What Does It Mean To Be 'Healthy'?

For over a century, most healthcare systems have been built around one main goal: avoiding disease. 

Screening, diagnosis, and treatment are crucial, but they are only one side of the coin.

Health, as the World Health Organization emphasized back in 1948, is “a state of complete physical, mental and social well‑being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,” a vision many contemporary ethicists argue was meant as a holistic, not perfectionist, definition.

More recent work reframes health as a dynamic interplay of multiple parts of the whole...our capacity to realize aspirations, meet needs, and cope with our environment...rather than a static label of “sick” or “not sick.”

Research on human flourishing (beyond simply surviving) describes optimal functioning and well‑being across physical, mental, social, and spiritual dimensions. The holistic approach we take here at the Society.

It demonstrates a very powerful correlation: that positive well‑being predicts better future health outcomes, even when accounting for depression.

People with higher flourishing report better self‑rated physical health, social connectedness, and resilience over time. 

In other words, focusing on what makes life full, meaningful, and energized is a measurable health asset.

We are, after all, 'meaning making machines.' (An old adage in the world of personal development.)

“Avoiding Disease” Is Not Enough

When health is defined mainly as “normal labs” and the absence of diagnosis, people who feel unwell but test “fine” are often told everything is okay.

Women especially understand this as we were treated as "tiny men," and diagnosed with "female hysteria" when a symptom was unexplainable, up until the late 80's-early 90's.

This misplaced focus leads to several problems:

-Healthcare sytems are optimized for crisis care rather than daily vitality and prevention. 

-Metrics are anchored in “normal ranges” drawn primarily from people who see doctors often, not from the most robust or long‑lived populations. Healthy people are seen as within the average or better than average but that's not necessarily ideal for the individual.

-Research tends to over‑represent the diseased and under‑represent truly thriving individuals, so our idea of “normal” may be biased toward merely surviving rather than flourishing. Disease Management vs Optimal Health.

Which further proves the point that just avoiding disease is a very low bar for identifying what healthy means to and for the individual.

Autonomy, Self‑Awareness, and Health Behavior

Self-Determination Theory (SDT)‑informed interventions focus on supporting people’s basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness in health behavior change (for example, nutrition, movement, smoking cessation).

This is why in holistic health coaching, we focus on giving our clients room to tune into their own intuition. Long-term success comes when the individual makes up their own mind to change. Not because we told them they have to change.

Meta‑analyses prove that when people feel supported in making self‑directed choices (rather than pressured or controlled), they develop more autonomous motivation, sustain healthy behaviors better, and show small but meaningful improvements in physical and psychological health over time.

One longitudinal study in diabetes care found that patients who perceived their providers as more autonomy‑supportive developed greater self‑regulation and competence, which predicted better adherence and lower blood glucose over a year.

This is why our belief here at the Alpha Zen Society is that autonomy in health is our future. When people are treated as partners, not passive recipients, they are more likely to make and sustain changes that reflect their innate wisdom to heal. 

From Disease Awareness to Intentional Wellness

"I had a client once ask me what I thought about the 'awareness' movements. I told her, I was not a fan. Anytime we bring MORE awareness to something, we add energy to it. Which then creates more momentum toward it. I have turned down the opportunity to participate in many charity events for this very reason. Intention, by way of focus, creates the reality of the thing you focus on. This is basic quantum physics.

I'm not saying we don't need to fix or resolve these things. I'm simply saying that if they haven't been fixed by now, and instead they just keep becoming MORE of a problem, perhaps...We're going in the wrong direction." -Alida, our Founder

 "Awareness” campaigns that pour more attention into disease labels without necessarily changing underlying conditions breed more acceptance of the disease rather than finding the root cause, and an actual cure.

Psychological and public health research on flourishing suggests that simply spotlighting what is wrong is not enough; building positive capacities—such as meaning, connection, character strengths, and purpose—predicts later well‑being and reduced risk of anxiety, loneliness, and depression.

Longitudinal studies have found that an orientation toward promoting the good of oneself and others is associated with higher life satisfaction, better self‑rated physical health, and lower psychological distress over time.

That does not mean diseases do not deserve attention or funding; it means that a collective mindset that only or primarily thinks in terms of pathology misses the power of building health in the first place.

Health systems based on “whole health” or “integrative care” now explicitly aim to help people clarify what matters most to them and then align care, lifestyle, and community resources around those goals. Not just around risk factors. 

A shift in collective consciousness, if you will, from what's broken to what can possibly go right.

Symptoms Are Signals, Not Identities

Many people have been trained to see symptoms like they are enemies they need to suppress. 'A pill for every ill.'

Yet even in conventional care, there is growing recognition that fatigue, sleep problems, digestive issues, and low mood often reflect chronic stress, physical inactivity, poor sleep, social isolation, or a suboptimal diet. 

These are all basic, foundational issues that medication alone cannot resolve. 

Staples like hydration, movement, human touch, or regular bowel movements—may sound almost too simple as health treatments, but they point to a much larger principle:

That symptoms are often early signals of imbalance, not fixed identities. 

Positive health and flourishing research conceptualizes vitality (energy, motivation, resilience) as the opposite of fatigue and as a mediator between healthy behaviors and outcomes, reinforcing that everyday choices meaningfully shape how people feel and function.

Rather than labeling ourselves by diagnoses, viewing illness as a temporary state of “dis‑order” or “dis‑ease” in the system, can create psychological room for change.

This reframing is consistent with whole‑health approaches that view health as a dynamic capacity to be strengthened, not a static binary dictated by fate.

What a Wellness‑First System Could Look Like

If more people and systems oriented around the pursuit of wellness rather than simple disease avoidance, several evidence‑aligned shifts might occur:

From passive patients to active partners: Care models would emphasize collaboration, motivational interviewing, and autonomy‑supportive communication, which SDT research shows improves adherence and outcomes.

From fragmented specialties to whole‑person care: Metrics would include flourishing, vitality, and social connection, not just lab values, reflecting the growing science that positive well‑being independently predicts health and longevity.

From one‑size‑fits‑all to personalized baselines: Instead of treating population “normal ranges” as ideal, systems would account for individual variation, context, and the fact that many vibrant people seldom present in clinical datasets.

From symptom suppression to root‑cause curiosity: Lifestyle, environment, and psychosocial factors would be foregrounded, with medications and procedures used when needed but not as the sole tools.

None of this requires rejecting conventional medicine; it requires expanding the frame to include health creation, autonomy, and flourishing as explicit goals.

Health autonomy isn’t anti‑medicine—it’s pro‑you. It’s a shift from “How do I avoid getting sick?” to “How do I build a life that keeps me well?”

Are you ready to focus more on wellness than fear in the new year? We're here for you.

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