Quality of Life: Don't Flatter Yourself

The quest towards increasing your quality of life can be a hard one.   No matter which part(s) of your life you are trying to better there are some principles and behaviors that can help you get there.  Here are a few tips to give you some direction towards an end goal.

1) Define what you are trying to change/better.  The Wellness Wheel is a broad overview of the different types of wellbeing.  The first step is to define which one(s) you want to focus on. The 5 areas are Emotional, Physical, Spiritual, Social, and Mental (some include Financial, Cultural, and Environmental in that, but I consider them External benefits that root from the previous five internal wellbeing’s) It is also important to remember that they are all interconnected and greatly influence each other.

2) Once you define what part of your life you want to better the next step is to Set goals! (Link to goal setting blog)  Once you define the Outcome (outcome goal) it is motivating but only in the short term. 

3) Now once you have set your goals and are motivated (in the short term) you need to make the CHOICE to continue on with that goal.  There is a bestselling book called The 80/20 Principle that I highly recommend.  This book explores the Pareto Principle, put simply, it is the idea that 80% of the Positive results come from 20% of your behavior; and vice versa 80% of your negative results come from 20% of your behavior.  I have found that in the Health and Wellbeing profession that the 90/10 principle yields the best results when APPLIED to your Health and Wellbeing.  Here are some examples of this principle applied.

-Be Healthy or “Well” for 90% of the time and the other 10% of the time cheat.

-90% of your Health and Wellness limitations come from 10% of your behaviors/actions.

-Identify what 10% of your behaviors are holding you back and make the CHOICE to stop them.

-Look forward to the positive behaviors/actions instead of looking forward to cheat that 10% of the time.  In other words look forward to that feeling of wellness and balance that accompanies healthy behaviors in the short and long term. 

- Bruce Banner, the Hulk, has to work on developing his Yin personality (Bruce) 90% of the time so that he can control his 10% of Yang personality (The Hulk).

Make sure you have someone to hold you accountable.  Someone you can trust to tell you the TRUTH and not try to flatter you (“Flattery is telling the other person exactly what he thinks about himself” Dale Carnegie author of How to Win Friends and Influence People)

4) Evaluate your Results.  I find that every 3 months is an ideal time to evaluate results.  Three months is enough time for the body’s General Adaption Syndrome (GAS) to occur because of the stressors that where applied.  The next point is very important!! If there is NO CHANGE than you did not apply the stress and you LIED to yourself.  If a stress is applied than you will either get better or get worse.  If you did not change, according to GAS, you did not apply the stressor at all or even worse you applied it half heartedly.  I don’t give a damn what you do, but if you apply a stress whole heartedly you will get a response, whether it is a positive one or a negative one are the only variables.  It is Imperative to your well being that you do not lie to yourself.  Evaluate your results honestly or if you don’t trust yourself get someone you trust to evaluate them for you.  If you see a negative result from an action/behavior than change your methods to reaching your end goal.  If you see a positive result from an action/behavior keep doing it but always re-evaluate it to make sure it keeps producing the desired result. 

The take home point here is if you want a result (Outcome) you have to apply a stressor.   This stressor should be managed by the 90/10 rule.  After successful management of your actions/behaviors comes evaluation, and evaluation reveals success or failure. 

-Tatum