It’s tempting to think of health as a physical thing. We picture the epitome of health as someone running down a beach, sun-kissed, swimsuit-clad, and ripped as hell. But after more than three decades in the fitness industry, I can tell you something uncomfortable: some of the healthiest-looking people I’ve ever known had the least healthy lives.
I knew a guy once who was absolutely obsessed with his body. He couldn’t walk past a mirror without pulling his shirt up to check his abs. From the outside, most people would’ve called him disciplined. Dedicated. The picture of fitness.
But behind the scenes, his life was falling apart.
There were steroids (LOTS). Stimulants. Opiates. He could never sleep normally. He was too big. He was so large he had developed sleep apnea in his mid 20s. He struggled to hold jobs because of bad decisions, exhaustion, and a terrible attitude toward life. He had children he wasn’t allowed to see without court supervision. Most of the time when I heard from him, he needed money to repair or fuel his beat-up old car so he could get by another week.
The last time I spoke to him, he was calling from jail. He needed bail money and nobody would help him anymore. His family had finally reached the point where they were just… done.
But man, he had abs.
That experience stuck with me because it forced me to ask a serious question: if a person can look that physically fit while every other part of their life is collapsing, then what exactly is health?
I learned that health is not ONLY physical.
At First There Were Three
In the beginning, my understanding of health had only three elements: mind, body, and spirit. These were the basic elements I learned in school and the same basic framework most people know. But even then, I felt like something was missing. The mind, for example, is treated like one category, but aren’t there different aspects of the mind? Isn’t emotional health different from intellectual health? If so, wouldn’t the path to improving emotional health look different from the path to improving intellectual health? I believe it would.
Over the years, I’ve come to believe that a person can only become “Optimally Healthy” after achieving balance in eight unique and interconnected areas:
Mental Health.
Emotional Health.
Social Health.
Spiritual Health.
Financial Health.
Intellectual Health.
Environmental Health.
Physical Health.
The point of understanding the 8 Aspects of Health is simple: once you recognize these areas exist, you can finally begin improving them deliberately. Once you understand that mental health deserves every bit as much attention as physical health, your decisions begin to change. Your priorities begin to change. Your life begins to change.
And that’s the secret.
Most importantly, remember this: you can only become “Optimally Healthy” after achieving balance across all 8 Aspects of Health.