Kind of a like a motto or a catchphrase, a mantra is a word or phrase you repeat pretty often. Usually, a mantra is associated with a particular task, situation, habit or goal. It’s meant to help center and focus you, as well as to support you on a particular journey.
Mantras are often used in health and personal development to keep people focused on their priorities. They’re usually specific and meaningful to an individual—even if they don’t necessarily make total sense to the rest of the world. Repeating a mantra provides a brief moment of extra, personal motivation.
How Can Your Wellness Program Use a Mantra?
There are lots of different ways you can use a mantra in your employee wellness program. Your wellness mantra might not be as meditative or personal as a traditional mantra, but it can provide very similar benefits for your program.
Your mantra can help drive the direction of your program. It can help you to set goals that matter and to constantly move towards the goals you’ve set.
A mantra makes your program recognizable. It helps to ensure all of the pieces of your program are on the same page. It can also help you maintain consistency across different wellness platforms.
Your mantra also makes your program more relatable. Short, concise words and phrases are easier to get on board with than complex ideas. They more easily come to mean something to your employees.
Initially, your program might use a mantra a little nontraditionally. As you expand your program, and your employees really start to invest in their health and well-being, your corporate wellness mantra can serve as a foundation for employees’ personal mantras.
How Do You Create a Wellness Mantra?
Your mantra should be something specific to you and your wellness program. It should be something your employees not only understand, but relate with and value. That means it needs to stem from the wellness brand you’ve established for your program.
Start by thinking about the goals and the purpose of your program. Are you focused on productivity? Positivity? Longevity? Something else? Use those things to help you brainstorm your mantra.
Next, take a look at the culture of wellness where you work. Consider your employees’ attitudes towards your wellness program, but also towards health in general.
Here at TotalWellness, we use the mantra, “Be happy. You’re healthy.” It not only drives our program, our employees and our clients to a positive outlook on health, but it also encompasses our idea that everyone is healthy. Every single person has healthy habits in his or her life. And we believe in celebrating those habits and letting them inspire an overall healthy lifestyle.
Your wellness mantra might include similar notions about positivity. Or maybe not. It could focus on strength, progress, success, goals, relationships or anything else your employees value.
Regardless, your wellness program needs a mantra. To help drive your goals, yes. But also to help you create a recognizable and relatable wellness brand among your workforce.
Do you have a wellness mantra? We’d love to hear it in the comments below!
