Health
If It Only Was That Simple: The Illusion Of Explanatory Depth
When faced with overwhelming, frightening and ultimately complex problems we tend to search for simplistic answers. Perhaps this is an adaptive attempt originating in the deep part of our brain known as the amygdala, where fear triggers our survival instincts (and our flight/fight/freeze response). In our ancestral days near our cave, taking action to freeze, run or fight like…
Lessons From Albert Bandura For Wellness Coaches
“Self-efficacy or belief in one’s ability to perform determines whether behavior will be initiated, how much effort will be expended, and whether the effort will be sustained.”
"People with high assurance in their capabilities approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than as threats to be avoided." Albert Bandura
From ancient philosophers…
Maybe The Last Heart Attack
Each year over one million Americans experience a heart attack, about one every thirty seconds. CNN produced a program recently about this that has everyone talking: “Dr. Sanjay Gupta Reports: The Last Heart Attack.” (http://sanjayguptamd.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/29/sanjay-gupta-reports-the-last-heart-attack/) (watch the entire program while it’s archived here)
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Following the odyssey of former President Bill Clinton and two…
Meaning And Purpose: A Key To Wellness
Those in the helping professions have long observed that people who have a sense of meaning and purpose appear to do better with their lives in general and their health in particular. Research over the last ten years is showing us that our observations were spot on. A clear, if even very simple, sense of one’s values, meaning and purpose…
New 2nd Edition Of Wellness Coaching For Lasting Lifestyle Change
In 2007 Wellness Coaching For Lasting Lifestyle Change became the first comprehensive health and wellness coaching book published. Written expressly for the practitioner, it quickly became the foundational book of the field and has remained so to this day. Updated in 2009 it has served as the go-to book for independent coaches, health care and wellness professionals, and is often…
Pre-diabetes – A Wellness Opportunity To Help
There is an opportunity for wellness and wellness coaching to impact the lives of millions of people in a life-saving way. 79 million Americans are estimated to have a condition called pre-diabetes. Usually symptom free, without intervention they will develop full-fledged Type II diabetes within ten years and possibly endure physical damage to their heart and circulatory system along the…
Process Coaching: Yes, Coaches “Do Emotions”
How can we walk with our clients through the landscape of emotion and stay on solid and fertile ground? How can we avoid the mud, or even the quicksand of faux-counseling/psychotherapy? We want our clients to harvest the insights and benefit from the emotional release that comes telling their story, while feeling heard, understood, and even affirmed. We want them…
Productive Exploration In Wellness Coaching
How can we tell if we have or have not done enough exploration with a wellness coaching client? Inadequate exploration usually results in poorly selected and set goals. In the rush to do “goal-setting” clients sometimes do so without considering all aspects of their life, health and wellbeing first. Many times I have seen a client insightfully discover that a…
Real Balance GLOBAL – Taking Wellness Coaching To China
What The World Health Organization dubbed “Lifestyle Disease” is a global phenomenon. The increase of non-communicable disease is going up the fastest in what is sometimes called the developing countries of the world. “Twenty-five years ago, the number of people with diabetes in China was less than one percent. Today, China has more than 114 million people suffering from the…
Retreat, Review, Renew and Rewrite The New Year Now
The ancient Celtic Calendar rings in the New Year at the very end of October with the holiday of Samhain. Looking at a Northern European year’s climate through largely agricultural eyes this makes perfect sense. The last of the harvest is done and it’s time to prepare for winter and a long rest for the land.
For the self-reflective…
Seven Expressions Of Courageous Coaching
Courageous coaching! What would “courageous coaching” look like for you? There are many ways to approach the subject of courage in coaching. As a trainer of wellness & health coaches here are some of the ways I would like to see courage show up for the coaches we educate.
1. The Courage To Stand For NCRW- Naturally Creative, Resourceful…
Stress Coaching Part I: A False Sense Of Urgency
How often do you find yourself and others around you at work and at home operating on a false sense of urgency? How often do we take action before we have all the facts, or make a decision just to relieve our anxiety? See if this sounds familiar? On Thursday, a deadline is set for Friday for a report nobody…
Stress Coaching Part II – Recovery From Stress
What we refer to as “stress” is quite a mystery. Ill-defined by most everyone except psychological researchers, we ascribe devastating levels of power to it, and often feel helpless to cope with it. We know that stress is linked to worsening health, greater risk of illness and the exacerbation of most any condition we find ourselves with.
Wellness and…
Ten Ways To Coach Through Barriers To Change – Part Two – Inner Barriers To Lifestyle Improvement – II by Dr. Michael Arloski.
6. Practice Extreme Self-Care
Many times coaches and clients co-create a wonderful set of self-care action steps that the client knows will help them to be healthier and well. Then, on the next coaching appointment, the client confesses that they held back from doing almost all of the actions agreed upon. The coaching conversation then reveals that the client…
The Bigger Mindset Shift: Waking Up To Lasting Lifestyle Improvement
Just back from a whirlwind of professional travel, I’m struck by a pervasive awakening that our health is largely behavioral, and if we truly want to improve health worldwide, we must seek methods that support success at lasting lifestyle improvement. At the Lifestyle Medicine 2015 Conference http://lifestylemedicine2015.org, where I presented, we saw that the medical profession is embracing wellness…
The Challenge of Being Well And Being Male
Living a healthy lifestyle presents challenges for everyone, but what are men, in particular, up against when it comes to being well? Stereotypes aside, let’s look at what we know about men’s health during Men's Health Week 2020.
In January 2012 a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, published in the Journal of the American Medical…
The Health And Wellness Coach’s Value Proposition
Every potential coaching client is looking to have the question ‘What’s in it for me?’ answered. Every coach needs to be able to succinctly answer that question by conveying what they will provide for their client.
Potential coaching clients are rarely familiar with what a coach, especially a health & wellness coach, can do for them. They are used…
The Optimistic Advantage in Being Well
Considering how happy most folks are to see 2011 fading in the rear-view mirror, it’s amazing what a collective sense of optimism there is about 2012. An Associated Press-GfK survey found that 62 percent of those surveyed are optimistic about what 2012 will bring America, and 78 percent were personally optimistic about the new year. (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70925.html) This validated…
Time Affluence: What New Findings Mean For The Wellness Coach
No matter how intensely we human beings think about time, the Earth rotates on its axis in the same twenty-four hour cycle. Yet time is all about our perception of it, and far too frequently we view it as a scarce commodity. Time scarcity thinking is just as detrimental to our health and wellbeing as financial scarcity thinking, maybe even…
Wellness Coaching And Chronic Lung Disease
It surprises many people to discover that the third leading cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease and cancer, is chronic lower respiratory diseases. These conditions take twice as many lives annually as does diabetes. Yet, unless COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), or another such disease is part of your life or family, the seriousness…
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