How to create a vision of wellness and achieve it

The program for the June 2 Women of Wellness (WOW) event, sponsored by Fallbrook Healthcare District (FHD), was about "How to set wellness goals and achieve them".

In the community room at Fallbrook Library, FHD board vice-president Barbara Mroz, the new emcee for the WOW program, started off by telling the ladies who attended, "Just being together is healthy."

Presenter Erica Williams, BS, ACSM, CHWC, then explained that among people who are trying to improve their health and fitness, there is 65 percent better achievement when the individuals create their own new behaviors instead of having someone telling them what to do.

In wellness coaching, Williams helps people to find the tools they need to make changes in their lifestyles, making better general choices to fit those lifestyles. "Wellness is different for everyone," Williams said, and "a quality of state of being in good health."

There are different kinds of wellness: intellectual, social, physical, spiritual, occupational, emotional, and environmental. Wellness is a full integration of all these dimensions which interact in a way that affects well-being.

Intellectual wellness refers to the ability to open one's mind to new ideas; social wellness, the ability to relate to others; physical wellness, the ability to maintain a healthy quality of life without undue fatigue or physical stress, avoiding destructive habits.

Spiritual wellness refers to the ability to establish peace within oneself; occupational wellness, the ability to achieve personal fulfillment (including motherhood) while maintaining balance; emotional wellness, the ability to understand oneself; and environmental wellness, the ability to recognize one's own responsibility for the world around them.

In a wellness coaching session, Williams talks to her client on the phone first, to see where his or her priorities lie, and what they want to achieve. She helps create a wellness vision with weekly goals and three month goals. When she checks with her clients to see how things are going, "There is no wrong or right answer; it's your goal, you have the power to change it," she tells them. "Through goal setting, we turn vision and goals into reality," she added.

The vision is one's desired future self. To create it, one connects to his or her best experiences and core values. "A compelling vision identifies what people want rather than what they don't want," Williams explained, involving values, outcomes, behaviors, motivators, strengths, challenges and a support team.

The three month goals are medium term goals, to start, learn and hopefully maintain a new set of behaviors with meaningful actions for realistic outcomes. "A SMART goal is one that you are fully in charge of accomplishing: specific, measurable, action-based, realistic and time-bound," she said.

After guiding the ladies through the process of creating a vision of the future selves they would like to become, Williams handed out a worksheet for them to write down their wellness vision, three month goals and then weekly goals, encouraging them to be very specific with action goals that are realistic.

She offered to answer questions about the process, being available by phone and email to help them set goals and achieve their vision of wellness.

The next WOW program will take place on Thursday, July 7, with the topic "Diagnosis and treatment for varicose veins."