Back to school season is here! Now is a great time to take stock of your personal intellectual wellness. Ask yourself…how are you measuring up with your peers? It’s not a competition, but are you challenging yourself to pursue new learning experiences? Do you look outside of your comfort zone, or stick to what you know or like to engage in? As we age, brain health is often top of mind. Learn more about the importance of intellectual wellness with key insights from Dr. Bill Hettler’s Six Dimensions of Wellness Model.
Connecting and Keeping Well
What is Intellectual Wellness?
Intellectual wellness is a recognition of our own creative abilities. Someone who is ‘well’ seeks to find ways to expand their knowledge and skill set. If you identify as intellectually well you cherish growth and stimulation. You also recognize the importance of sharing your gifts with others. Maybe you enjoy problem solving and crossword puzzles, getting crafty with scrapbooking, or reading new novels. All of these activities work towards developing your intellectual curiosity and encouraging you to expand and challenge your mind.
Intellectual wellness follows these principals from the Six Dimensions of Wellness Model.
- It is better to stretch and challenge our minds with intellectual and creative pursuits than to become self-satisfied and unproductive.
- It is better to identify potential problems and choose appropriate courses of action based on available information than to wait, worry, and contend with major concerns later.
Discover new things!
How can you Improve your own Intellectual Wellness?
Everyone can take small steps towards improving their own personal intellectual wellbeing.
- Challenge yourself to think outside your comfort zone. At Shaker Pointe you could join in a Monday Night Lecture Series on the Industrial Revolution. Or sit in on a current events discussion group on Monday afternoons.
- Try new things. Have you ever attended an Opera? Try it! We stream an Opera every month from the Metropolitan Opera’s Live collection.
- Diversify the world around you. Step outside your own four walls. Residents at Shaker Pointe live in the comfort of their own home, while also enjoying large community gathering spaces as an extension of their four walls. We have a great monthly calendar of scheduled outings. This month we are looking forward to taking a trip to the Albany Institute of History & Art and Mac-Haydn Theatre in Chatham, NY.
- Identify potential problems or obstacles and work towards solving them rather than letting issues pile up or dismissing them. Having the right attitude is key to striving towards overall wellness.
Visit our Amenities page each month to view some more ways our residents are learning new things every day! September Calendar of Events
Discover more about the Six Dimensions of wellness by visiting NationalWellness.org