BEHAVIOUR CHANGE
Many of us would
benefit from evidence- based wellbeing coaching, and this
service is best delivered in non-clinical settings such as health clubs and leisure centres
One way to improve your wellbeing is to make more time for friends
• Invest in friendship. Make a list of friends with whom you’ve been out of
• Engage in small and large acts of kindness. Do something
will be happening in your life in around three to fi ve years’ time if things were going really well for you.
touch for a while and arrange to meet up. Make more time for friends. Become a better listener.
nice for someone, or several people. • Become more active.
• Forgive people who've hurt or offended you and let go of grudges. You
Mindfulness. A practical guide to fi nding peace in a frantic world (Mark Williams and Danny Penman, 2011): http://www.
amazon.co.uk/Mindfulness-practical-guide- fi nding-frantic/dp/074995308X
• Increase your contact with nature. We didn’t evolve to live in urban environments, so fi nd ways of spending more time close to animals, fi elds, hills, lakes and woods.
• Get into 'fl ow'. Flow is the positive emotional and performance state
identifi ed by the psychologist Mihalyi Csikzentmihalyi. When in fl ow, you lose track of time and become less self-conscious. You become absorbed, immersed and lost in the task or activity. This might be cooking, gardening, writing, painting, playing music – we all get into fl ow doing different things. Identify when and where you enter this state, and try to spend more time in it.
• Discover, explore and use your strengths. Strengths are the things that
• Become more mindful. Learn to pay attention in a non-judgmental way.
are right about you, that you do well, that others appreciate about you, and that you feel drawn towards doing. Once way of doing this is to take an online survey – for instance, here:
http://www.viame.org
Mindfulness is proving itself to be an extremely effective way of helping many people improve their wellbeing, and I commonly recommend people buy and listen to the MP3 fi les in the book
56
don’t have to tell them you've done this – this is more about you than them. The aim is to reduce your experience of negative emotions such as bitterness, hurt, anger and hatred.
nurse or someone from the local NHS counselling services (sometimes called the IAPT service: increasing access to psychological therapies).
• Cultivate gratitude. Once or twice a week, write down a list of things you’re
• Notice good things. We’re wired to notice bad things: threat, danger,
grateful for – things you sometimes take for granted. Refl ect on these, and let the feeling of gratefulness arise within you. Also, express gratitude more often to others, whether that’s for small things like serving you coffee or for big things. Express gratitude to people to whom you are grateful, but to whom you have never really expressed that gratitude. Tell them why you’re grateful, what they did, and why it means or meant so much to you.
potential loss, etc. They grab our attention more easily. Good things happen, but we may have to pay more attention to notice them. In this exercise, sometimes called ‘what went well’, I encourage individuals to identify and write down four to seven good things that have happened to them in the previous 24 hours. Some people choose to do this at the end of each day for a seven-day period, and see what happens.
• Get help. If your level of wellbeing is really low – if you are very unhappy,
anxious, addicted, feeling out of control, etc – then go and see a trained health professional such as your GP, practice
Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital
Reflection Many people lack wellbeing. They experience boredom, feelings of isolation, sadness, lack of meaning, self-doubt, self-criticism, regrets about the past and worries about the future. Sometimes these thoughts and feelings are so strong and long-lasting that modern medicine calls them ‘psychological conditions’ and recommends treatment for them. Without wishing to understate the
importance of doctors, psychologists and other mental health professionals in helping people with psychological health problems get well, I believe many of us would benefi t from evidence-based wellbeing coaching by a professional, and this service is best offered in non-clinical settings such as health clubs and leisure centres. ●
Tim Anstiss is a medical doctor who has been training health professionals in the use of behaviour change techniques for over 20 years. He helped develop the training materials for the Let’s Get Moving national programme for physical activity, as well as co-authoring a National Obesity Observatory report on weight loss. He is currently training cancer clinicians in health coaching as part of the National Cancer Survivorship Initiative, and developing a health coaching qualifi cation in conjunction with SkillsActive. He is also a former international polevaulter and Gladiators contender. Email:
drtim@appliedwellbeing.com Twitter: drtimanstiss Web:
www.academyforhealthcoaching.co.uk
July 2013 © Cybertrek 2013
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK.WCOM/PRESSMASTER
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