Healthy lifestyle: the basics and the benefits
A healthy lifestyle prolongs life but you still can’t live forever!!:
spud! blog: Media Doctor Dispenses Health Advice with Humor.
Managing Stress
Stress management is about lightening an unwanted heavy load. When you carry a lot of stress around with you all day you might talk of having a ‘load on your mind.’
Imagine if your worries were rocks which you carried in a rucksack on your back and every time you met put another rock in it.
What would you look like? More and more bent over with the increasing weight on your back. How would you feel? More and more fed up with the people who kept adding the rocks.
What might people be saying about you? Want to get rid of your rock? Put it in my rucksack. I can carry them for you.’
Perhaps this metaphor might enable you to notice what the ‘rocks’ in your life are and who keeps putting them in your rucksack. If the ‘rocks’ are the things which people ask you to do during the day and the increasing load on your back is your increasing overwhelm, then take a moment and reflect how you could change the situation. How could you change the situation so the rucksack gets lighter rather than heavier? What can you do to stop more rocks being put in your rucksack?
Well, suppose you are busy doing something and you are asked to come and do something else. Maybe now you say ‘OK I’ll do that when I’ve finished here.’ That might become another rock.
How about saying ‘I’m not able to deal with that now as I’m busy for the next half an hour. Please come back and ask me again then’ Result: the rock stays with the requester and you don’t have to do anything until you are asked again.
When asked again and if you are no longer involved in something else say yes, do what’s required, and there will be no more rocks in your rucksack!
Tips to change your life
When you want to change your life, it’s easy to be waylaid by what you perceive as obstacles stopping you. These may not be as real as you imagine, so it’s important to examine your beliefs about them. It’s a common experience to not do something because you start to think about how other people will react to you. However there are two things to remember about these thoughts: they are only thoughts, not necessarily based on reality, and secondly, even if true, why are you suffering so that you don’t hurt someone else’s’ feelings?
- Decide what you want (set your goals). Make sure your goal is specific so you will know when you’ve achieved it.
- Choose one goal to work on: choose whatever it is that you feel passionate about.
- What 3 things do you have to do in order to achieve that goal? Decide your first three steps.
- Start with the very first step Take the action you’ve decided.
- What can you do today? Stop procrastinating and finding excuses. Just do it.
- What can you do by the end of the week? Plan the next few days too.
- What’s stopping you? Are those excuses real obstacles or are you using them because you are fearful about what you are about to do?
- What can you do to remove those obstacles? Communicate with others. Stop yourself using excuses about other people. Put yourself first.
- What do you have to do to achieve that? Start to change your beliefs about what you can achieve.
- Take action: move and your world will change.
- Bite by bite the big goals are achieved when you start to take action.
What are your top tips?
Holidays and Stress
Are you overwhelmed with the amount of work you have to do in your day to day life as a doctor? Delegating is OK in theory but sometimes you find yourself doing jobs which are not really in your remit. It’s too easy to start to feel sorry for other members of the team who just like you are also overworked. However you won’t be helping anyone in the long term if you help out by doing someone else’s job instead of addressing what needs to be done to change the system.
What do you do when, for example, the practice nurse refuses to take the bloods and you end up taking them all? Ask yourself: Whose job is it? Are you covering up for the inadequacies of the system by doing someone else’s job? How do other practices manage? Are you ordering too many tests?
Another practice might solve the problem by employing another person specifically to take blood. Another asks patients to come back the next day or at another time for another appointment specifically for blood to be taken with no problem because that’s their system and the patients know how it works.
You can introduce and put another system in place. It takes about three weeks for it to become automatic. Think of the time you spend doing things that don’t need your qualifications – and decide to put new boundaries in place.
What difference would doing this make to your life? What will you do in the time you free up as a result?
Procrastination
Don’t put off the important things in your life until some mythical time when you’re not so busy. However small the first step, decide what it is, and do it. Once you start a task it’s easier to continue. Yes of course there are things which you may prefer to do in big chunks of time and these have to be planned. But there are often some small steps you can take in preparation for the big chunk. Free up some emotional space by clearing physical space, throw away what you no longer love or need, open letters, pay your bills, and fill in forms.
Organize a decent filing system for what you must keep so that you can clear your surfaces and your cupboards.
A common reason for procrastination and not taking the action you must take for change is believing that others would be affected or offended by what you do. So instead of having the life you truly want you remain stuck.
Take a look at what you consider are the obstacles are in your path and decide how to get rid of them. Imagine the ‘you’ who wants the goal talking to the ‘you’ who wants to please other people. Let the two parts of you discuss the reasons for doing a particular thing and not the other thing. Then ask them both if there might be a middle way, a compromise which might be better than not doing what you want at all. Can you find a win-win solution both to achieve your goal and keep the others happy too?
It’s fine to be selfish sometimes. Louise Hay in her book ‘You can heal your Life’ calls this being SELF-ish, and suggests that doing things for you, is not only useful but actually essential. I agree with her, as part of the concept of looking after yourself.
Making changes happen
Have you noticed how sometimes you don’t even admit that you need to change something in your life? Your friends and family may have been telling you for years to lose weight or to stop drinking so much or to exercise more and yet all the time you say: ‘It’s not my problem- I can deal with living the way I live: stop telling me there’s something wrong.’ And yet there may well be if you hear those messages lots of time. Perhaps you need to take a step back and ask yourself it they, just might be telling you the truth you on’t want to hear!
The first step for change is actually acknowledging that something needs to be different in your life! So listen to what your nearest and dearest are saying to you, find out more and accept that what they say may be something you can begin to deal with.
Get organised
If you want to make big changes in your life you have to get more organised and clear your clutter. Take it drawer by drawer, cupboard by cupboard. Take everything out and put the contents into categories. Most important is to throw away anything broken or out of date, things which doesn’t fit or which you know you will never wear again. Ask yourself: ‘Do I need this?’ ‘Do I like this?’ and if the answer is no then either throw it away or give it away to charity shop or freecycle.
Being assertive
One of the most important skills to learn when you want to change your life is being assertive. Saying no when you mean no. Not letting people persuade you to do things you don’t want to do, or eat what you don’t want to eat.
Recognise what it is that you want and avoid doing things just because you don’t want to upset someone.
Learning to say no is vitally important. Be selfish because that is the way to look after yourself and when you do that you will begin to eat more healthily and exercise more too.
Coaching?
Are you fed up of not getting things done, had enough of never having enough time to take the exercise you need and prepare the healthy meals you know you should?
Have you had enough of stress, or lack the confidence to step out of your comfort zone, or being sure you would like a different sort of life but not knowing how to achieve it?
Would you like to have more fun, better relationships with friends, family and partner?
Coaching can enable all of these to happen!!
Find out more HERE
- Do you want to change your life?
- Would you like more time?
- Be more healthy?
- Have better relationships?
- Feel more confident?
- Be less stressed?
If you are fed up and want to wave a magic wand but aren’t quite sure what words to use except for abracadabra…..Look no further except HERE
Lose weight without dieting
Is it possible for your weight to change by your mind-set rather than by restricting your intake according to diet rules? Is the reason diets don’t work because of your state of mind?
Start with your beliefs about weight and about thinness:
- What would being slimmer mean to you?
- How would your life change if you were slimmer?
- What are you protecting yourself against?
- How would other people perceive a slimmer you?
