What is the Whole Person Development Blend?

Leadership

Dec 9

In the ever changing workplace environment, broadening our focus to incorporate the Whole Person Blend is integral to success. What is the Whole Person Blend? Picture, if you will, your favorite recipe. We often see the word “blend” while cooking or baking; it’s the idea that we are taking different amounts of multiple ingredients and combining them together to become a finished product. The combination of ratios, ingredients, and substitutions are endless. The same recipe may result in an entirely different end product, depending on the chef.

The same logic can be applied to people.

Take a moment to think about the best week of your life. Chances are this week doesn’t fit into your usual routine of going to work, doing chores, and prioritizing your responsibilities. This week may have included time for focusing on your passions: volunteering, running, meditation, time with family and friends, and perhaps catching up on your workload; activities that contribute to all aspects of your existence.

This is Whole Person Development.

Whole Person Development is how you choose to function in the following six different areas of your life in order to feel fulfilled:

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is how you understand yourself and others. Everything you have been through in life that gives you perspective or experience contributes to your emotional intellect. This, in turn, feeds your ability to empathize and ensure you understand other people and the diverse perspectives they offer. Emotionally intelligent people remember the importance of taking the time to understand others before making yourself understood.

Physical

The physical aspect of Whole Person Development encompasses your health, wellness, eating habits, fitness level, and overall mental and emotional well-being; it addresses the ways you fuel your body and your mind.

Spiritual

Spirituality is often confused with religion when it is in fact far more expansive. Many people are on a spiritual quest without even realizing. Spiritual awareness can, of course, relate to faith, prayer, and involvement in a church. Alternatively, spirituality can pertain to calming one’s inner turmoil through deep breathing, meditation, music, or words of inspiration. It’s about connecting with a higher power, whatever that means to the individual.

Social

The Social aspect consists of two subsets: Relationships and Giving Back. Relationships are self-explanatory- it’s how one interacts with colleagues, friends, and family members; how people build connections, communicate, and grow with one another. Giving back pertains to philanthropy, volunteering, and community building. It’s how we contribute to society, pay our successes forward, and make a social impact by giving back to our communities.

Psychological

The psychological facet pertains to self-esteem and self-acceptance. It’s not about the image we portray to our peers on social media, but our relationship with our true inner self; it’s how we feel when we look in the mirror.

Professional

While Whole Person Development addresses our life beyond the workplace, our career path remains an important aspect of our overall person. The professional aspect addresses one’s career, education, and goals; everything we do to define and pursue our definition of success.

Whole Person Development is scientifically proven. Studies show that if we’re not pursuing at least one thing in each of the six aforementioned fields, we’re not going to feel fulfilled. Or worse, we feel lost, tired, or that something is wrong with us; we feel like we’re not showing the world our best selves.

So how does this all tie together? As when we blend ingredients together in our favorite recipes, we blend the best of the various angles of our lives to create the ultimate finished product: our happy, fulfilled selves.

Take a moment to consider the six areas of Whole Person Development. Become more aware of what aspects you excel in, and what needs more focus. In doing so, you’ll begin to change the way you think. You’ll be able to apply these ideas to your life and work towards being more fulfilled. You’ll be able to change yourself for the better, which is my favorite recipe: the recipe for success.

How are you going to blend?