Well-IQ: The Nine Dimensions of Wellness Content Map

Most health advice treats you as one problem to solve — fix your sleep, fix your diet, fix your stress. But wellbeing doesn't break down that easily. Your finances affect your sleep. Your sense of purpose affects your immune system. Your creative life affects how well you recover from setbacks. The dimensions interact, and a framework that only looks at a single one will keeps missing the underlying cause.

Well-IQ is my attempt to holistically map the entire territory of wellness — nine dimensions, each with its own episode of Wellness Rewired and its own essay (links below). Start with the introduction, or jump straight to whichever dimension needs attention.

If you’d like to objectively learn where to begin, Take the free Well-IQ assessment — it takes a few minutes and gives you a real starting point instead of just a guess.

Series Introduction — A Map, a Compass, and a Creative Spark
Wellness isn't a single fixed goal — it's nine moving, interacting parts you can check in on separately, using this framework as both a map of where you are and a compass for where to focus next. I open the series with the moment I realized my own wellness was out of balance: my Intellectual and Financial dimensions were thriving on paper while my Physical dimension quietly failed — and took everything else down with it.
Listen to the episode · Read the essay

Physical
Where you'll feel first if something's off — energy, sleep, the basic capacity to move through your day without running on empty. Not gym memberships or kale smoothies: movement, food as raw building material, sexual health, and sleep as the overnight repair mechanism.
Listen to the episode · Read the essay

Emotional
How you handle the day when it doesn't go your way — whether you can name what you're feeling instead of just pushing through. I learned this one the hard way: when my Physical dimension collapsed, my emotional regulation went with it. Four skills, not four feelings: recognition, regulation, resilience, use.
Listen to the episode · Read the essay

Intellectual
Whether your mind is curious, or just efficient — intellectual wellness is the difference between consuming information and actually thinking through it. I once lost half my memories of a cross country trip on I-80, stuck on a question about "junk DNA."
Listen to the episode · Read the essay

Existential
The question underneath your to-do list: what you're actually here for, and what it costs you to not know. Standing on the bluffs at Bodega Bay, I asked these questions of myself — there's no tracker for this one, but a 2019 JAMA study found purpose is associated with longevity.
Listen to the episode · Read the essay

Social
Who comforts you when your life goes sideways — and who's costing you more than they give back. My story here was over coffee at a shop tucked into the woods in Chapel Hill; the research says strong ties make you about 50% more likely to survive over time, on par with quitting smoking.
Listen to the episode · Read the essay

Occupational & Purpose
Whether the work fits you, or you're running someone else's script. A clinical-trial simulation lab taught me that a job can look fine on paper the same way a protocol does — until you stress-test it by living.
Listen to the episode · Read the essay

Financial
Not your net worth — the physiological cost of financial uncertainty, and what your money decisions actually reveal about security and health. I watched a couple at Weaver Street Market argue over a CSA box in a way that was clearly about more than produce.
Listen to the episode · Read the essay

Environmental
The spaces you didn't necessarily choose but must live inside, and how much they contribute or quell your baseline stress. My story here starts with fog over Dillon Beach, redwoods at Muir Woods while reflecting: am I safe here?
Listen to the episode · Read the essay

Creative
Whether you have an outlet where you create something instead of just consuming — and what those activities do for a nervous system. In the final episode, I reflect on the night I finally sang, alone in my home studio, off-key, without books or my career to hide behind, teaching me creativity isn't decoration. It's how we metabolize uncertainty.
Listen to the episode · Read the essay

Want to see where you actually stand across all nine? Take the free Well-IQ assessment — it takes a few minutes and gives you a real starting point instead of a guess.