As a health and wellness professional I believe it is very important to live the life and practice every aspect of being a health and wellness professional. You need to be living a healthy well balanced life psychologically, spiritually, and physically. I feel as though you cannot be successful with others or really gain their trust unless you are living that lifestyle yourself. I personally know there are many areas of my life that I need to improve upon to become a successful health and wellness professional. Physically and psychologically I am great, where I struggle is with spiritually. One of my goals is to become more in-tune with myself and learning and practicing meditation. I want to live a more balanced life and learn how to deal with everyday stressors better. By meditating and practicing things like the loving kindness exercises I will be able to apply what I learn, teach and explain my experiences with clients I may have as a personal trainer. You need to have that firsthand experience to be able to tell and explain the benefits to you clients and to gain their trust in you.
Monitoring and assessing your health every so often is important because it keeps you in check of developing and a health and wellness professional. It gives you an opportunity to look at yourself, spiritually, physically and psychologically and see where you are and how you can improve in certain areas. When we look at these three areas each one holds its own importance. I think physically is a very important one because here we are looking at our physical appearance health wise. We are looking at things like are we active? Are you happy with yourself and your lifestyle? I personally feel very good in this area when it comes to my own personal assessment. If you were to ask me 2 years ago to asses myself I would have given myself a very poor score. I exercise 5 times a week for 60 minutes. I have very healthy eating habits and live a healthy active lifestyle. I still feel this is an area that I can improve in because I am still a bit over weight and would like to get a an even better and healthier lifestyle. Exercise makes me feel good and is a great way for me to relive any stress in my life. Exercise has helped me psychologically because it is like therapy for me. It gives me the time I need to focus on myself and puts me in a great state of mind. I used to have problems with depression but ever since I started exercising and working out and feeling good about myself and my body. I do not have a problem anymore which is a wonderful feeling. When it comes to spirituality I am very much in touch with God and prayer. I could be better with meditation and being at peace with myself and just letting everything go, but that is not me. I feel that when it comes to spirituality I have a good balance to keep me in a good state. I feel as though sometimes if you have too much spirituality you can be unbalanced in other areas. I guess that can be true with anyone of the other areas as well.
Goal development will help you striving to make improvements in your life physically, psychologically and spiritually. Everyone should make goals in these areas. When it comes to my physical goal I would like to see myself more toned and dedicating more time to working out. I already work out a lot but I would like to be able to push myself harder to accomplish quicker times when I run races. When it comes to psychological or mental health I would like to see myself with less stress in my life and working on being in a better state of mind. My mental state tends to waiver a lot. One day I am feeling great happy as can be and the other I am having the worst day and feeling very down. One of my goals is to get consistency in my mental wellbeing. So that is one thing I will work on, becoming more at peace with the way things are and become patient with change. When it comes to my spiritual health I would like to work on being more at peace and have a closer relationship with God through prayer. I often times with just pray in times of need but I personally would like to be better at praying and thanking God for all the wonderful things I have in my life. Taking moments to be thankful for what we have can be an important step to changing our spiritual wellbeing.
There are many strategies that I can implement to foster growth in your physical, psychological and spiritual areas. When it comes to my physical there are two areas that I could implement to help me with attaining my physical goals. One is discipline, which is sticking to a schedule and saying with it and making sure that I commit time to work out toward my physical goal. Procrastination is my worst enemy and as longs as I stick to my plan and think of my workouts as an appointment I will be able to attain my goal of becoming even more fit and living a healthier lifestyle. When it comes to my psychological and mental health there are many strategies I can implement to foster growth in this area. One of the ways I can help myself deal with stress is meditation. This will give me time each day or even every other day to take a moment for myself and just let go of all my stresses and just focus on things like deep breathing and relaxing my body. Doing things like the loving kindness exercise, can help me achieve that peaceful state of mind. Another technique I can use to help my mental health is journaling. Journaling is a great way for you to be able to express your emotions and help you release feelings that you feel you can’t tell or say to others. I already do a lot of journaling because it helps me keep balanced and express feelings where I know I won’t be judged or frowned upon. Spirituality is one area where I find I do need improvement on and there are several strategies or things I can do to help improve my spirituality. The first thing I can do is make time everyday for prayer. I personally tend to only pray in times of need. Spiritually I would feel better if not only did I pray for times of need but pray to thank God for all the wonderful things in my life. By making time for prayer it will help me both spiritually and mentally as well.
When it comes to assessing my progress it is going to be key that I look at it every few months or maybe even weeks at first. With any change that you make you need to set short term and long term goals as to where you would like to be and then follow through and track whether or not you have achieved them. For me when it comes to me physically there are many ways that I can track my progress. I could utilize tools like weight loss applications or even something as simple as writing my weight down in a journal to see my progress over the next 6 months. There are several strategies that I can use do assist in maintaining my long-term practices for health and wellness. One of the strategies I can utilize is setting up a schedule almost like an appointment. Thinking of exercise makes it important having the mentality that it is something you cannot miss. You are able to say I am busy during this time because I am exercising. This is a great practice to make sure you make time for yourself everyday and to keep yourself going strong in your wellness goals.
