What Does Good Health Mean to You?
For a long time, good health was defined simply as the absence of disease or infirmity. If nothing was wrong, you were considered well.
Today, we have a more complete definition: “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
It sounds good on paper – but what does that actually mean in real life?
Most of us still tend to think of health in narrow terms: eating well and exercising regularly. And while those are important pieces of the puzzle, they’re not the whole picture.
Health and well-being is wider than that. It’s about exercise and nutrition, but also about rest and recovery, connection, time spent on things you enjoy, and having a sense of purpose in the world.
Whether that purpose comes through your work, your role in the community, or relationships – these aspects contribute to how we feel day to day.
Bigger Picture Health
At Thrive, we believe you can’t be truly healthy in isolated or fragmented ways. You can eat well, train consistently, and still feel unfulfilled and disconnected. To feel at your best, your life needs to work as a whole.
That’s why we view exercise and nutrition as tools to enhance your life – not consume it. When your focus becomes too narrow, other areas of life start to suffer. And the reverse is also true: if you’re constantly stretched in other areas, your training and nutrition habits will almost certainly take a hit.
That’s not to say there won’t be short periods of time when your focus naturally narrows – perhaps toward areas of life you’ve recently overlooked.
But overall, long-term, sustainable health is about striking that balance. About doing enough of the right things to support your well-being, without tipping into obsession or neglect.
If you’d like to get a clearer picture of how your current health and well-being habits are working for you, we’ve created a simple worksheet to help you rate and track your subjective well-being across a few key areas. You can download it here. Use it to highlight what’s going well, identify what might need more attention, and choose where to focus next.