Lifestyle Change
Posted on August 11, 2012 by laura mantell, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
This article is about broadening the definition of health to include all the factors that impact wellbeing. Lifestyle is the change agent.
What’s your health and well-being vision?
Some people define their health vision largely in terms of their weight, how active they are and whether they eat nutritiously; many others include effective time management and stress reduction to their health vision.
I think it’s important for our core values and signature strengths to find expression in our everyday lives because doing so truly energizes and excites us about living. I call that optimum health or well-being. Maybe you are known for your problem-solving ability, your talent “reading” people, your creativity, your love of learning or your sense of fairness. Extensive research tells us that when we use our strengths, we feel we are living authentically and our productivity in many areas of of lives soar.
In my practice I help people make transformative lifestyle change. It may involve a career change, improving physical health, identifying pathways for creative expression or managing time and energy more effectively.
Success is achieved by working in partnership and using your inner strengths – those that have helped you succeed in life so far – to excel at work, be a good parent, a compassionate friend, a motivated tennis player, a creative writer – to reach your personal vision of optimal well-being.
The qualities that make you “you”, those that have gotten you to your unique place in life, can be applied in new ways to assist you in making lifestyle change in every way that matters to you . We’ll use what’s right – your intelligence, skills, motivations, longings, curiosity, hope, zest, courage, and much more to help you become your vision of great health and well-being.
Everyone’s health vision is different. But what we all share is the desire to be as healthy physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually as we can possibly be. That might mean tuning up your physical self or it might mean creating work that gives you a new source of meaning and engagement.
Toss aside your usual ideas about what health means, for the moment. Picture it’s a year from now, and you’ve acheived your own vision of health. You are in an airport and you bump into a schoolmate you haven’t seen in fifteen years. Who do they find in you? Try to answer these questions for yourself:
• What do I look like? What am I wearing?
• What does my energy level feel like?
• What is my work or life like?
• How do I spend my free time?
• How does it feel to be me now?
• How many people do I feel connected to?
When you answer the questions as if you already are your vision of health, you’ll feel the gap between how you live now and how you’d like to live.
The important message is that no matter how large or small the difference is between how you feel now and how you want to feel, lifestyle change is proven to profoundly improve your health and well-being.
To start, all you have to do is ask yourself: are you open to change? If so, we’ll work together on the rest.
Laura Lewis Mantell MD
212.734.2902 or info@mantells.com
