Mindfulness
“Coaching for a Lifetime of Wellness: Five Keys to Sustainable Behavioral Change”
The theme of the 41st Annual National Wellness Conference was “Spotlight On Sustainability”. While we often think about sustainability and our environmental practices, as a wellness coach and psychologist I immediately thought of sustainable behavioral change. As I prepared for my presentation on this topic my research revealed that we actually know very little about how effective our…
“Well-being” Is Whole-Person Wellness
The term “Well-being” may have come along at just the right time. Public speakers and marketers are re-branding wellness as wellbeing by saying that well-being is more complete, more holistic. Well-being, they say, incorporates the whole person, their environment, their financial picture, their career, etc. On the one hand it’s too bad that we have to invent a new term…
A Thousand Pots of Brown Rice: A Mindful Way To Be Well
We all want to be as healthy as we can be, and are usually anxious to get there quickly, like it was a destination we could actually arrive at. Mastering a wellness lifestyle is rather like mastering any art, craft or skill. It’s more of a journey than a destination. Lifestyle means a way of living, and doing it well…
Access Excess: Always Wired Makes Us Tired and Less Productive
Paradox, double-edged sword, blessing and curse combined, mobile devices have made our lives easier and more stressful at the same time. I remember the feeling of relief the day I finally got my calendar synched on my work/home computer, my laptop and my smartphone. Now I could be in a conversation with someone at a conference and set an appointment…
Consciously Well Holidays
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” This cheery tune becomes an earwig for many of us as we wander through any kind of store playing holiday muzak. However, “According to a survey, 45% of…people living in the United States would choose to skip out on the holidays, rather than deal with the stress of it all.” (https://www.claritychi.com/holiday-stress/…
Crafting A Wellness Lifestyle With A World Of Choices
How trapped are we in the limitations of the culture we have experienced most of our lives? Greater travel and today’s technologically shrunken world has immensely increased our awareness of alternative ways of living. We do, in fact, have a world of lifestyle choices to draw upon. Let’s look at some cultural concepts and practices we might draw upon and…
Dancing In The Moment: Awareness of The Coaching Process/Interaction
Sometimes I find that the coaching I am doing with my clients flows into a combination of elements in their lives, their own wellness, their businesses, their families and their leadership opportunities. Such a client related a story today that unexpectedly led us into talking about what worked so well in our coaching relationship. She had just recently attended a…
Downshifting To The Speed Of Life: Coaching Slowness
“Summertime and the livin’ is easy.” How long has it been since the words of that old song rang true? In response to the accelerated pace of life a conscious movement has emerged to help us slow down and reclaim our quality of life again.
In my last post I shared about Time Affluence (http://wp.me/pUi2y-hV) and how…
Emotions, Feelings and Healthy Choices: Coaching for Greater Wellness
One of the first things we learn about in the fields of Wellness & Health Promotion and Health & Wellness Coaching, is that our lifestyle choices are a primary determinant of our health and wellbeing. It seems straightforward that making the right or healthy choice is a rational process based upon having the best information. We often then address…
FAVE ! First Acknowledge, Validate and Empathize.
Effective coach training teaches about the power of relationship, of person-to-person connection, not just because it’s warm and “nice”, but because all the evidence from coaching and psychotherapy says it works! We each need to feel truly heard by others that we are attempting to be in relationship with. When we share our lives, our experiences and our feelings we…
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…
Inner and Outer Awareness: Coaching and Living Mindfully.
Suzanne Ballantyne, Wellness and Health Coach and Yoga Teacher, recently shared this piece below with me and her classmates from her Wellness Mapping 360° training course.
“I am taking more anatomy classes for my yoga teaching and Thursday the topic was breathing anatomy. The first thing the teacher did was have us breathe – no big surprise there. Anyway…
Make Contact With Nature Part of Your Wellness Plan
Here in Colorado we have one of the ultimate places for outdoor activity and opportunity. Yet, it is easy for many of us to stay so busy that we rarely take advantage of the healthful benefits of contact with the natural world.
We experientially know that our stress levels go down when we spend more time in nature. We…
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…
Motivation Plus Mobilization: Coaching For Success At Lifestyle Improvement
“I just don’t seem to have the motivation to really make changes.” This is a lament frequent to the ears of health and wellness coaches. Our clients are often puzzled by a lack of success in their efforts to start living a healthy lifestyle, or keep such efforts going. They blame it on either a lack of motivation to get…
Question Your To-Do List and Be Well: Coaching The Urgent/Important Matrix
Despite our best efforts to avoid “holiday stress” it always seems to arrive as reliably as Santa himself. The “to do list” seems impossible and we pay the price physically and emotionally when the stress is too much.
The way to tackle a “to-do list” is not to whittle away at it, it’s more like running it through a…
Really Full Engagement in Life, Work, and Coaching
In 1971 Ram Dass (psychiatrist turned meditation teacher/guru) admonished us all to BE HERE NOW! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Here_Now_(book), and the battle with the distraction capacity of our big brains has never let up. How many wonderful books, mindfulness practices, institutes, and even religions have arisen in our quest to focus on this very moment in front of us. Today a…
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…
Self-Deception and Living Well
Enjoying abundant good health often means having a great wellness plan for our way of living and sticking to it. Sometimes we struggle and don’t know why. The problem may be that we don’t know what we don’t know. Self-deception happens at various levels of consciousness and when it’s at its insidious worst, we don’t even realize it.
The…
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…
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