Asking the Expert – making your own difference

When we want to ‘make a difference’ in our lives (get more active, get fit, lose weight, reduce stress etc), we go to an ‘expert’ for advice, guidance and, often, motivation. After all, an expert is usually someone who is highly trained and highly knowledgeable. This means that they know what to do. More importantly they know what YOU should do, what you ought to do (and of course what you have been meaning to do for some time!). When you meet with your expert what happens typically follows a common path – an approach that I call “Show and Tell”.

In simple terms here’s what these interactions usually look like:

Step 1. You meet with, and talk to an ‘expert’ about what your goal is (“I want to lose weight, get fit, reduce stress etc”)

Step 2. Then, after a conversation that varies in length from person to person, the expert first shows you what to do “Just follow these steps (and/or directions and/or advice”, and then tells you how to do it. “Make  sure you do it like this (and then this, and then this…”)

Step 3. The expert keeps showing you and telling you in different ways until you do it ‘properly’. If you do not succeed in making your goal, the typical expert response is something like

“Ok why do you think you didn’t make it?” or maybe “Ok let’s try (something different) this time”

By the way, the other thing to mention here is that if you don’t ‘make it’, the fault is almost always assumed to be yours (both by you and by the expert). Maybe you just didn’t try hard enough, or have enough will power, or enough commitment etc. Sound familiar?

Here’s the thing about this ‘Show and Tell’ approach. It is at its most effective only in Kindergarten! My children loved their Show and Tell sessions but have long since outgrown them and moved on to more appropriate learning methods. However, in my field of exercise, wellness and physical activity, Show and Tell still reigns supreme. The kind of three-step approach I describe above, is based on the assumption that if you simply provide intelligent people with important and understandable information about the benefits of healthy behaviors (or, more frequently, the risks of unhealthy behaviors) then they will take this to heart and ‘just do it’ (with apologies to Nike!). There is no question that, assuming the information and instruction provided is accurate, this really would be a highly effective approach

if only people would do it!

However history has shown us that, even with the ever-increasing availability of health and wellness information in the media and on the internet, more people are overweight and sedentary than ever before. It is clear that knowing what to do, or having an expert show and tell us what to do simply does not work – but we continue to ask them anyway!

This is not the fault of the expert, who has been through some highly demanding academic training that prepares them to offer their own thinking and expertise to the client as to what they ‘should’ do. It’s also not the fault of the client – who is prepared to believe that the expert knows best – after all that’s why they are an expert! The tendency is therefore that the expert will think (indeed, are trained to think) they know best for the client and the client will think that the expert knows best for them – that is, after all, why they went to him/her in the first place. No-one is ‘at fault’ here – it is fault neutral! However …..

It is time for a new way of thinking

Making your own difference: You are a singular and unique individual on this planet, you have your own goals and aspirations, your own motivations and inspirations, your own wants and your own needs your own ‘angels’ and your own ‘demons’. Here’s that new thinking – try this on for size!

- YOU are the expert on you -

No-one knows you better than you – no-one! You know instinctively this must be true, so think about what logically follows. If you pass over responsibility for yourself to someone else – to someone who knows only what they see of you, maybe has only just met you for the first time – to someone who can only work with what is merely apparent to them – how can you realistically expect something important and lasting to happen for you?

If you ask someone to ‘prescribe a program’ for you – and you take responsibility for doing the program. What you are actually doing is taking responsibility for THAT person’s program – for someone else’s stuff! After all they made it up FOR you. If and when you start, or – like so many others before, re-start such a program – you do so more in hope than expectation. This is no way to achieve a goal. Experts know all about ‘cause and effect’ – this is their training, this is their knowledge. They know that “If you do ‘this’, then ‘this’ will happen”. However they don’t know YOU – they haven’t been educated in YOU – the don’t have a degree in YOU.

We hear a lot these days about ‘personal responsibility’ – for health, for being active etc, and we hear about how it’s all down to us. At base, this is true of course – responsibility for our health is, in the main, ours. Taking responsibility is a good and desirable thing, but if you do take it, you’d better make sure it’s responsibility for something that’s yours – not someone else’s idea of what you should or shouldn’t do.

This is the new thinking – where you go from here is all about what’s important to YOU

I have also written about the related concept of  ”Thinking Different” in a series of  previous posts – check out http://telosity.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/get-smart-look-yourself-in-the-i/

More later

Well, Well, Well,

body mind spirit

 

Building ‘Wellness Cultures’  in Senior communities

In recent years ‘Wellness’ has received much attention and the benefits of adopting what has come to be known as a ‘wellness lifestyle’ has been confirmed and reconfirmed from a wide variety of ‘evidence-based’ research. There can be little doubt that for senior residential and retirement communities a wellness program, appropriately designed, can elicit a whole range of behavioral, health and even economic benefits for the facility, the residents and the facility staff.

Wellness, however is not just about ‘exercising’, ‘eating right’ or taking your medications. It is also, in its fullest expression, not a single ‘program’, or even a collection of separate ‘programs’. Wellness is actually a very broad and somewhat indefinable concept which can be thought of as a journey rather than a destination, a process rather than a product. It is also often described as consisting a number of diverse but linked ‘dimensions’, including physical, emotional, social, vocational, spiritual and intellectual.  I will be writing more about these later but suffice to say that when these dimensions are appropriately implemented, merged and developed, a comprehensive evidence-based Wellness ‘Program’ evolves into a Wellness ‘Culture’, something that becomes an integral and positive part of the community in which it resides.

For any successful senior residential facility manager, resident quality of life is surely at the top of their goals list. Increased quality of life means greater resident satisfaction, morale and consequently less resident turnover (plus, it makes management both feel and look good!). From a ‘bottom line’ perspective, a successfully implemented, values-based wellness program will reduce operating costs, reduce health care costs and be a major PR focus for attracting new residents.

Quality of life is the key to a successful community

Quality of life however depends on more than just bricks and mortar, more than providing fine accommodation, meals and services – it even depends on more than good health care provision, which traditionally has a ‘deficit-based’ or ‘reactive’ approach to health (fix the bad stuff). Our Intrinsic Wellness^TM approach is founded on an ‘asset based’ or ‘proactive’ philosophy (increase the good stuff). It is build, developed and guided in great part on participants choosing and becoming involved in activities that are important to them, that are intrinsically meaningful to them, and in which they have ‘ownership’.

I well remember many years ago as a young man being ‘the wellness bloke’ (it was in the UK and they use strange words like ‘bloke’ over there. In the US I would have been the wellness ‘guy’). Anyway to continue with my story – I would go into the facility or residence, do my ‘wellness program’ (usually an exercise class of some kind) and then leave – taking my ‘wellness’ with me! Before my arrival – and after my departure – things went on much as they did before! These days the awareness of wellness is certainly much greater (as, I am glad to tell you, is mine!), but it is still a word – and an approach much misunderstood and I could say also, much maligned, or at least underestimated. For example, I have experienced ‘wellness programs’ that consist only of medically oriented activities such as blood pressure screenings, or ‘taking your medication’ or ‘regular medical checkups’. Or wellness programs that consist only of ‘brown bag’ talks on various aspects of health. Of course these factors are important – but are not of themselves the whole of wellness or of a ‘wellness program’.

True wellness is determined by the informed choices or decisions a person makes about how they live their lives with vitality, meaning and purpose. A successful intrinsically derived wellness program appropriately integrated into a senior community can offer these choices to residents, and management alike. This will enable the community to become a place where quality of life is enhanced, a place of rejuvenation rather than a place where the attitude is one of ‘making the best of things’, of inevitable decline and deterioration. In effect a ‘true’ wellness approach is integral to the community rather than simply a ‘program’ that consists of set classes conducted at set times.

The AgeWELL Initiatives philosophy is to cooperatively partner with residents, facility management and staff so that we can collaboratively initiate and develop a wellness culture that becomes part of the fabric of their community, and that they are a part of.

For more details on establishing and developing an Intrinsic Wellness^TM culture in your facility, either leave a comment on this post or check out our website  http://www.agewellinitiatives.com/index.html . You may also call Dr. Wayne T Phillips @ (602) 793-0752

Getting Wellness down Pat

Pat's Wellness Wheel

A few weeks ago I was a guest on the Pat McMahon Show, AZTV 7, Cable 13. It was a lot of fun – Pat is a great guy with a sense of humor and a talent for relating to people of all kinds. I was there to talk about Active Rx a company that does excellent work with older adults – pro-actively working with them to optimize physical and wellness function.

During part of our interview Pat asked some general questions about wellness and though I was happy to answer them as best I could in the time we had, they prompted some more detailed thoughts that I wanted to share in this post

Wellness is a term that is hard to pin down – it always sounds positive of course – and perhaps people could use it accurately in a sentence – but what is it exactly? I Googled this once out of curiosity  - and not surprisingly got thousands of hits! More surprising was the whole range of wellness ’situations’ that came up – here are some examples

The Wellness Revolution: How to Make a Fortune in the Next Trillion Dollar Industry, Marketing to the New Natural Consumer: Consumer Trends Forming the Wellness Category, Wellness Foods A to Z, Reconnecting With Nature: Finding Wellness Through Restoring Your Bond With the Earth, Digestive Wellness, Mystic Healers & Medicine Shows: Blazing Trails to Wellness in the Old West and Beyond, The 22 Non-Negotiable Laws of Wellness: Feel, Think, and Live Better Than You Ever Thought Possible,

 …and my own personal favorite “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wellness “ –  LOVE to get my hands on that one! I even found a Quaker Oats Cereal with the words “An expedition into Wellness” emblazoned across the front of the packet. Wellness with fiber! Who would have thought it!

 So to go back to my original question – but what is it exactly? What is wellness? Googling clearly does not help!  

History tells us that a man by the name of Halbert Dunn is acknowledged as the first author to use the term in his book “High Level Wellness” back in the ’60s, and he defined it as follows

… an integrated method of functioning which is oriented toward maximizing the potential of which the individual is capable.  It requires that the individual maintain a continuum of balance and purposeful direction within the environment where he or she is functioning.

                                                                                                                                                                 Halbert L Dunn, M.D., Ph.D. “High Level Wellness” 1961.

When I first came across this book and this quote as a graduate student, my first reaction was “Huh?” – and I haven’t travelled too far from that reaction even now! In the world of academia where I came from ‘Wellness’ is typically described as being made up of different ‘components’, or ‘dimensions’, the number varying according to which authority you are reading. The most quoted of these components/dimensions are: ‘physical’, ’social’, ‘emotional’, ‘intellectual’, ’spiritual’, and occasionally also ‘occupational’, ‘vocational’ and ‘environmental’ – check out the Wellness Wheel image above for one Wellness ‘model’. I’ll be writing more about wellness components in later posts but the point to make here is that wellness is a broad and perhaps indefinable concept that I would say is more of a journey than a destination, more of a process than a product. The Wellness Councils of America define ‘Wellness’ as ” …the process of being aware of and actively working towards better health.”

In short Wellness is all about behavior – and lifestyle choices – and it’s always your choice.

So, loved the show – and thanks for the opportunity to Get Wellness down, Pat. Looking forward to our next conversation.