Lifestyle Medicine: How It Works
Creating an inspiring vision for change
It’s much easier to achieve something when you visualize what you want. When people picture something better for themselves, it’s energizing and motivating. That’s why we begin by constructing a Big Picture of your vision for change. Your vision describes who you want to grow into when it comes to your health and happiness. What behaviors do you want to integrate into daily life? Your vision links your wellness to your personal happiness, cementing the connection between your value system and the lifestyle changes you seek. This is critical because research tells us that for change to be lasting, your vision needs to align with what you care about most.
Tapping into the personal strengths that will help you change
Applying your personal strengths and talents is also crucial to the process. Many people don’t think they have strengths, or don’t know what they are. We’ll focus on uncovering and emphasizing yours - those that have helped you succeed in your life thus far. Your character strengths are your natural resources and drawing on them will lead you to success.
Building motivation and confidence to create change
Confidence and motivation are essential for lifestyle change; they enable you to achieve your goals. Determining why this change is really important to you now will help you tap into a deep source of motivation. Most of us are familiar with the experience of wanting something so badly we’ll go to great extremes to get it. That’s the feeling we’ll ignite.
Throughout the process, I will share various approaches to behavior change and positive psychology that help foster these key change agents. With every success, motivation and confidence build, making additional goals easier to attain.
Overcoming challenges
Recognizing obstacles and strategizing to effectively overcome them is key to avoiding sabotage, and will empower you as you reach for your goals. Conversely, we’ll draw on any support systems you have to help you realize your vision and meet challenges along the way.
Understanding how ready you are to change
Next, it’s important to figure out how ready you are for change. People who accomplish lasting change succeed by getting ready for it: they strategize about how to enjoy the process and they think about the obstacles they’ll face, the resources they can bring to bear, the steps that feel right, and then move to action. Most New Year’s resolutions fail because people haven’t prepared themselves for change or examined whether they’re really ready to take it on. We raise the odds of success by preparing for each stage.
Setting actionable goals for change
For goals to be effective they need to be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Action-based, Realistic, and be Timely. It’s been said that a goal is a dream with a timeline.
Step by step, you’ll meet your goals. Yes, you’ll change behaviors, learn many new skills, and think and feel differently. But something even more amazing will happen…
You will move beyond simply maintaining healthy habits and actually outgrow your old ways of being, making the healthiest lifestyle choices second nature and great happiness, a natural consequence. The transformation is so gratifying, you won’t be able to imagine going back.