Wellness and the Coach

3. Manage your limbic threats. Regardless of personality, experience or capability, everyone encounters events and stimuli that activate their limbic system every day. Learning to identify these triggers and manage them effectively allows you to take back control, make considered judgements and avoid emotional decision-making. David Rock’s SCARF model helps us identify the five most common limbic threats and ways to manage them.

4. Run on six cylinders. Individuals who make poor lifestyle choices are not as mentally focused and have lower self-confidence, lower energy levels and lower overall life and work fulfillment.

In 2009, my colleagues and I took a closer look at the variables at play here and cross-checked our observations with the available empirical evidence. As a result, we were able to isolate six key areas that facilitate wellness. We call these the six cylinders of wellness and the evidence shows a causal link between these behaviors and wellness outcomes including stress levels, mental alertness, energy, self-esteem, memory, sex drive, life fulfilment, focus, concentration and overall levels of happiness.

These six cylinders include nutrition, activity, sleep, time out, social connections and our outlets. Making good decisions across these six cylinders helps all of us to be at our very best, particularly when dealing with change, stress and inevitable life challenges.

Small Steps

As with all behavior change, this is not about making wholesale changes to your life. Small, easy-to-maintain changes facilitate sustained change over the long term. As such, you should start with the elements that make the most sense to you right now.

This article was originally published in Coaching World.