There are many things that cause stress to the body at a cellular level. Some of these triggers are:

• Eating with guilt
• Exercising too hard and too much
• Lack of sleep
• Improper nutrition
• Smoking and excessive alcohol
• Emotional turmoil
• Hatred
• Envy
• Anger

…the list goes on.

Take resentment, for instance. Did you know, something as small as the inability or unwillingness to forgive can cause immense stress to the body?

Some of this stress we don’t even feel as it slowly but surely eats into us, chewing away pieces of our being. Stress lowers and destroys our immune system, making our body vulnerable to infections and diseases. Weakened immunity is known to cause lethargy and fatigue, which leads to indigestion, bloating, acidity and a number of other ailments. Thus begins the cycle of popping pills, which ultimately triggers other health problems.

If we can identify our stress triggers and manage them with awareness, the whole game changes. Of course, we will always have some stress. Who doesn’t? But how we handle it can lead us to the road to great health.

Use gratitude to heal your life

Whether it’s a client with a life-threatening illness or someone who just wants to lose weight, 90 per cent of my job revolves around working with their minds. If there is any one tool that I swear by in the healing and counselling process, it is gratitude. This simple yet powerful phenomenon changes lives.

All religions preach the virtues of being thankful. Yet, in our hectic lives, we fail to find time for it. Gratitude is magical. Many books have been written on the subject of gratitude and the benefits it brings along. Most of us are relentlessly focussed on how fat we are, or how sick we are, or how much our knee or back hurts.

The cure is never in the pill—it’s in your mind

If you want to heal an illness, focus on everything else in your body that is working well and be thankful. In other words, take your attention off the disease and put it on everything that is working for you—you will begin to recover faster. Try it! Gratitude has no boundaries. It can be practised regardless of your domination, your beliefs, customs and traditions.

Life is full of positives, negatives and everything in between. By acknowledging your sadness, heartache, worries and fears with gratitude, you can flip on your positive switch and appreciate the good that you have.

The physical benefits of gratitude

Studies have shown that acts of thankfulness and appreciation

• Trigger more time exercising
• Lower blood pressure
• Decrease the perception of pain
• Improve sleep quality
• Encourage relaxation
• Lower depression symptoms
• Increase overall energy

In other words, by taking the time to show gratitude you improve your health, both mentally and physically, thus bettering the quality of your life as a whole.

Try this exercise

On a sheet of paper, list all the things that you are grateful for. Really feel what you pen down. If you are struggling to lose weight, be grateful that you have healthy legs to walk, run or work out with. If you have work stress, be grateful that you have a job or a business. If you have relationship stress, be thankful that you have people in your life who care about you. No matter what your situation, you can always find something to be thankful for. And that starts the process of healing. The cure is never in the pill—it’s in your mind.

Continue your efforts to eat clean, sleep well, and stay physically active, and then let your body do the rest. Whenever you find yourself stressed, worried and anxious, stop and count your blessings. Practising gratitude enriches your life and the lives of those around you. It also helps you focus on possibilities which, in turn, helps you achieve your goals in all spheres of life.

Gratitude is a simple route to get your life back on track, to gain back our positive focus and manifest your desires.

Most problems in life exist because we choose to focus on them. And we don’t just focus on the situation, but rather focus on the negative part of it. We get obsessed with our problem and close the door to the “big picture,” or the bright side of the equation. If you are consistently complaining about things, stop it now. This will automatically make you focus on the positives. Apply gratitude to your health and lifestyle and watch in awe as it transforms your whole life.

The post Struggling to lose weight? Try gratitude! appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

I usually focused my attention on the length of the transfer zone, where I would smoothly receive and hand off the baton but this time the coach’s words filled my thoughts. I turned and faced the start line. A loud CRACK from the starter’s pistol and they were off. As the sprinters pounded toward me, one thought repeated in my head: “DON’T DROP THE BATON.”

52 seconds later, our fastest runner streaked across the finish line; dead last. I had dropped the baton.

What went wrong?

We had raced as a team for two years and not once in the hundreds of practices and competitions had I dropped the baton. What had gone wrong this time? Had the coach inadvertently planted the thought in my mind? Would the result have been different if his final instructions were “most of all, pass the baton smoothly and safely”?

I had fallen victim to one of the most fundamental laws of the universe: What you think about most, becomes your reality. It is as certain as the law of gravity.

How affirmations work

Affirmations are verbal declarations, which have a powerful effect on our conscious and subconscious minds and ultimately our actions. They must NEVER be stated in the negative. We must choose our words carefully. Psychologists, neuroscientists and metaphysicians all agree that the subconscious cannot understand or acknowledge a negative. The affirmation, “I don’t [negative] want to be fat” is heard by the subconscious as, “I want to be fat.” We cannot help focusing on the word fat. The positive alternative, “I want to be slim” would be much more beneficial.

Don’t believe me? Close your eyes and repeat this statement three times. “I am not afraid.” Open your eyes. Which word stands out? We cannot help it; even though afraid is what we do not want to be, it is certainly the dominant word our mind focuses on. Now try repeating, “I feel safe.” Notice the difference? What we think and focus on the most becomes our reality. This is true in any aspect of life.

Archimedes formulated the principle of flotation in 200 BC. But Dr Wayne Dyer rightly observed, “The law of flotation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of things.”

Success follows your dominant thoughts

I have read biographies of many great achievers. They all share a single trait—their thoughts, and thus their actions, are dominated by what they want to achieve. How they might achieve it is secondary. Since they keep thinking about succeeding most, success becomes their reality.

I spend a great deal of time in group homes and institutions talking to seniors. “What is your purpose, your goal, your dream, your worthy cause?” I ask. Sadly, many say they have none. Then I ask, “Well what is important to you, what do you want in life?” More silence. “OK, tell me what you don’t want in life?” Within seconds the responses pour out.

“I don’t want to be sick.”
“I don’t want to be poor.”
“I don’t want to be lonely.”
“I don’t want to be fat.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“I don’t want to die alone.”
“I don’t want to be senile.”

The sad truth is, most people are much better at telling you what they don’t want in life than at telling what they do want in life. What they focus on and think about most is what they don’t want and that becomes their reality.

Can we think your way to sickness? You bet!

Does this hold true for our health? Certainly. Our brain controls every part of our body. The science of biofeedback has conclusively proven that thoughts have the power to control the physical states of our bodies. We can raise or lower our temperature, change our heart rate and blood pressure, and direct blood to different body parts all by our thoughts alone.

Our thoughts can also have devastating effects on our health. The most destructive and toxic element unleashed on the human body is stress. Where does it come from? It’s not a bacterium, a virus, an amoeba, a fungus or mould. Nor is it a burn, trauma or pressure injury. We cannot see it, touch it, cut it, isolate it, weigh it, grow it, inoculate against it or transmit it to another person. It exists only in the mind, but its devastating effects are felt in every physical system of the body.

Stress is produced by what we think of most. Our stressful thoughts manifest themselves in the physical plane and show up in every organ and system.

Most people pay little or no attention to their health until something goes wrong. When the episode passes and the body heals, they often go back to their old habits, thoughts and lifestyles until the next time their body’s defence systems get overwhelmed again. Some, however, heed the warning and start considering and practising disease prevention.

Although this seems like a positive step in the right direction, it can be greatly improved. The problem is we are still focused on disease, even though it is the prevention of disease.

A far more successful strategy would be to focus on wellness. This is not simply semantics. Dominating thoughts of wellness can only lead to wellness.

What are you focussing on?

Do you think any great general in history ever won a battle by focusing on how not to lose?

If your sole goal in life is to accumulate great wealth [I feel sorry for you if it is], do you think there is any chance of attaining it by focusing on how not to be poor. Does the circus performer say to himself, “Don’t fall,” as he steps onto the high wire? Will you ever find love by filling your mind with thoughts of how not to be lonely?

What you think about most becomes your reality. Do not be against illness; rather direct your thoughts toward complete and total wellness and it will become your reality. You possess the power. It’s all in your head.

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Health and happiness are twin goals that mankind has always pursued. Many of us know that we must be healthy in order to be happy; but very few of us realise that we must strive to be happy in order to be healthy. Since the beginning of the 20^th century we have accepted what is known as psychosomatic unity of the human being. ‘Psyche’ means mind or soul; ‘soma’ means body. Thus, the psychosomatic concept tells us that we are not just bodies – but an entirety that includes body, mind and spirit, functioning in a symbiotic relationship in which a separation is impossible to make.

Don’t take good health for granted

The World Health Organisation [WHO] defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing—and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity.” To this we must add, spiritual wellbeing—without which a feeling of ‘wellness’ is incomplete. The sad fact of the matter is that people take good health for granted. They don’t even think about their health until they are in danger of losing it—when illness and disease begin to threaten. Even then, they go to a doctor or a hospital, and think that this is all they have to do about it—in other words, they take no responsibility of their health. This reminds me of the words of the great comedian, Charlie Chaplin. He said: “When I fall sick, I go to the doctor. After all, the doctor has to live! The doctor writes out a prescription for me and I take it to the chemist–for the chemist too must live! The chemist gives me medicines–but I don’t take them, for I too must live!”

The time has come when doctors too realise that they must work on the principle of healing that is within each one of us

I must offer due apologies to doctors and chemists who are reading this. But I am sure they too will see the point of the joke–you are your own healer. The power of healing is within you. And the time has come when doctors too realise that they must work not on the disease and its symptoms–but on this principle of healing that is within each one of us. It was Dr. Johnson who said: “To preserve health is the moral and religious duty of us all—for health is the basis of all social virtues. We can no longer be useful when we are not well.”

Health is not just about adding years to your life

Longevity is not the primary goal of human life. We are told that life expectancy has increased in our times; and this is attributed to better health care and the advances made in medicine and allied sciences. But a longer life is not what all of us seek. A life of pain and disease and affliction can only be a miserable burden when it is prolonged. Thus we have the cases of incurable diseases, and people who are ‘clinically dead’ being put on life-support systems in the ICUs of hospitals. This is hardly the kind of treatment or ‘life’ that we aspire to. Take the case of a man who is not really ill. He may not suffer from any disease–but he may feel dull, lethargic and listless. He may be unhappy, and beset by negative emotions. Such a man is not really healthy.

True health and wellbeing encompasses man’s physical, mental, intellectual, and spiritual state. When there is harmony and integrity between all these states, one is in good health. This is the concept of holistic health that we need now.

The post Dada Vaswani explains the true meaning of wellness appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

In the conventional paradigm, we are led to believe in a science of mechanical forces that combat illness and maintain health. The key to understanding the limits of this reductionist science lies in the language it teaches us to take for granted: mechanical forces, combat, maintain health.

This model conceptualises battlefields that destroy the enemy rather than conditions that disrupt the expression of wellness. And yes, I chose the word wellness to differentiate it from the established concept of health: the absence of illness. Wellness goes beyond battlefields where illness is defeated, to healing fields where we find meaning in our existence and celebration in the love we share. And if these views seem like New Age naïveté or pseudoscience claims, wait until you read the “Cultural Brain” chapter (of my book The Mind Body Self ) to relieve your concerns.

Beyond the absence of illness

Notice the pattern of answers most people give when asked how they’re doing. “Can’t complain”,  “I’m okay”, “Same old, same old ”, “Not bad…” These responses reflect how most cultures teach us to be complacent with our lives and satisfied with the absence of illness. Am I asking too much? Well, the average person might think so. But if you’re reading this, you’re far from average.

Thus, you’re more willing to venture beyond living in the absence of illness and the blandness of capitulating to the impositions of cultural editors. Blandness is void of passion and capitulation stifles curiosity. I’ll have more say later about passion and curiosity.

If I am encouraging you to go beyond complacency with your living conditions and satisfaction with the absence of illness, where do you look and how do you manage what you find?

First, answer the following two questions

1. Who taught you compliance? For example, if you respond to being asked how you’re doing with answers like “I can’t complain,” where and from whom did you hear these words when you were growing up? Sometimes it’s not the words, but rather the repeated helplessness you observe from your cultural editors.
2. How did you learn to be content with health as the absence of illness? For example, diabetes runs in your family and your concept of health is the absence of diabetes.

These cultural subtleties that gradually sneak up confine you to conceptual tribal boundaries. And if you dare to question their impositions, you might be called a charlatan or naïve. I propose that we should be revolutionists who venture beyond the pale to assert our abundance birthright of health, love, and wealth. This revolution, however, is based on change by example rather than by imposition. It entails recontextualising your beliefs and how they are expressed, without expectations that others will join you or be pleased with your transition to personal excellence. It can be lonely at times, but I assure you that if those you love are ever going to change, it will mostly happen by consistently speaking your new language and experiencing your new life.

Setting the terrain for the causes of health

Let’s conceptualise health as genetic propensity and wellness as its optimal cultural expression. In other words, you’re born with a gift but your culture teaches you how much to express and benefit from the endowment. It can go from not knowing or denying that you inherit the causes of health, to not feeling capable or worthy of accepting your inheritance. These clarifications may help you understand why I propose we inherit the causes of health, rather than health itself.

We need to find what causes our health as well as to determine how much we are willing to gracefully accept what we discover. Once again, I ask you to withhold judgement on the relevance I assign to cultural beliefs in gene expression until you read the “Cultural Brain” chapter.

We need to prepare a terrain that can express the causes of health: a coauthorship of script and player in a cultural scenario. For example, to express your brilliance at finding directions [endowment], you need relevant conditions [context] such as searching for an address, driving in a foreign country, and so on. This obvious illustration of endowment and context co-authorship becomes less self-evident when we deal with the causes of health. Why?

1. Because the causes of health concept is not as established as the causes of illness mindset. New paradigms go through three stages: disdain, doubt, and acceptance. It takes repeated exposure for the subtleties of novel constructs to become obvious.
2. A “healthy” lifestyle is not the same as expressing the causes of health. For example, eating organic food, exercising, and meditating have limited benefits if the causes of health are missing.

If you’re still wondering why I insist that healthy living is not enough, let’s dig deeper. When we do things to be healthy we may be inadvertently seeking the absence of illness. But if you learn the conditions that trigger the causes of health, then you purposely enter wellness. Just as healing is superior to curing, wellness is the optimal expression of health.

So, what is the terrain that can express the causes of health?

1. A commitment to view your mind-body as a self-organising entity that integrates culturally driven contexts with personal experiences to develop a cultural self. Your worldview is a convergence of how your culture teaches you to perceive and what you discover from your personal experiences.
2. A commitment to challenge genetic sentencing in family illnesses. In addition to propensities for some illnesses to run in families, our heredity also includes the causes of health that can prevent pathological genetic expression.
3. A commitment to learn worthiness. Whereas health in the conventional view is defined as the absence of illness, in the bio-cognitive paradigm, health is only one of the three components of wellness: abundance of health, love, and wealth. And yes, for those who see wealth as undesirable materialism, my definition goes beyond monetary accumulation. Let me give you examples. I have interviewed many healthy centenarians [100 years or older] worldwide, and when I ask them to define personal wealth, their usual answers are: the number of good friends they keep, their creativity, their passion for life, their capacity to feel gratitude, and so on. By the way, I see honestly gained monetary wealth as evidence for others to break from their self-imposed helplessness. I say “self-imposed” because people in profoundly impoverished countries suffer from endemic poverty rather than self-imposed disempowerment.
4. A commitment to avoid people who live in “illness consciousness.” I am certain you know people whose illnesses define their identity, and their existence revolves around their medication schedules and their visits to health professionals. We should differentiate, however, between having an illness and becoming your illness. For example, some people discuss their illnesses with as much enthusiasm as if planning a vacation to Tahiti, while others, like one of my mentors, confined to a wheelchair by muscular dystrophy, was one of the most inspiring individuals I’ve known.
5. A commitment to relinquish personal power gained from having an illness:using illness to avoid what you dislike or to sabotage what you like. With avoidance you manipulate others; with sabotage you manipulate yourself.

The terrain is built on commitments that challenge the conventional views we learn from our cultural editors about the attainment and maintenance of health. In addition to preventing and treating illness, we need to embrace an abundance mindfulness not considered in the usual pursuit of health: moving from the absence of illness to the presence of wellness.

Excerpted from Dr. Mario Martinez’s new book The Mind Body Self: How Longevity is Culturally Learned and the Causes of Health Are Inherited (Hay House Publishers, March 21, 2017).

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I have to admit—I was expecting a compliment from the doctor! [vanity, such vanity] I’d have settled for a modest tribute, something like, “You’re in pretty good shape, for an old guy.” It was not to be. When the tests were done and results compiled and assessed, the doctor came over, confirmed my identity, looked at the test results, then at me, and said: “Well, I couldn’t find anything wrong. You seem medically uninteresting.”

I thanked him, paid the bill and departed. I wondered about his conclusion all the way home—“medically uninteresting…hmm”.

Does medically uninteresting mean I’m healthy? Are these the signs of health?

• No pain
• No symptoms
• Not sick
• Not always sore/tired
• No life-threatening disease
• Not unconscious
• Still alive

Of course not—there IS more. There truly is a great deal more to health than the absence of illness or the presence of medical non-interest. For today, simply acknowledge that the term ‘health’ is not often used in the best and fullest sense of the word. You can truly do much better than “medically uninteresting”—aim for wellness.

Wellness vs Health

Well over half a century ago, a physician named Halbert L. Dunn began talking and writing about “high level” wellness. Though I used the “high level” phrase for a while, I gave it up after a few years, thinking it a bit redundant. After all, wellness is by nature and definition “high level” compared with just an ordinary lifestyle.

I was attracted to the word “wellness” because it is an alternative to the common word so poorly understood, namely, “health.” People usually think of health as a state of non-sickness or absence of pain or injury. Health, in short, was then, and still is, viewed as the absence of something.

This perspective is not only inaccurate—it’s also hazardous to health! If you think you’re well just because you’re not experiencing sickness, you might be less motivated to take steps to advance beyond that state. There is, in such case, too little incentive or vision for something more. You might settle on taking the minimal steps for maintaining the sub-level normalcy of a low-standard normal health.

The alternative, which wellness invites, is to view health in a variety of positive dimensions. This includes recognizing levels and degrees of wellbeing, stages and positions along a continuum of functioning. In this way, quite specific images of optimal existence come into sight.

So What Is Wellness?

Wellness embodies new parameters and expectations of wellbeing. Here are a few of them.

Wellness is multi-dimensional

A wellness lifestyle has multiple dimensions. Let me outline to you my first model that has five dimensions. Each dimension was used as a chapter in my 1977 Rodale book entitled, High Level Wellness: An Alternative to Doctors, Drugs and Disease. Maybe it will appeal to you, and be helpful as a starter way of organizing things

1. Self-responsibility
2. Nutritional awareness
3. Stress management
4. Environmental sensitivity
5. Physical fitness

Self-responsibility entails a conscious recognition that you are in charge of your health and the quality of your life. Without an awareness and full commitment to the idea that you are the prime cause for what goes well or poorly, you are not likely to invest the time and energy to pursue excellence in the other dimensions.

Wellness Is Positive

The reasons for pursuing wellness are always related to satisfaction, payoffs and pleasures, not sickness avoidance or life extension. It’s likely, of course, that wellness will lead to less illness and probably a longer life, but these are welcome side effects!

Negative appeals to behave sensibly, such as “don’t do X [often something appealing, like drinking, dancing and carousing] or else Y [something unpleasant, like inebriation, fatigue or accusations of moral turpitude] will happen, are not effective and they certainly are not much fun. People often look for ways to outwit negative admonitions. In wellness, the emphasis is on short-term pleasures gained from choosing positive path, not on long-term penalties or negative-reinforcement. This is why wellness is so much more pleasant than traditional health education.

Wellness Is About You

Wellness lifestyles must be shaped in a manner unique to each person. No guru or other expert can tell you what to do or how to do it. Your style, opportunities, situation and resources are unlike those of anyone else so you must adapt all advice to your situation and circumstances. That’s another reason why self-responsibility is a foundation for this concept.

Wellness Is Beyond Body

Wellness includes physical health and emotional/mental wellbeing. The physical element is equally important as the mental, but the two are actually inseparable. One always affects the other. Physical fitness is a pathway to psychological and emotional equanimity and if the latter is going for you, you will realize the necessity of daily physical exercise “devotionals”.

Wellness Is An Attitude

You can practice wellness at any point in the life-cycle. A great lifestyle is as important to the old as the young, the poor as the affluent, the sick as the well. This is about an attitude and a mindset, a context by which to perceive what matters and what to do about matters large and small affecting your life and purpose. It is not a stagnant position to take on one thing or another.

What Wellness Isn’t

Wellness is not the same as holistic health, complementary medicine, prevention or medical self-care. There are sometimes common themes, but more often there are not. Most important of all, wellness is almost certainly not about wellness! That is, not about the misrepresented nature of so-called wellness by pushers of products and services who have borrowed or rather hijacked the word. Many shysters and mountebanks and just plain hustlers have taken the word and shaped it into forms unrecognizable to those of us who view wellness along the lines described here.

Complementary medicine and holistic health are often oriented toward treatment; the terms are most often employed by healers, usually by persons who are not licensed medical doctors and others who practice standard, evidence-based care. Prevention and health education are terms used by healthcare professionals who dispense illness and disease avoidance advice. Medical self-care is primarily focused on teaching you how to accurately, economically and efficaciously identify and attend to emergencies, injuries or relatively minor medical problems. This kind of care-giving and teaching is fine and desirable, if done properly. However, they are different from what is herein described as wellness. Such distinctions enable an appreciation that lifestyle choices affecting quality of life are not matters administered by others and directed at problem areas.

Wellness is that which is up to you, with the focus upon becoming “weller” and happier, not less troubled or to suffer less. The latter happens as a pleasant side-effect as you advance toward or succeed in remaining at or near a dynamic high level wellness state of being.

The everyday experience of a lifelong quest for attainable but challenging peaks of optimal life quality is its own reward.

Make Your Journey Joyful

It might be fun to think of wellness as a game, especially if you want to have fun while getting serious about a more ambitious lifestyle. Wellness is not complicated. Imagine a game about boosting your quality of life. Why not? Games are enjoyable and often effective as a learning tool. A wellness lifestyle game might be an attractive way to approach a higher quality of life. To play what could be called “The Wellness Game” [TWG], you first decide to participate. A wellness lifestyle usually does not come about accidentally. Instead, it is a choice. Like any game, you play TWG best if you know and abide by the “rules.” Here are a few basics.

• Decide to play
• Make a commitment to try to win
• Recognize The Wellness Game is something you want to do—nobody is pressuring you to play
• Don’t put it off till tomorrow or next week—get started now.

You are already abiding by these basic rules: you are reading this article. The next step is to follow a rule not included in most games, but helpful for TWG—express your commitment to play. Do it in writing.

Use a sheet of paper to write these words or words of your own choosing along the same lines: I am committed to playing the Wellness Game. Sign your name to this agreement.

“I, _______________, agree to learn the rules and play The Wellness Game.”

To make The Wellness Game fun, feel free to add your own rules. After all, it’s YOUR lifestyle that is to be won or lost.

OK, if you put your name in the blank or wrote a note to this effect as suggested, you are on your way. You are committed to learn about and shape a wellness lifestyle. Games, though associated with frivolity and play, are hardly frivolous when they have a long-lasting positive impact on your life.

Follow the kind of rules [or guidelines, traditions or principles] that seem most likely to complement your circumstances and ambitions. Remember, this process is about enjoying and winning TWG. The bottom line is to identify, create and sustain a lifestyle that boosts your well-being, particularly your happiness and capabilities to live well.

A key rule in The Wellness Game is to take your lifestyle choices seriously without being grim or rigid about it. Find the balance that works for you—that’s what the best lifestyle players do. You can learn to play as well as anyone else.

What Counts As Lifestyle?

Lifestyle includes the entire range of actions that are or could be brought under your control, including but not limited to:

• How and what you eat. In the course of playing The Wellness Game, you will discover that it is less important to think in terms of specific foods being “good” or “bad” for you as it is to eat wisely most of the time. Nobody is, or needs to be, perfect. If a certain food is a big treat for you, enjoy it now and then, but not so often if it’s the kind of item that might give the average dietician a heart attack to look at, let alone consume.
• How often, how long and how intensively you exercise.
• Your ability to enjoy some aspects of everyday life, find rewarding work that is of interest and maintain friendships and community support. A game? Yes, we can think of it that way, but the stakes are higher than any game you might play in Las Vegas, Monaco, Mumbai or elsewhere.
• Your understanding of the medical system, particularly its limits and how little it can do, under the best of circumstances, beyond diagnosis and treatment of injuries, illness and disease. Becoming healthier is entirely up to you—based on the lifestyle you create.

A Key Variable

For TWG, the environment is important. You can’t exert as much influence on the environment as you can on your own lifestyle. Yet, you must pay attention to the nature and influence of your surroundings. To the extent possible, rearrange it to your favor, at least at home and in your work setting and friendship circles.

Because only your lifestyle is under your direct influence, the emphasis in The Wellness Game will be on elements that fit the lifestyle category. But, the culture is important. An environment or a culture that belittles certain qualities needed for happiness or hope, optimism or, in our case, a wellness lifestyle, will make success at TWG difficult, no matter how outstanding an individual plays TWG. An individual can only do so much.

The efforts you make to succeed at TWG and enjoy wellbeing and joy in life, happiness, a positive outlook and multiple levels of meaning and purpose are shaped by the quality of the physical, emotional and mental surroundings.

When you think of wellness as a game, the pursuit of advanced well-being becomes a lifelong no-lose contest in which you get to win every day, find continuing meaning and experience recurring satisfaction. Good luck.

Where Are You on the Wellness Scale?

All lifestyles patterns fall into one of four categories [called the Ardell’s Four Lifestyle Patterns]. They portray a range from the highest level of wellness to the minimal level of functioning. Occasionally, we all behave in ways that fit each category. However, for the most part we follow a certain pattern, one of the four described below:

Low level worseness

A few examples of egregious choices that diminish life quality and personal effectiveness:

• Insufficient exercise
• Poor food choices
• Alcohol and/or other substance abuse
• Use of nicotine
• Reliance on caffeine
• Severe weight issues and attendant poor body image
• Misuse of medications
• Unrealistic expectations for medical care
• Uncritical acceptance of information

Middle-level mediocrity

A few examples of choices that reflect mediocrity. This is “absence of illness” level of health. It does not so much diminish life quality as it fails to advance it. It’s a form of being stuck nowhere in particular, a boring and uneventful place of being.

• Non-sickness associated with good health
• Apathy
• Low energy levels
• Lack of commitment
• Poor self-image
• Unaware of negative norms and their influence.

Intermediate-level omnibus tinkering

This level entails sporadic efforts toward better health and advanced functioning. A beginning, but still missing is the conscious, determined commitment to sustain an all-out wellness lifestyle. A few examples:

• Non-systematic health initiatives
• Cyclical efforts to change
• Experiments with short-term fixes and programs [e.g. the rhythm method of girth control]
• Illness-avoidance motivation
• Excessive faith in experts with all the answers, not to mention products and services on offer

High-level wellness

A systematic and pleasure-based understanding of what to do and how to sustain a deliberate commitment to a high quality of life. Examples might be:

• Embracing personal responsibility
• Initiating efforts at shaping supportive environment
• Balancing positive initiatives in different dimensions of living
• Resolving to adopt and utilize healthy skepticism and initial doubt while looking for objective data to assess choices
• Conscious commitment to excellence
• Developing a personal wellness plan

Which one would you guess, at this stage describes your lifestyle pattern? Are you closer to one of these broad-brush stages than another? Most people are likely to have features of all the patterns in their lifestyles, but one usually stands out as most representative of an overall pattern. Not to be concerned—this is only of personal historic interest. What matters, is where you want to go next—unless, of course, your pattern is High Level Wellness. In that case, the goal is to keep doing what you’re doing. Things are going great if that’s the case.

Remember, maintaining a wellness lifestyle is rarely done accidentally—it is more likely if done deliberately. To function at the heights is a choice and while satisfying and rewarding, it’s not always easy. That might be the most important “rule” to emphasize in approach to wellness.

Kick-start Your Journey to a Fuller Life

You are ready to begin journey to wellness. Let me send you off with ten simple suggestions for improving prospects for advancing, day after day, until you are better informed, more motivated and well prepared to pursue, achieve, and enjoy a wellness lifestyle.

1. Advice can come from many sources but ultimately you must make the unique decisions for designing and maintaining quality for your health, work, and wellness.
2. It is very difficult to be well and focused on excellence in lifestyle if you can’t express your talents and passions at work, in some manner.
3. Coming to terms with the fact that change is inevitable and happening at a faster pace than ever before will enable you to deal more effectively with its manifestation at home, at work, and at play.
4. Your lifestyle choices, including your attitudes, beliefs, emotional responses, and actions, will have a greater impact on your health and wellness performance than any and all doctors. Such choices also matter more than the economy, the environment, your income level, your age, your employer, your horoscope or your luck.
5. Wellness is too important to be pursued grimly. Whatever your choices, make sure you are having fun.
6. Modern medicine’s a wonderful thing but there are two problems: people expect too much of it and too little of themselves.
7. Balance is a good thing and a worthy goal but there are times when you should forget about it in order to pursue a passion. Passions are not for the moderate or “balanced.” Passions are for lovers of life, paragons of artistry and champions among men and women.
8. It is far better to take up healthy practices than to give up unhealthy habits. This is especially true in the beginning of a change program when you are seeking to enhance the quality of your lifestyle. It is wiser, for instance, to take up a satisfying activity that gives early positive results, such as vigorous daily walking for an hour or more, than to struggle to refrain from smoking. Of course, doing both is best.
9. Lifestyle quality is seldom achieved by accident. You have to make a choice to live and work this way.
10. It’s never too late to start a wellness lifestyle though sooner is always better than later.

This feature is an excerpt from the latest edition of Donald B Ardell’s 14 Days to Wellness. If you enjoyed this excerpt, you might also enjoy Donald’s other book REAL Wellness: It’s What’s New in Wellness Today.

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