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The Wheel of Life

Before I discuss health, I would like to explain the difference between fitness and health. Fitness is the physical ability to perform athletic activity. You can improve your fitness through strength and endurance. Health is the state in which all the systems of the body (eg: nervous, skeletal, circulatory, digestive, lymphatic, hormonal, etc.) are working properly.

It is a state of complete physical, mental or social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Health is the result of Individual responsibility – choosing healthy over non-healthy. 

Optimal human fulfilment and productivity = quality of life.

How we can measure health

  1. Physical
  2. Mental
  3. Emotional
  4. Spiritual

Relationships, meaning, time, fulfilment at work, finances, celebration and contributions all have a key role in our outlook on life.

Filling in the wheel of life is a great start to see how you are balancing your life, but this is only a guide (as our six human needs aren’t all equal). The idea is the wheel needs to be circular to turn and move correctly. When I filled my wheel out, it made it clear that I was concentrating more on my physical body – and my emotional state and meaning needed much more work. I was working so hard on my physical body to help me with my emotional state, yet my emotions and meaning were ranked the lowest on the wheel. This was an eye opener.

As stated above, there is a difference between fitness and health.

My Health Journey

I’d just like to share my health journey, as I think sometimes we can concentrate too much on one area and for me that was becoming obsessed with fitness work outs. I originally trained to help improve the look of my physical body and then to help me with my mental health. The problem for me is that I started to rely (apart from my other addictions – a story for another day) on training to relieve all my stress, which, yes, is definitely better than other bad habits, but also it can become an obsession/addiction within itself. 

This is my own personal experience, but even though I was training, I still didn’t feel satisfactory on a day-to-day basis. So I tried to train even harder to quieten my mind. The harder I trained, the harder I partied, the harder I worked – this just wasn’t working for me, and even after quitting all my bad habits I felt even worse. 

Have I got ADHD? Am I bipolar? I was having schizophrenia symptoms. It was all pretty scary and at times very nearly forced me back into my old ways. One day I decided that even if I had any of the above, what would that prove? Did I want to be labelled? How would a diagnosis help me? Were all these symptoms trying to tell me something? What am I doing wrong? I was so focused on myself and how I felt, I was mad at the world for still ‘not feeling right’.

I had kicked all my bad habits, meditated in the mornings, drank water, had a balanced diet, trained, sauna and cold plunge most days, and I put everything in place to help improve my sleep. I still didn’t feel ‘right’. I wasn’t even aiming to feel good, just ‘normal’.

In the background I had already been dipping my toe into emotional and spiritual health. I knew, somehow, that I needed to find another way to control my mind.

Awareness, being truthful with myself, and to living in denial were my first steps. This led me to admit that my life had become unmanageable, to the point where I didn’t know where to turn, so I got down on my knees and prayed. I made a pact with God and promised I’d do everything in my power to get sober if only God would get all these demon thoughts out of my head.

A few hours later, a Tony Robbins event – Unleash The Power Within, flashed up on my phone and I booked myself on it. And I feel like the universe has been talking to me ever since.

I had completed steps one and two of recovery without even knowing about it:

  1. Admitting my life had become unmanageable
  2. Believing in a power greater than myself.

(The 12 steps of sobriety should be an open practice to everyone – even sober people).

Since then, I have had an open mind to improve all areas of my health and to help anyone who needs it. 

I have started to make small changes – like swapping Yoga for intense workouts. I have found that doing Yoga has really helped me connect with my own mind and body.  

Being healthy isn’t only about training hard; there are lots of other ways to improve your health. Don’t get me wrong, I train 5-6 times a week. Exercise is important to me, but there are other means to stay healthy, so you have other options if you become injured.

Working with a coach could be another way to help improve your health. Asking for help isn’t a weakness, it’s the start of your new journey.

My main advice would be to make that decision to start your journey and make that journey not all about you. It’s a work in progress for me (which it always will be) and my health is constantly improving.

As a coach, I will try to assist you to discover what you want from life and unlock ways that you can achieve your desires. I will help you focus on the future, long and short-term, helping you to create a vision of your goals and dreams. With that we’ll work on action plans to help achieve your professional and personal goals faster.

I’ll do this without judgement, but with understanding and compassion. I’m not here to ‘tell’ you what you ‘should do’ or ‘need to’ do. The answers and solutions rest with you, I’ll just help you unpick your own locks.

I will not be practicing as a therapist, I’m not trained to deal with people who have serious mental health issues. I will not be concentrating on getting you over your past, I will help you guide you to a new future. 

People always tell me what they don’t want – that’s easy, but working out what we actually do want and being very specific and detailed about our vision for our future is extremely important, as without this, what are we actually aiming for?

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