Well-Being

Happy New Year! While many people make resolutions this time of year, I find it more meaningful to choose a word or theme to reflect on and aspire towards over the next 12 months. As we begin 2025, I'd like to focus on "well-being."

Well-being is so much more than physical health and fitness. It encompasses emotional, social, spiritual, financial, vocational, intellectual, and environmental dimensions. What's fascinating is how these areas of our lives are interconnected—improving one aspect often creates positive ripple effects across others.

As you embark on this new year, I encourage you to consider what wellness means for you. Don't feel pressured to overhaul everything at once. Instead, focus on one or two areas you'd like to improve. Even small, consistent changes can make a significant difference over time.

This year, I invite you to consider your well-being goals specifically within your work and educational environment. One challenge in improving well-being within healthcare communities has been an artificial divide between focusing on individual resilience and implementing system-level changes. But what if individual well-being and systemic change are actually two sides of the same coin?

Creating a culture of well-being is inherently collaborative—it requires community. It's you and me together. Well-being begins with "we." While this may seem simple, evidence supports the idea that we must simultaneously build individual skills and resources while improving our collective culture of well-being. This happens through small actions that can grow over time. Taking it further, I believe that when we take agency in improving our own well-being, we create ripple effects that help transform our entire environment.