Your first thought on hearing that Quirl promotes both success and wellness might be, how is that possible? Aren't they competing goals?
The short answer, of course, is no! While you might at first think of successful students as overworked and burnt out, stretching themselves thin until they are anything but well and healthy, on closer look we see a different story.
Because, even if that student becomes valedictorian and gets into their top choice college, you still have to ask yourself, are they really successful? Sure, they might look successful externally, but they could still be struggling immensely inside.
No one is served by defining success externally. Everyone benefits when we define success not by others' expectations, but by our own goals for ourselves.
When you think of success in this way, you realize it's impossible to have true success without wellness and vice versa.
True Success Depends on Wellness
A healthy emotional and mental state is a key driver and component of change and progress in your life
True success is not something that just happens to you. It comes from within. It flowers directly from your own actions and dedication, which ultimately depend on your mental wellbeing.
If your head's not in the right place, if you're feeling negative and like nothing you do makes any difference, meeting the goals you set for yourself is going to feel like an impossible task.
If you are patient and kind with yourself, realize all you already have to be grateful for in life, and can easily call to mind your potential positive impact on the future, you are in an ideal position to succeed at the goals you set for yourself.
Wellness Depends on Success*
*as you define it personally
A sense of wellbeing and personal fulfillment is greatly aided by regularly engaging in making the world around you a better place, even if it's just telling yourself you are going to pick up your room for the day and following through.
It's hard to feel well when we are constantly detached from the world. Not acting or engaging in the world for long enough can trick you into feeling like things can only happen to you, not because of you, and that you have no power over the direction your life and the world takes.
But when we experience the successful completion of our goals, even just sitting in a clean, fresh smelling room after a few minutes of picking up, we are reminded of our interconnectedness with the world around us. We are not solitary creatures, but active members in the positive progress of the world.
So whether we are parents setting goals for our children or managers setting goals for team members, we should first listen to their ideas of their own success, rather than impose our own external ideas of what their success should look like. When you value the people involved over the outcome, the people inevitably come out healthier, stronger, and more ready to handle whatever the world throws at them.