Social Support
When embarking on our wellness journey it is important to have a strong network of people we can turn to for social support. When we have someone in our corner it provides us with a myriad of benefits, including encouragement, a sounding board to listen to our challenges and someone who can motivate us when we have the blues.
When I look at the wellness journey, I see more than physical exercise. I see an opportunity for people to become better people. In life we tend to have the pathological drive to achieve everything on our own. We have tricked ourselves into believing we can navigate this life independently from everyone else, and as a consequence far too many people are lonelier than ever. If we want to live our highest quality of life, to live with love and fly with the peace of a dove, we must seek out the company of amazing souls. If you truly want to achieve your wellness goals it can only be reached when you have social support from people who actually care about you.
We all have different needs, but everyone requires some level of assistance. Some may need instrumental support, while others may require emotional, informational, or companionship support. As you continue on your path ask yourself what you need to achieve your wellness goals.
- Do you need someone to help you get to the gym? Do you require assistance in paying for your membership? Do you need someone to watch your children while you exercise? People who have these kinds of needs require instrumental support.
- Do you need emotional encouragement to exercise? Do you need people to provide you with positive feedback? Do you need someone to hold space with you when frustrated? Sometimes we just need someone to be there with us to listen, or serve as a sounding board to our thoughts, emotions, and ideas. People who have these kinds of needs require emotional support.
- Do you need advice about how to achieve your wellness goals? Do you need access to reading materials to improve the results of your physical activity. Do you need additional information in regard to the risk factors associated with poor health and living a sedentary life and the ways to improve your overall wellness? People who need these kinds of needs require informational support.
- Do you need someone to exercise with? Do you like hanging out and talking about physical fitness? Do you want physically active options when at social gatherings? People with these kinds of needs require companionship support.
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Instrumental Support
Social support is something that is earned and maintained, just like friendships. If we want to reap the rewards of the harvest we must tend to the farmlands of life. We must enrich the soil, plant the seeds, and tend to them till they are ripe and ready to be enjoyed.
There is a lot of give and take in relationships, sometimes we need to be there for someone else, and other times we need people to be there for us. Instrumental support goes both ways. If you want to have help when you need it, you must offer it first, and it must be offered without the intention of ever cashing out. This means you need to build relationships that are genuine and pure, they cannot be transactional, because if you want the genuine support of someone the foundation of the relationship cannot be built from the dollar sign, it must be constructed from the heart. You can’t buy genuine love, just like you can’t purchase genuine support.
Instrumental support doesn’t have to be from our friends and family. Many times, it arrives as a service we pay for, or from our church, but if we want it to be reliable, we need to treat others fairly and with respect. Even when you pay people to perform services for you, if you treat them well, they will treat you well in return.
Instrumental support is crucial in the lives of many because it allows them to overcome barriers that would have otherwise prevented them from improving their health and quality of life. If you are in the position to help someone else, consider offering it. There is nothing more rewarding than helping someone feel wonderful. It feels good to help others for the sake of helping them, and if you are friends it opens the doorway for you to strengthen the bonds of your friendship. Who knows, maybe one day you will need help, and because you have been good to the people around you, maybe they will be good to you.
Ultimately, take some time to really dive into the barriers you are facing in your wellness journey. Do you have any barriers that could be solved with instrumental support? If so, think about what you need to resolve them, and seek out those who can help. Our friends want to help us, but many don’t know how. When you go to them for help, you are helping them be there for you as a friend. As long as you aren’t always going to them for every little problem you face, they will be happy to help you. You may even put a smile on their face if you are the type who is always there for your friends, because it gives them the opportunity to be there for you.
Emotional Support
We all need encouragement, feedback, and someone to hold space with us as we share our feelings. This is important in all aspects of existence, but it is especially true in our wellness and exercise journey. We like it when people ask about our lives, are offered an opportunity to talk about our achievements, or have someone to vent to when we are frustrated with our progress.
Emotional support is the cornerstone of any genuine friendship or relationship. We need to know that our loved one’s care about us, that they want to inquire into our life and are genuinely invested in our wellbeing. When people show us that we matter, that they care about us, and want to engage with our day it invigorates us. It propels us forward and encourages us to fly through life.
Informational Support
We need accurate information throughout our wellness journey. Unfortunately, this knowledge can be difficult to come by. The reason is because a lot of people are more interested in making a quick buck than they are in helping you achieve the wellness you seek. Finding information is easy, you could enter nearly any question into Google and receive some kind of answer, but it doesn’t mean it is reliable, safe, or beneficial information.
When seeking informational support, we need to find someone who we can rely upon to provide us with reliable information. Often times this means we must tap into our social support network to ask questions from people we know, but this also tends to lead to inaccurate information. When seeking out knowledge it is imperative to speak to people who can prove to you that they know their stuff. While certifications and licenses are great, it does not guarantee you will receive correct information. You must have some degree of knowledge to test their expertise. This means you will have to do some research yourself, so you can test whether the wellness professional you are speaking with has the knowledge you seek. All in all, acquiring informational support can be challenging indeed.
Companion Support
This kind of social support is when two people agree to workout together. It offers a plethora of benefits such as encouraging accountability, consistency, friendly competition, social relationships, and serves as a method to distract each other from the discomforts of physical exercise. It also comes with some drawbacks; workout partners may be unreliable when they choose to skip workouts or show up late. Scheduling can be difficult amongst adults who have varying schedules, and parents may require sitters to watch their children. In most instances the benefits outweigh the challenges associated schedule difficulties.