Unit 9 Final Project Blog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unit 9 Final Project

 

Mike Scales

 

Kaplan University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HW420: Creating Wellness

 

Professor Nysewander

 

08-08-2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unit 9 Final Project

 

            As I young child there were few things that really upset me as much as my dad telling me that I must, “do as I say, not as I do.”  I believe it was the simple hypocrisy of the statement that lead me later in life to realize it’s by attraction and not promotion that I found myself following.  The simple question posed is asking the importance of health care providers and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually, and physically.  Is there anything more important?  Practicing the principles in which a health care provider will be assigned to be teaching others, in my opinion, is perhaps the most important aspect of their lives.  Living what they are teaching and preaching is something that I feel is second to none when it comes to importance.  One of the great minds to walk the planet, Albert Einstein is credited with saying, “Example isn’t another way to teach, it’s the only way to teach.”  Imagine walking into a health care provider and having them give you advice or offer help in the way or health if they themselves didn’t appear healthy?  So the physical aspect would be vital as that’s what patients and clients will first recognize.  I believe that the attraction some people have, or charisma if you will, is the combination of spiritual and mental health.  Those both will show up fairly quickly in a conversation with a health care provider.  My personal development in these areas has been a slow but steady road.  The physical aspect of health is the easy one for me as I’m a very active beach going surfer who plays beach volleyball a few times a week and is in the gym six days a week.  I attend weekly meetings of the church and work on my spirituality as I see it by expanding my personal relationship with a God of my understanding.  Mental, or psychological health, is one area that today, as a full time student and a participant of life, to me is the one area that for me follows the other two.  Mental health is important and continuing to seek knowledge helps with that but it’s been my brief experience that if my heart, or spirituality, is in the right place my brain seems to follow.  They all work together in my life and the more I acknowledge that truth the more willing I am to never, or at  least try to never, neglect any of them as they are all important for me to develop as a wellness professional and more importantly as a human. 

            Self-assessment is something I’ve been working on and its importance has been growing as I get a bit older.  Assessment of my life, where I’m at, where I’m headed, and where I need to improve is an aspect of life I wish I would have been practicing at a much early age.  The most difficult task with my personal assessment is being completely honest with myself without being too much my own critic.  Honesty is the basis for any self-assessment in my opinion and without it makes any assessment moot.  My spiritual health is one of faith and trust.  I am going through a very difficult time with a dear friend suffering from a fatal illness and though my mind wants to ask “why” my hearts is telling me that it’s just something I’ll never know the answer too until I meet my maker.  I must continue to trust my God and not question Him.  At times this is very difficult for me but I continue to turn to my God when in doubt which is growth for me at this point.  My mental, or psychological health, is something I feel I’m also improving with my dedication to school and the real gift has been a dose of humility which has cleared my brain to learn and accept that I know so very little.  Humility has been, and continues to be the greatest gift I’ve received from God with regards to my mental health.  I feel arrogance and ego had, for far too long, kept me from learning and experience all that others might offer.  I feel today that I’m open to learn and experience what others have learned and that has been a great experience.  My physical health is something that has always been an easy aspect, and completely enjoyable, part of my life.  I have been an athlete my whole life and being active and busy with sports is part of my fabric.  So with all that said I would give myself a 6 in spirituality, a 7 for my psychological health, and a strong 8 for my physical health but the more important aspect of them all is I do feel they are all trending the right way, upwards and onwards.  I feel my best days are still in front of me. 

            After taking an honest appraisal, or self-assessment, of one’s lot in life what am I to do next?  It’s to see where I’m struggling and to make some goals or decisions to make some changes, right?  So when it comes to my spirituality I find there are two areas that I want to work on.  The first one is to be more diligent with my daily prayer.  I have set a goal to pray upon awaking and praying before I lay my head on the pillow at night.  I feel it’s important to start and end every day with at least a brief prayer.  The second aspect of my spiritual health I’m looking forward to improving is my working with others.  Working with others to help them improve their lives is a great way to help myself become more aware of what it’s like to be more like Jesus wants us to be.  If I can make small strides in these two areas I do hope that it will grow my spiritual life.  Psychologically speaking I feel that this aspect for me is a goal to remain as humble and teachable as I can.  I feel my brain can and will absorb what it needs to if I make the decision to set aside my own prejudice, my own hurts, and my own ideas aside so I can be open to learn.  My goal for all of this is simple and one word, humility.  I’ve spent far too much of my life thinking I knew the answer and my honest assessment is that has served me all that well and sure hasn’t helped my loved ones to flourish as they should.  So my mental goal is a decision to remain humble, very simple to say but more difficult to practice.  My physical goals are an ever evolving improvement on two things.  I was blessed to be given enough ability to play volleyball for a living and along with that God given talent there in me lies a work ethic that serves me well in the gym, on the beach, and when I’m doing any physical training.  So my goal, like every physical goal, is to become a bit harder working, a bit more educated, and bit more active in helping others with their physical health.  This is the easy part of life for me but due to the importance I have always put on the physical aspect of life my propensity to get a bit depressed when I’m injured and not able to participate in physical activities is very high.  Now that I’m in my 40’s (turned 40 in December) my aches and pains come on a bit more frequently so allowing myself time to rest and recover is my new goal so I don’t get injured and have to miss more time than I should.  So getting the proper rest and allowing my now older body to recover is my physical goal. 

            So what are some options, or actions that can help me improve in my areas I suggested I need help in.  Spiritually seems to be an obvious action for me.  Praying and praying all the time is a great action to improve my spiritual life.  There is another aspect to praying, which I’ve been told is my opportunity to speak to God, which is to listen to God, which is what I’ve been told is meditation.  So the two ideas that I need to practice prayer and meditation are the two physical actions I can, and will, take to help improve my spiritual growth.  Actions are the work that I need to put forth to achive any goal, no matter what aspect of life it has to do with.  Activites or actions to help with my mental health is a bit of a cross section with my spirituality in that prayer and meditation are going to be a part of them both but they will be focused on different things, which in my mind, seperates the actions enough to help me with the different aspects of mental and spiritual health.  Visualization is another aspect of my life that I’m working on that can help me mentally.  Visualizing how I my day might work out or putting a proper visualization on stressful situations can and will help with my mental health.  The other meditation I have been working on and plan to continue is the aspect of loving kindness in all aspects of my life.  That mental approach to the day is a great tool for me to live a stress free life and be default allows my brain to focus on the important things of helping others.  Two actions that I’m working on with my physical health are taking one yoga class a week and the other is to do nothing once a week.  Though both actions might appear simple on the surface the reality is I’m asking myself to take two days off from hard core training to take a yoga class which will help me stay limber and to take another full day off to do nothing which in itself is the hardest thing for me to do.  Both of those physical actions, or in the case of resting no action, will help me to remain fresh and ready to compete on the beach which is what I love to do.  So all areas and actions are going to take a conscience decisions and they won’t be easy to accomplish but with some hard work I feel I’ll be able to improve the actions. 

            Measuring progress in aspect of life will be, and always is, a tricky task to say the least.  Life isn’t a linear object that continues to move in one direction which allows me to gauge where I’m at with my goals.  Life is an ever evolving series of events that provide different ejoyments, difficulties, and tasks as we move through this crazy thing called life.  So assessing the goals and where I’m at isn’t something I can quanify so to speak but the idea that I’ll be taking a long hard look at my life every six months is the best I can do at this point.  At that point I can see where I’m moving forward, where I might be stagnant, and hopefully there won’t be many areas in which I’m back sliding.  I have marked on my both my phone and computer six month “updates on myself” that will be great reminders to sit and look at where my life is.  I guess putting myself on my own calender is one way I know to take time out for me.  I realize now that you’re either growing towards improvement or moving towards mediocrity and I choose to move towards improvement. 

 

Mike Scales

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Dacher, E. (2006). Integral health: The path to human flourishing (p. 143). Laguna Beach, CA: Basic Health Publications.