Picture in your mind the most beautiful lawn you have ever seen: Lush, thick green grass is nicely manicured, and all blades of grass are of equal length. Did you ever wish your lawn could be like this? Or did you ever think, “That’s what my lawn is going to look like?” Overall, proper lawn maintenance depends on the type of grass, such as cool season and warm season grass. Proper lawn care also includes knowing what to do at a given time of year. There is basic lawn care that includes mowing, watering, and removal of small weeds by hand. Proper lawn care also includes grub control, patching, feeding, and thatching. It also includes maintenance of your lawn mower so dull blades do not “split” the grass blades. Most important, to maintain a healthy lawn requires active attention to the soil, including monitoring the pH balance. In other words, lawn care is not a passive process.

In reality, most homeowners do not monitor the pH of the soil, despite this being instrumental in overall lawn health. Much like having a healthy lawn, it is also important to take that same active approach to maintain personal balance. However, people tend to take a more passive approach to self-care, often attempting to balance external demands at the expense of their own physical and mental well-being. Consider your own personal wellness wheel and its individual components.

In broad strokes, it seems that not enough time exists to do things that would create more balance. Specifically, if a you work 8 hours per day, then must take care of other external demands such as school, after school activities for children, and making dinner for the family, not much time is left for taking care of personal balance. The more demands placed on a person, the more likely that person will not make time for self-care. This can almost be ironic in that, considering the internal and external wellness wheels, a person would be able to better manage the demands of life if both internal and external wellness wheels were balanced with each other.

Having said that, there is also balance to self-care. In other words, some people may take too much self time at the expense of external demands. In other words, after working 40 hours and playing golf on Saturdays and watching football on Sunday, a person’s relationships may be negatively impacted because of limited attention to family (if family is included in a person’s definition of wellness).

With moderation, personal needs are extremely important for balance because meeting those needs makes a person more effective in managing external demands. People can create their own individualized wellness wheel to include physical health, physical exercise, eating and sleeping habits, and personal time for hobbies.