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Whether you have recently been diagnosed with a chronic illness or you have been living with it for a long time, you may feel that traditional advice on wellness may not apply to you. This can be challenging because you may still want to feel your best and maximize your time and energy. The tips below can help.

Redefine Wellness

First, you may want to think about what wellness means to you and not how others define it or how you might have defined it before you became ill. This can give you a framework that is meaningful to your own life. What this is will vary a great deal from one individual to the other depending on your particular situation. It might mean simply being able to get out of bed and get dressed, or it could mean being able to engage in a particular activity that you enjoy. It also may include less obvious elements like good quality sleep and avoiding inflammatory foods. Alternately, you may want your idea of wellness to focus more on a mindset if your physical condition is particularly unpredictable.

Explore Resources

Another thing to look at is what kind of resources available to you. Are there agencies or organizations that can assist people in your particular situation? Are there support groups for people who have your condition? What are your physical needs? For example, if you use a wheelchair, you might need to have work done on your home to make it easy to maneuver around.

You might also want to look at your financial resources. If you have a life insurance policy, you might want to consider a viatical settlement to help provide funds for priorities. You can review a guide on the process of selling through a viatical settlement, which may be possible for people who have terminal or chronic illnesses. Although it will not provide you with the full value of your policy, it can leave you with a substantial sum of money.

Set Boundaries

When you have a chronic illness, you may need to set boundaries with others. This can be particularly true if your condition is one that is not visible or if you alternate between days in which you can do a great deal and those in which you cannot. This can be difficult for people to understand, but protecting your physical health based on knowing your body better than anyone else can be critical for wellness.

Modifying Wellness Tools

You can still use most wellness tools. You will simply need to think about how to modify them to suit your life. For example, you should still take steps to ensure that you are able to get enough sleep and that you eat nutritious food, even if you have certain dietary restrictions. You may be limited in your range of movement, but in most cases, there are probably some activities you can do for exercise even if you have to weigh what you are capable of on certain days. Furthermore, the overall holistic principle of wellness, the idea of striving to integrate your physical, mental and other aspects of health, also still applies.