To benefit most from what life has to offer and to deal with the demands of day-to-life in our time, it’s just as important to take care of our mental health as our physical health. Eating well – for instance, by consuming more fruit and vegetables – and being physically active are winning strategies for promoting health and general well-being. That is the basis of the Health Challenge. And this year, the Wellness goal has been added to the Health Challenge, which has become the 5/30 Health and Wellness Challenge.

What is wellness?

Achieving wellness in our lives or maintaining it means investing ourselves in all aspects of our lives: work, love and leisure. It also means making time for all the things, big or small, that help us be healthy and feel good about ourselves.

What to bear in mind:

• The goal is to “nourish” all the diverse aspects of our lives. When, from time to time, one aspect demands more of our energy – for example, facing a big challenge at work or preparing for a marriage – it’s possible to spend the extra time and energy on that, knowing we’ll be able to refocus on the other aspects of our lives later. We have to accept that at certain moments in our lives, work, love or leisure can take up more room or, possibly, less room than it should at normal times. This is a temporary imbalance.
• However, if we put all our time and energy into one single aspect, like work or love, and neglect the others, our happiness and well-being come only from those aspects. If one day we should have a crisis in that part of our lives, such as the loss of a job or a divorce, we risk not having the means to deal with it. But if we invest in all aspects of our lives, we are generally better equipped to get through the crisis. We are able to find other ways to feel good about ourselves, as well as a reason to smile. Still, we have to be careful: investing ourselves to the extreme in all aspects of our lives can also knock us off-balance. What it comes down to is striking the kind of balance that will satisfy us.

Managing stress: essential!

Moreover, if we consider the fast-with-a-capital-F lifestyle that we lead today, stress threatens us at every moment and can easily upset the wellness that we enjoy. In the daily whirlwind, we don’t always make our well-being a priority. We accumulate stress, we forget to take care both of ourselves and of our relationships with others. In the long run, that can lead to discomforts, uneasiness and even illnesses like depression and anxiety. Learning to manage our stress is therefore vital for maintaining our wellness.


To foster that wellness, concrete steps can be taken that help us take care of ourselves and our relationships. Allowing time to yourself, assigning priority to priorities, opening up to relaxation, communicating better and maintaining your relationships with others are the steps that the Health Challenge suggests you take in your day-to-day life.


Consult this section to learn more about the Wellness Goals (visit the Wellness Goals page), the different ways of keeping in balance and stress management.

The “Wellness and stress” section was produced in collaboration with the Canadian Mental Health Association and thanks to the support of