Wellness is living your optimal life- not just your physical wellness, but in other realms too. And unlike the western secular approach where your spiritual wellness is just one more type of wellness to consider, the focus here is building a life of wellness where we Allah is included through out our efforts.

Building a life of wellness includes addressing our struggles in our life-not with the self-centered goal of YOLO or "living my best life for me," but rather because building a life of wellness strengthens our relationship with Allah. And becoming a strong believer, (not just in faith but in other areas of our life), was encouraged by the Rasul saw.

To move towards living a life of wellness requires us to not only shift our intellectual understanding of what wellness is, but also for us to be more intentional as we build a life of wellness with a newer understanding. It's not just about living a life of wellness- it's also the process of building that life.

Both the process of building and then living a life of wellness leads to increased gratitude, inner transformation, deeper awareness of our need for Allah and heightened awareness of our unique individual potentials resulting in targeted action to foster that potential.

Let me give you an example.

When you start focusing on living a life with optimal wellness, you start working on whatever struggles you have in your current life that are stopping you from doing so. Let's say you want to start focusing on being physically healthy, which all Muslims should as our bodies are an amanah from Allah. Ideally, you start working on whatever stops you from being healthy and what action you need to take to become healthier.

And when you start taking care of your body, you will notice changes in your energy level which then impacts how you show up at work, home, as a parent and even in your salah. You might notice how working out consistently has led you to become more consistent in other areas of your life or that eating healthy has led you to be more intentional with what you buy. You realize that this is all from Allah and taking care of your body isn't just about physical wellness anymore. It's about honoring the amanah Allah has blessed you with- honoring it with gratitude.

But let's say you realize you are not physically where you want to be but for a number of reasons, you don't take the action you need to for your own health. You feel stuck, you don't know what to change. You try a lot of quick diets and fads and still feel you are struggling. It can be easy in those moments to say, "why won't Allah won't help me with my goals?" And that question, for many, can lead to feeling more distant from Allah. Staying stuck when it comes to our wellness negatively impacts us on many levels, including our relationship with Allah.

And also important to note, the secular way is to emphasize at times getting fit for yourself without any internal shift or any larger goals attached to it. There is no harm in wanting to become fit to "look good," but if that's the only reason for your goal, then your goal stops short of being something more transformative (and for some that goal of just looking good can be rooted in other struggles like low self-worth- more on this later).

The focus here is on understanding what wellness is overall, what each type of wellness entails, what it means to put Allah in the center as we build our life, how building a life of wellness brings us closer to Allah, and how we can achieve that.

That will also require us to understand what stops us and blocks us from living a life of wellness and how our struggles to build a life of wellness impacts our relationship with Allah. Because they will.

The bottom line is this: building a life of wellness is an opportunity to get closer to Allah SWT- not just in your life but also for the ummah. Building a life of wellness includes self-growth and stepping more fully into the role of Allah's khalifah which you can read more about here.

It's all connected. Building a life of wellness, knowing yourself to know Allah, understanding your lived experience, embracing self-growth- it's all connected to having a deeper and more personal relationship with Allah.

I'll be sharing more on all of these topics here and on social media. Let's stay connected!

If you want to get started on understanding how struggles in your life impact your relationship with Allah, check out the free resources- specifically, Empowering Insights. If you want to dive deeper, check out the upcoming courses and mini-courses here.

Be well and many duas,

Amna K.