A Sustainable Wellness Habit for Real Life

By Amberley Meredith

Registered Psychologist and author of The Adaptable Sustainable Psychology Collection

When it comes to wellness, it’s less about what you do once in a while and more about what you do every day. One of the simplest, most accessible, and genuinely supportive practices that has stood the test of time for me is a regular self-check-in.

This isn’t me standing in front of the airport scanner, efficiently scanning my own ticket. It’s taking a moment to simply ask myself: How am I doing? These check-ins don’t need to be formal or time-consuming. They can happen while driving alone in the car, standing in the shower, walking — perhaps even pretending you’re on a hands-free call — or while getting dressed. There are many everyday opportunities to slip a check-in into your routine without it becoming burdensome.

Whenever possible, I try to ask this question out loud. It’s very easy to get distracted in your own mind — especially for me. I can be a little like Dory, chasing shiny things. I might start off asking how I’m doing and somehow end up wondering what cats really think of us.

Asking yourself how you’re doing allows you to take stock of where you’re currently sitting. If you know yourself well and have gathered self-knowledge over time, you may even need to repeat the question: But how are you really doing? This can gently open space to notice what’s been happening recently, or whether experiences from the past are still influencing you now.

You might notice that something has been difficult lately, or that there’s something ahead that feels challenging or requires extra support.

This self-check-in creates an opportunity to offer yourself compassion and understanding. Whatever is going on, you can take a moment to normalise and validate your experience: This is how many humans feel when work is stressful. This is common when people are grieving. It’s understandable to feel lonely when you’re not in a relationship.

The final part — and possibly the most important — is asking what steps, if any, you need to take right now. That might involve allowing your feelings rather than pushing them away. It may include engaging in gentle, favourite distractions, spending time with supportive people, walking in nature, or recognising that professional support could be helpful. A self-check-in is your chance to notice whether you’re okay — and to support yourself if you’re not.

With the constant stream of scientific information, opinions, and wellness advice circulating online, self-improvement burnout has become a very real issue. The challenge is learning to find the point where you feel comfortable being yourself, while also recognising when change might be helpful — and when it can wait.

Here, the self-check-in continues to play a role. It helps you assess whether something you’ve heard or read is something to act on now, or something to revisit later. It also encourages you to consider what else is happening in your life and how your personal, finite resources are tracking.

Sustainability is about not taking more out of a system than you put back into it. When applied to wellbeing, this matters because change requires energy, focus, and consistency.

If your emotional and cognitive resources are already stretched by modern life, even well-intentioned wellness practices can begin to cost more than they give.

Sustainable wellness involves choosing habits that match your personal resources at any given time, rather than absorbing external expectations about how we should be living. If you don’t currently have sufficient capacity, forcing change can create strain rather than support. Sometimes, sustainability simply means allowing yourself to be as you are, while trusting that change can come later.

Change is always available. Sustainable wellness reminds us that we don’t need to rush toward it — it will still be there when we’re ready.

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