We all know that social media has warped our ways of viewing our bodies and our perceptions of beauty. And while it may seem like getting in better physical shape will make you feel better or more accepted, the truth is that doing so could possibly make you feel so much worse than you did before.

By definition, wellness is the state of being healthy in body and mind — there are six different aspects of this. Aside from physical wellness, there's also social, emotional, environmental, intellectual, and spiritual wellness that we need to be assessing when we look at how healthy we seem to be. All of these are equally important, but we need to be addressing our emotional and social wellness far more than we address our physical wellness.

The way that American culture has a focal point of looking at a person's physical wellness as an overall statement of their health is tearing down our emotional health, hurting us more overall. We have been conditioned to stress so much on how our bodies look that it can send us into a spiral of anxiety and depression, which can hurt our relationships with other people, not to mention our relationship with ourselves.

These ideal body standards portrayed in the media lead people to fad diets, and in the worst cases, people develop eating disorders because their body confidence has been damaged so severely.

More recently, we have been seeing all different body types in the media, which is a very good thing. However, it's not enough because young minds have already been taught that their bodies aren't enough the way that they are. Younger generations may be a little bit better off, but for significant changes to be seen we all need to take care of our brains and mental health first and foremost.

I say this because in my own experience if you aren't just generally happy with how things are going in your head, changing how you look won't make you feel any better. We need to practice self-love before anything because if you become comfortable in your skin, every aspect of wellness will begin to fall together.

I'll also be the first to admit that self-love and acceptance WILL NOT happen overnight. It takes practice and constant work. Start with learning what bothers you in your head first, and write self-affirmations that combat your negative thoughts and read them when those thoughts arise.

We need to love ourselves and love each other, and we can all be well in our own unique ways.