Growth is
essential when it comes health and wellness professionals. The key to this is
growing in not just one area, multiple areas.
For many people it is quite easy to make one area your primary focus and
then stray away from others. The areas of focus that I am referring to are physical,
spiritual, and psychological. It is very important for health and wellness
professionals to develop themselves in all of these areas because that is
something that they are going to preach and project off onto patients. In order
to be truly healthy, a fine balance of stability in all three areas is
required. These three areas are not at all three areas, they truly reflect on
one another, and go hand in hand in the development of each other in the end. I
have noticed that lately in my life it has been challenging to gain balance in
my spirituality. The reason for this is because I just have not made time to
develop myself in this category, and the other areas of focus have suffered
from this as well.
When
it comes to my wellness in these categories I think that rating them by letter
grade would paint the best portrayal for my self-image of wellness in each
given area. My physical being has lacked as of late, and I truly need to focus
on making time to condition my body, with that said I would give my physical
grade of a B-. My spirituality has been next to non-existent, so I would have
to give myself a D. Lastly, my psychological presence has been very consistent.
I have always been very strong willed, and stable. I would have to rate myself
an A- in this area.
I
have a distinct goal for myself to use each area to grow off of one another. I
think that by getting back in the gym on a regular basis will allow for me to
certainly grow physically, but it will also heighten my psychological stability
by releasing the tension within from outside stressors. To tie this altogether,
my wife and I are going to join a church that is down the street from my house
to gain perspective on things that may not necessarily be within my control.
This will help my grow spiritually, which will also create that higher
awareness and quality of life by twining together the physical and
psychological with that spiritual gain that I have been missing for so long.
As
far as practices, the physical comes very easy to me as it does to most. I will
start my day by going for at least a one mile jog to create that physicality
early in the morning. On top of this, I will then go lift weights following the
work day before I come home at night. For spirituality, as stated, my wife and
I are going to join a church for starters. The second practice ties into all
three categories in my mind, and that is yoga. I am going to do yoga twice a
week, every week. Lastly, I have decided that once a day, I am going to find a
dark and quiet place to reflect on my thoughts, and then just clear my mind,
and try to become one with my body by bring all of my senses together.
I
have started to implement my plan already by doing a couple of different things
to ensure that I am staying motivated. The first thing that I have done is
placed sticky notes all around my house and in my office with motivational
quotes and questions on them. This has proven useful for the fact that when I
do not feel like proceeding with what I have set out to do for that day, I happen
to turn the corner and see one of those notes and it reminds me of why I
started this process of growth in the first place. To help with all three areas
of focus, I have also decided to quit drinking alcoholic beverages altogether.
It has been 3 weeks, and I truly feel great thus far. I am monitoring my
progression/regression by measuring my physical endurance, as well as my stress
levels on a weekly basis. I am doing this because in order to set a goal and
achieve a goal, it has to be written down, and it also has to be tracked to gain
perspective on progression. I think once I am into my new lifestyle for one
month, it will become second nature to me again, and I will be able to continue
to grow as a student and a practitioner of health and wellness.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteGreat post!!! I feel that for a health and wellness professional to be the most beneficial to the patient they must have an overall sense of health and well-being themselves. You would not want to go to a cardiologist who was greatly overweight and who always smelled of smoke, as the patient, you would feel that this person was not even able to follow their own medical advice and therefore how or why should you. I feel that overall health and wellness requires a holistic view point. I think you have to look at yourself as a whole and not in separate pieces. You must have an understanding that all aspects of your health affect the other and therefore none is more important thent he other.