasts a lifetime? Well it will never last if you don’t find joy in the journey! 

Wellness should be exciting, feel great, and taste good! If that hasn’t been your experience then I have some news for you, my friend, you’re not doing it right! 

There’s a better way! You either need to dig into your inner well of creativity and refuse to settle for boring, bland and blah, or you need to get a wellness coach who can help you get there. 

It will take creativity and out-of-the-box thinking to build a healthy life that you also love, but it is so doable! 

Besides falling into the pit of boring and bland, the next mistake people make is mourning the loss of the things they have to give up. 

For me, it was my morning coffee creamer, and my nightly ice cream. I thought that life was worse off because I had to give up the things I loved, and it sucked out my joy and left me moping about what I was missing. 

Instead of focusing on what you need to give up, start by introducing healthy habits, foods and changes that you can add in that bring you more joy. 

Do that – over and over again – and eventually you’ll notice your attachment to some of those things you initially mourned become less and less and maybe even slip away altogether without much effort. 

The healthier habits will eventually crowd out the unhealthy ones. There’s so much to enjoy about a life of wellness, so put your focus there. 

On the other hand, if you eventually find that there’s a habit you really need to overcome and you’re still feeling stuck after building lots of healthy habits around it, then we need to stop taking this habit at face value and uncover the motivation behind it. That’s leads us to pillar #4.

Pillar of Wellness #4: Mind the Motivation

Those sticky habits that we just can’t shake are there for a reason. If you’ve read my blog about the principles of Holistic Wellness, then you know everything is connected! 

If our unhealthy habit goes beyond, “it tastes good”, “it feels good”, or “it’s what I’m used to”, then there might be a deeper undercurrent that’s influencing our choices. 

In this case, it will take more than a good habit to overcome. We have to mind the motivation behind the habit and get to the root of the issue. 

This step is often left as a missing link when it comes to building change. If you’ve tried over and over to stop a habit, and always come up short, then there’s more going on behind the scenes. This is where a coach can come in handy, to help you pull back the curtain and take a peek at what’s going on in the background. 

We are created with three parts of our being: mind, body, and spirit. Each of those pieces of our being have unique needs, and each of them work in tandem with one another. 

Let’s say for example, you’re really struggling to stop eating sugar. You have it stashed away in drawers at work, in the back of cupboards at home, and even some in your nightstand. 

No matter how hard you try to remove the temptation, eventually sugar becomes all you can think about, and you go in search of finding a morsel so that you can feel the relief and get back to your regularly scheduled day or night. 

Some days, you binge sugar. And every time you find yourself at the grocery store, no matter how much you told yourself you would not buy any sweets, you still feel pulled to purchase something, just in case. 

You feel the anxiety of not being able to stop, and simultaneously the worry that you won’t have sugar when you need it next. You’re deeply entangled in a sugar fix. 

Let’s also say that you decide to seek help with a wellness coach. You let her know that you’ve tried everything to remove sugar from your presence, to put limits on when you can have it, and to replace it with healthier snacks. You’ve even set up an accountability partner, but you ended up just sneaking it anyway and feeling a lot of shame. You’re at the end of your rope! 

The first thing your coach will do is mind the motivation. Addressing your body’s need for sugar is only touching the surface. So, what’s going on on an emotional or spiritual level? 

Usually, there’s a healthy need that’s being met in an unhealthy way (i.e.: the sugar). It might be that you’ve been operating under high functioning stress for years and you’re emotionally seeking the relief that sugar provides in a temporary moment of joy.

First, you’ll want to identify what’s causing the stress. Then, focus on lifestyle changes to reduce that stress daily. Lastly, build healthy skills for when you feel stress creeping in. Then, you can start to build real change toward removing sugar as your go-to source of comfort. 

You can also start to incorporate more moments into your regular schedule that meet the need for peace, joy and comfort that will leave you feeling more fulfilled and ultimately happier. 

On the other hand, maybe motivation isn’t exactly the thing tripping you up. It’s possible you find yourself struggling to stick with a habit and you give up because you assume you’re just not that kind of person. If so, it’s time to get to the core, which brings us to pillar #5. 

Pillar of Wellness #5: Get to the Core

Creating core values around your health is one of the easiest methods for people to miss. I know because I used to be one of those people! It’s easy to believe that when you set a goal, and you accomplish that goal and build consistency, then that goal will define you. 

For example, I set a goal to workout. I workout consistently. I build muscle, therefore I also look like I workout. I have a gym membership that I use regularly. My life is proof that I’m someone that works out. 

But . . . when that doesn’t happen, then we conclude that even though we set the goal, we’re just not that kind of person. 

Our narrative becomes something more like

• “I can’t find time to workout.” 
• “There’s always something that becomes a bigger priority.” 
• “I can’t seem to wake up on time.”
• “I don’t want to pay for a membership I won’t use so I just gave up trying.”

Or something else along those lines. You get the picture.

The trouble is, we look for evidence to affirm who we are, our core beliefs around our health. In this case, we let the flexibility of life determine the flexibility of our character. 

If you define who you are first, then your choices will match your definition of who you are. 

Even though it seems counterintuitive, it’s the key to becoming the best version of yourself. Instead of setting a goal, and looking for evidence to define you, you need to define your core values first. 

The truth is that there is a natural ebb and flow to life. Our schedules and plans never remain set in stone. If you’re a parent, you know this to be true better than anyone else! Our ability to be flexible is a strength, not a weakness. We need to apply this to our habit building too. 

If you allow interruptions to your plan to throw you off, and then define you, you’ll never get back on track. 

But if you first decide that your core value is “I am someone who takes care of my body”, then when life throws you a curveball (like your kids get sick in succession for three weeks straight) then eventually you’ll feel the result in your body of being off track and you’ll remind yourself “I am someone who takes care of my body” and you’ll make a plan to jump back in – because that’s who you are. 

Do you see the power in that? 

Perfection is a terrible way to measure your success. Remember how consistency is your superpower? Well guess what? Your core values play a huge part in building consistency. 

Even if you do quit working out for three weeks, you get back into it when you remind yourself of your core values. That builds true consistency. 

In the moment, you’ll feel like you’re so far away from what you’d like to achieve, but after a year you’ll look back and say, “Hey! I worked out over the course of a whole year!” 

It wasn’t perfect by any means, and probably not the consistency you imagined – it didn’t happen three times a week religiously. But it did happen consistently over the course of time, and it will continue to happen consistently over your lifetime. That’s the power of creating a core value around your health! 

In his book about habits, when Craig Groschel gets off track he encourages himself with the phrase “I’m in training”. 

The beginning phase of building a habit is the hardest, and even when you get off track, remind yourself that perfection is not the goal, that you’re training your body, mind and spirit to align with your goals and it’s ok when you slip up because “you’re in training” and you’ll get there if you keep making small deposits into your bank of consistency! 

If you want to read more about building healthy habits I recommend the book The Power to Change: Mastering the Habits That Matter Most by Craig Groschel, as well as Atomic Habits by James Clear. 

Now that you’ve overcome mindset hurdles, defined your core values, and built consistency, there’s only one thing left to do: keep up the good work! That leads us to Pillar #6.

Pillar of Wellness #6: Run the Race

Everything you’re building is important to maintain a lifetime of wellness. That also means that the habits you’re establishing will need to be carried throughout your lifetime. 

There are certain wellness practices we set in place that work temporarily, like getting our body back in alignment and optimal health.

That might mean cleansing and restoring your liver, or building back up your gut health. However, most of the wellness practices in play will need to be applied permanently in order to see the continual benefit of them. 

The body is created to renew itself on a regular set of cycles, and those cycles require many nutrients, and rhythms to keep it in balance. 

Also, the benefit of consistency means that you’ll build a bank account of health in your body and you’ll have a really solid foundation that only exists with long term consistency. 

I’m not sure about you, but I would rather get to my 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s and still be working out and eating healthy amazing food, rather than schedule my life around a regular regiment of medications for the rest of my life! 

Hebrews 12:1b tells us, “Let us run with endurance the race God has set before us”. 

Let’s run our race well, persevering with consistency and invested for the long haul. In this way, we’ll be able and fit, full of energy and clarity of mind and spirit, for every good work set before us. 

Pillar of Wellness #7: Talk the Talk

Lastly, we land on Pillar #7. Up until now, everything has been about mindset. That’s because 90% of our wellness journey is about mindset! It’s important to get it right. 

The reason the Pillars of Wellness don’t include a set of what to eat, what not to eat, and the perfect way to workout is because all of these things vary person to person. 

I believe that leaders in the wellness community do a disservice to people by telling them there’s one “right way” to do things, regardless of the person. 

In my article “What is Holistic Wellness?” you’ll see me talk about the importance of Biochemical Diversity and how Wellness Coaching leans into each person’s unique makeup. 

However, there is one crucial practice that defines your health no matter who you are. That is learning to listen to your body. 

Your body is always talking to you! Trust me, it has a lot to say.

In wellness coaching, the first thing I do is take an inventory of a client’s symptoms. I want to know the obvious, and sometimes hidden, messages your body is communicating so we can start listening and applying health practices that will be like a fresh breath of air to your body. 

When I first started figuring out what my body was telling me, I imagined my body saying, “Finally, someone is listening to me!!” 

The truth is, my body was talking to me for a long time. However, it was as if we were speaking completely different languages and I needed a translator to figure it out. Some of the messages I actually ignored, thinking my symptoms were a normal part of life. 

Eventually, I figured out what was working, what wasn’t, and what my body needed. 

I stopped leaning into other people’s defined health standards and I became really clear on what worked for me. 

In the process, I eventually gained a lot of confidence to do the most powerful thing of all. I became my own primary care provider. I know – gasp! How dare I claim the position that belongs to a doctor.  

Yes, there will be times in my life when I need doctors and healthcare professionals to help me and share their wisdom and expertise. But at the end of the day, I get to decide what’s healthy for me, the right choices for my body, and the course of action I’ll take to restore my health. 

After ten years of my health journey, I can finally say I have the confidence and clarity to do that. Everyone else is a resource to my health, but I am the steward of my body and my health. 

These last two pieces of the puzzle we discussed: learning to listen to your body’s messages, and becoming your own primary care provider, can be a lot to accomplish on your own. 

I know, because I did it on my own and it took me over a decade to figure most of it out. I wish that I would have had a Wellness Coach to help me with this, but I didn’t know that was a thing until I was eyeballs-deep deep in my own research and wellness journey. 

The reality is that you don’t have to do it alone! You deserve support and clarity in your wellness journey and that’s what I’m passionate about doing as a Holistic Wellness Coach! 

If you’re interested in finding out more then check out my website here and feel free to reach out if you need support. 

And if you made it to the end of this article then, Hooray!! I am celebrating you because you stuck it out till the end and I can tell that you are committed to figuring this wellness thing out. Keep up the good work and keep on building wellness one small step at a time! 

Until next time, my friends! Stay well!

Blessings & Wellness,