Why Managing Personal Health and Wellbeing Matters
Personal wellbeing is more than just feeling good—it's about maintaining a healthy balance across your physical, mental, and emotional health. In today's fast-paced world, particularly as you enter the workforce, understanding how to manage your wellbeing becomes essential not just for your health, but for your success and happiness.
When we talk about wellbeing, we're referring to three interconnected dimensions. Physical wellbeing involves your body's health through nutrition, exercise, and rest. Mental wellbeing relates to how you think, process information, and handle stress. Emotional wellbeing concerns how you understand and manage your feelings, build relationships, and find meaning in life.
The modern workplace presents unique challenges for young professionals. Technology means we're always connected, making it harder to switch off. Deadlines can create constant pressure. Social media adds another layer of comparison and expectation. For many entering the workforce, financial pressures, study commitments, and the demands of independent living all compete for attention and energy.
Did You Know?
According to research from Beyond Blue, 1 in 6 young Australians aged 16-24 experience an anxiety condition. Meanwhile, employees who actively manage their wellbeing are 27% more likely to report excellent performance at work.
This is why learning to manage your personal health and wellbeing isn't just another box to tick—it's a vital life skill. When your wellbeing is strong, you think more clearly, perform better, build stronger relationships, and handle challenges more effectively. Understanding how to protect and enhance your wellbeing now will serve you throughout your entire career and life. This unit will give you practical frameworks and strategies to take control of your health and create sustainable habits that support your goals.
Understanding Your Health and Wellbeing Framework
Before you can develop an effective strategy for managing your wellbeing, you need to understand the framework—the factors, techniques, resources, and responsibilities that shape how we maintain health in both work and personal life.
What Affects Our Wellbeing?
Wellbeing doesn't exist in isolation. It's influenced by numerous factors in both your work environment and personal life. In the workplace, these might include your workload and deadlines, the physical conditions of your workspace, relationships with colleagues and supervisors, job security, and workplace culture. A supportive, respectful environment where communication flows openly tends to promote wellbeing, whilst toxic cultures, unclear expectations, or excessive demands can undermine it.
Outside of work, factors affecting your wellbeing include sleep quality and quantity, nutrition and hydration, physical activity levels, financial pressures, relationship dynamics with family and friends, and major life changes such as moving house or ending relationships. It's important to recognise that these factors don't operate independently—stress at work can affect your sleep, which impacts your energy levels, which makes it harder to exercise or eat well, creating a cycle that can be difficult to break.
Work Environment
Workload, culture, relationships, physical workspace
Rest & Recovery
Sleep quality, breaks, downtime, relaxation
Nutrition & Activity
Diet, hydration, exercise, physical health
Social Connections
Relationships, support networks, communication
Think About ThisTake a moment to reflect: What causes you the most stress or drains your energy during a typical day? Is it related to work, relationships, finances, or something else? Identifying these pressure points is the first step towards managing them effectively.
Techniques for Maintaining Wellbeing
Physical Health Strategies
Your body is the foundation of your wellbeing. Physical health strategies focus on the basics that keep your body functioning optimally.
Regular exercise doesn't mean you need to become a gym enthusiast—even 30 minutes of walking most days can significantly improve your mood, energy, and sleep quality. Physical activity releases endorphins, reduces stress hormones, and helps you sleep better.
Nutrition plays a crucial role too. Eating regular, balanced meals with plenty of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and protein helps stabilise your blood sugar and energy levels throughout the day. Skipping meals or relying on caffeine and sugary snacks might provide short-term energy, but leads to crashes that affect your concentration and mood.
Rest and sleep are non-negotiable. Most young adults need 7–9 hours of quality sleep per night. Sleep deprivation affects everything from your immune system to your ability to regulate emotions and make decisions. Creating a consistent sleep routine, limiting screen time before bed, and ensuring your bedroom is dark and cool can dramatically improve sleep quality.
Mental Health Strategies
Mindfulness & Meditation
Help you become more aware of your thoughts and feelings without being overwhelmed by them. Even five minutes of mindful breathing can reset your stress response and improve focus.
Journalling
Provides an outlet for processing emotions and experiences. Writing about challenges you're facing or things you're grateful for can provide perspective and reduce anxiety. It's also a useful tool for tracking patterns in your mood and identifying triggers.
Work-Life Balance
Means setting boundaries between work time and personal time. This might involve turning off work notifications after hours, scheduling activities you enjoy, or learning to say no to additional commitments when you're already stretched thin.
Real-Life Example
Marcus, 22, started his first full-time retail management role and quickly felt overwhelmed. Working irregular hours, he was skipping meals, sleeping poorly, and feeling constantly anxious. After speaking with his supervisor, Marcus started taking proper lunch breaks, using a meditation app for ten minutes each morning, and establishing a firm bedtime routine. Within three weeks, he noticed significant improvements in his energy, mood, and ability to handle workplace challenges. The key wasn't making huge changes—it was consistently applying small, sustainable strategies.
Building Your Personal Health and Wellbeing Strategy
Now that you understand the factors affecting wellbeing and the resources available, it's time to develop your own personalised strategy. A wellbeing strategy isn't a rigid plan—it's a flexible framework that helps you maintain balance and respond to challenges effectively.
What Is a Personal Health and Wellbeing Strategy?
A personal health and wellbeing strategy is your roadmap for maintaining and improving your physical, mental, and emotional health. It identifies your current state, sets goals for where you want to be, outlines specific actions you'll take, and establishes how you'll track progress. Think of it as a living document that evolves as your circumstances change.
The most effective strategies are built on honest self-reflection. Consider your current habits: How much sleep do you typically get? How often do you exercise? What causes you stress? How do you currently cope with pressure? What brings you joy and energy? Understanding your starting point helps you set realistic, meaningful goals.
Setting SMART Goals
Vague intentions like "get healthier" or "stress less" rarely lead to lasting change. Instead, use the SMART framework to create goals that are clear and achievable:
Specific
Clearly define what you want to achieve. "Exercise more" becomes "Go for a 30-minute walk three times per week"
Measurable
Include criteria to track progress. "I'll know I've succeeded when I've completed 12 walks this month"
Achievable
Ensure the goal is realistic given your current circumstances, resources, and commitments
Relevant
The goal should align with your values and genuinely improve your wellbeing
Time-bound
Set a deadline or timeframe. "I'll do this for the next four weeks, then reassess"
When developing your strategy, start with 2–3 goals rather than trying to overhaul everything at once. You might focus on one physical health goal (like improving sleep), one mental wellbeing goal (like starting a daily mindfulness practice), and one social or lifestyle goal (like connecting with friends weekly). Small, consistent changes are more sustainable than dramatic transformations.
Remember to consider your personal strengths and triggers. If you know that you struggle with motivation in the mornings, schedule exercise for evenings instead. If social support helps you stay accountable, involve friends or family in your goals. Tailor your strategy to work with your personality and circumstances, not against them.
Putting Your Strategy Into Practice
Scheduling and Implementation
A strategy only works if you actually follow through. This means translating your goals into specific, scheduled activities. If your goal is to exercise three times weekly, block out specific times in your calendar just as you would for work or study commitments. Treat these appointments with yourself as non-negotiable.
Use tools that work for you—this might be a physical planner, a digital calendar, a habit-tracking app, or a simple checklist. The key is consistency and visibility. When activities are scheduled and visible, you're far more likely to complete them than if they remain vague intentions.
Build in accountability mechanisms. This might mean setting phone reminders, putting your gym clothes out the night before, or arranging to exercise with a friend. Make healthy choices the easy choice by preparing in advance—cook healthy meals in batches, keep healthy snacks accessible, set your bedroom up for good sleep by charging your phone outside the room.
Think About ThisWhat small change could you make this week to improve your balance between work, rest, and activities you enjoy? Could you establish a wind-down routine before bed? Schedule a lunch break away from your desk? Commit to one evening per week without screens?
Sharing Your Plan
There's power in sharing your wellbeing goals with others. When you tell someone about your plans, you create accountability—you're more likely to follow through when others know what you're working towards. Research shows that people who share their goals with supportive friends are significantly more likely to achieve them.
Consider who might support your wellbeing journey. This could include a supervisor or mentor at work, particularly if your strategy involves workplace adjustments like flexible hours or regular breaks. It might include your trainer or assessor if you're studying, friends or family who can provide encouragement, or a health professional like a GP or counsellor who can offer expert guidance.
Monitoring Your Wellbeing
Creating a wellbeing strategy is just the beginning—you need to actively monitor how it's working. This doesn't mean obsessively measuring every detail, but rather developing awareness of indicators that show whether your wellbeing is improving, stable, or declining.
Why Tracking Progress Matters
When you monitor your wellbeing regularly, you can spot patterns and trends that might not be obvious day-to-day. You might notice that your sleep quality drops when you work late several nights in a row, or that you feel more anxious during weeks when you skip exercise. These insights help you understand what works for you and what doesn't, allowing you to adjust your strategy before small issues become big problems.
Tracking also provides motivation. Seeing evidence of progress—like consistently better sleep scores, improved mood ratings, or successfully completed activities—reinforces that your efforts are worthwhile. On difficult days, you can look back at your progress and remind yourself how far you've come.
Personal Indicators to Monitor
Everyone's indicators will be slightly different, but here are some common measures that provide insight into your wellbeing:
Sleep Quality
Hours of sleep, how rested you feel upon waking, how many times you wake during the night
Energy Levels
Your physical and mental energy throughout the day, times when you feel most alert or fatigued
Mood & Emotions
General emotional state, how quickly you bounce back from setbacks, frequency of negative thoughts
Focus & Productivity
Ability to concentrate, complete tasks efficiently, think clearly under pressure
Physical Health
Exercise frequency, nutrition quality, how your body feels, any persistent aches or illness
Relationships
Quality of interactions, whether you're maintaining connections, feeling supported
You don't need to track all of these all the time. Choose 2–3 indicators that are most relevant to your goals. If you're working on improving sleep, track your sleep hours and quality. If managing stress is your priority, monitor your mood and stress levels. Keep it simple enough that tracking doesn't become another source of stress.
Adapting to New Circumstances
The Modern Workforce: Constant Change
One of the realities of today's work environment is continuous change. Technology evolves rapidly, bringing new systems to learn and new ways of working. Artificial intelligence and automation are transforming job roles. Remote work and flexible arrangements have changed how and where we work. Economic pressures create uncertainty, whilst social media amplifies comparison and expectation.
For young professionals, these changes can feel overwhelming. You might start a role only to have the responsibilities shift, the software change, or the team restructure. Study requirements evolve. Personal circumstances shift—relationships begin or end, living situations change, financial pressures increase or ease. All of these changes impact your wellbeing, often in ways that aren't immediately obvious.
The key is recognising that your wellbeing strategy needs to adapt alongside these changes. What worked six months ago might not work now. The exercise routine that fitted your previous schedule might not suit your current commitments. The stress-management techniques that helped during study might need adjusting for workplace pressures.
Think About ThisWhy is it better to update your strategy proactively than to ignore mounting stress or burnout? Consider the difference between making small adjustments regularly versus waiting until you're completely overwhelmed.
Recognising When Adjustment Is Needed
Warning Signs
- Persistent tiredness despite adequate sleep
- Increased irritability or mood swings
- Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
- Withdrawing from social activities you previously enjoyed
- Physical symptoms like headaches or digestive issues
- Relying more heavily on unhealthy coping mechanisms
These indicators don't necessarily mean you're failing—they mean your circumstances have changed and your strategy needs to catch up. This is completely normal and expected. Life isn't static, so your wellbeing approach shouldn't be either.
Real-Life Example
Sarah, 24, had a solid wellbeing routine that worked perfectly during her first year in marketing. She exercised before work, meal-prepped on Sundays, and maintained good boundaries. When she was promoted to team leader, suddenly her mornings were filled with early meetings and her weekends with catching up on work. Her old routine fell apart, and she felt like she was failing. After recognising the issue, Sarah adjusted her strategy: she switched to lunchtime walks, used a meal delivery service twice weekly, and blocked out Friday evenings as non-negotiable personal time. Her new routine looked different, but it worked for her new circumstances.
Reviewing and Updating Your Strategy
The Power of Regular Reviews
A wellbeing strategy isn't a "set and forget" document. It requires regular review and adjustment. Think of it like maintaining a car—regular servicing prevents breakdowns and keeps everything running smoothly. The same principle applies to your wellbeing.
Plan to review your strategy formally at least every 3-6 months, or whenever significant changes occur in your life or work. A review involves stepping back and asking: What's working well? What isn't working? What's changed in my circumstances? What new challenges have emerged? What do I need more or less of?
During a review, look at the indicators you've been tracking. Are they showing improvement, stability, or decline? Have you been consistently following your planned activities, or have certain things fallen away? If you've stopped doing something, why? Is it no longer relevant, is it too difficult, or have you just lost motivation?
Initial Strategy
Develop your first wellbeing plan based on current circumstances and goals
Implementation
Put your strategy into practice, tracking indicators and building habits
Regular Check-ins
Weekly or monthly brief reviews to stay on track and address issues early
Formal Review
Quarterly deep review assessing what's working and what needs adjustment
Strategy Update
Revise goals and activities based on new circumstances and insights gained
Continue Cycle
Return to implementation with your updated strategy, then repeat the cycle
Seeking External Perspective
Sometimes it's hard to see our own patterns clearly. This is where seeking perspective from others becomes valuable. A mentor can offer insights based on their own experience managing wellbeing in the workplace. A health professional like a GP or psychologist can identify issues you might not recognise yourself and suggest evidence-based strategies. Friends and family who know you well can often spot changes in your behaviour or mood before you do.
Don't wait until you're in crisis to seek support. Regular check-ins with a trusted person—whether that's a monthly coffee with a mentor or a quarterly appointment with your GP—can help you stay on track and catch issues early. Remember that asking for help isn't a sign of weakness; it's a sign of self-awareness and maturity.
Skills and Knowledge for Long-Term Wellbeing
Beyond specific strategies, developing foundational knowledge and skills supports your wellbeing throughout your career and life. These competencies help you respond effectively to whatever challenges arise.
Physical Wellbeing Techniques
Understanding how your body works helps you make informed choices. Regular physical activity strengthens your cardiovascular system, improves mood through endorphin release, and helps manage stress. Even moderate exercise like walking, swimming, or cycling brings benefits. Proper hydration supports cognitive function and energy—aim for around 2 litres of water daily, more if you're active or in hot weather. Quality sleep allows your body to repair and your brain to consolidate learning and memories. Establishing a consistent sleep-wake cycle, even on weekends, helps regulate your body's internal clock.
Mental Wellbeing Techniques
Mental wellbeing involves developing skills to manage your thoughts and emotions effectively. Mindfulness—paying attention to the present moment without judgement—reduces rumination and anxiety. Cognitive techniques help you identify and challenge unhelpful thought patterns. Emotional regulation skills help you experience feelings without being controlled by them. Building resilience means developing the capacity to recover from setbacks, maintaining perspective, and seeing challenges as opportunities to grow. Regular self-reflection through journalling or quiet contemplation helps you understand your patterns and needs.
Time Management Tools
Effective time management reduces stress and creates space for wellbeing activities. Prioritisation techniques like the Eisenhower Matrix help you distinguish between urgent and important tasks. Time-blocking involves scheduling specific time periods for different activities, ensuring important tasks don't get crowded out. To-do lists, when used effectively, reduce mental clutter and provide satisfaction as you complete tasks. Learning to estimate task duration accurately helps you plan realistically. Setting boundaries—like designated work hours or screen-free times—protects time for rest and relationships.
Understanding Policies and Procedures
Workplace policies exist to protect your wellbeing. Familiarise yourself with your organisation's health and safety policies, including procedures for reporting hazards or concerns. Understand your entitlements around leave—personal/carer's leave, annual leave, long service leave—and don't hesitate to use them when needed. Know the processes for requesting flexible work arrangements, accessing EAP services, or raising concerns about workload or workplace culture.
Legislative Awareness
Under Australian WHS legislation, employers must manage risks to psychological health just as they do physical risks. This includes managing excessive workloads, providing adequate training and resources, fostering respectful workplace cultures, and addressing bullying or harassment. Workers have the right to raise concerns about psychological risks without fear of reprisal. Fair Work laws protect employees from adverse action when they exercise workplace rights, including rights related to health and safety.
Your Wellbeing, Your Responsibility
Throughout this guide, you've explored what wellbeing means, the factors that influence it, strategies for maintaining it, and systems for monitoring and adjusting your approach. You've learned about your rights and responsibilities under Australian workplace legislation, the resources available to support you, and the practical skills that enable long-term wellbeing.
Now comes the most important part: taking action. Knowledge alone doesn't create change—application does. The difference between someone who thrives and someone who struggles often isn't ability or circumstances, but rather the consistent application of wellbeing practices, even when life gets busy or challenging.
Start Small
You don't need to transform everything overnight. Choose one or two areas to focus on first and build from there
Be Consistent
Small actions repeated regularly create lasting change. Consistency matters more than perfection
Seek Support
You don't have to do this alone. Build a network of people who support your wellbeing goals
Stay Flexible
Life changes constantly. Review and adjust your strategy regularly to ensure it continues to serve you
Remember that managing your wellbeing isn't a one-time project to complete and move on from—it's an ongoing practice that evolves throughout your life and career. There will be times when you're managing well and times when you struggle. Both are normal. What matters is having the awareness, knowledge, and skills to recognise what's happening and respond effectively.
Your wellbeing affects everything else in your life: your work performance, your relationships, your capacity to learn and grow, your enjoyment of daily life, and your ability to pursue your goals. By investing time and attention in managing your health and wellbeing now, you're building a foundation for long-term success and satisfaction.
The strategies and frameworks in this guide provide a starting point, but ultimately, you are the expert on your own wellbeing. Trust yourself to know what you need, experiment with different approaches, learn from what works and what doesn't, and build a wellbeing practice that's sustainable for you.
Take the First Step Today
Your wellbeing is not a luxury or an afterthought
It's a fundamental requirement for thriving in work and life. It's not selfish to prioritise your health: it's essential. And it's never too late to start.
Your Action Plan
1
Reflect
Spend 15 minutes thinking about your current wellbeing. What's working? What needs attention?
2
Choose
Select 1-2 areas to focus on first. Don't try to change everything at once.
3
Set Goals
Create SMART goals for your chosen areas. Make them specific and achievable.
4
Schedule
Block time in your calendar for wellbeing activities. Treat them as important appointments.
5
Share
Tell someone about your goals. Accountability increases your chances of success.
6
Begin
Start today with one small action. Progress begins with a single step.
Key Resources to Get Started
Beyond Blue
1300 22 4636 – 24/7 support for anxiety and depression
Lifeline
13 11 14 – 24/7 crisis support and suicide prevention
Headspace
Mental health support for young people aged 12-25, with centres across Australia
Your GP
First point of contact for health concerns, referrals, and Mental Health Care Plans
"The greatest wealth is health. Invest in yourself—your future self will thank you."
You now have the knowledge, frameworks, and tools to take control of your personal health and wellbeing. The journey begins with a single decision: to prioritise yourself. Make that decision today, and commit to building a life where you don't just survive, but truly thrive.