don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

Many, if not most, people have occasional bouts with pollens and other allergens. Medications are available to moderate the effects of such annoyances. Even more insidious and damaging to your prospects for wellness are the habits and customs that seem “normal” but obstruct a self-managing lifestyle. Examples would include any number of unexamined assumptions we make based upon our varied sub-cultures, such as thinking that it’s reasonable to overeat in restaurants, to drink too much, to forego daily exercise, or to be around smokers (let alone to be one!)

Under most circumstances, it’s good to develop a resistance to allergies, however, resistance (or becoming oblivious to) habits and customs that obstruct self-management is injurious to your health. If you develop a resistance to being put off by or rebellious against obstructive norms, you’ll be lured into enduring what could be changed or at least avoided. A wellness lifestyle entails attitudinal and behavioral patterns that make you resistant to such irritating all-season lifestyle allergies as complacency, mediocrity, self-pity, boredom and slothfulness, among others.

Inoculate yourself, painlessly and at no cost or risk, with a wellness mindset—and make a conscious commitment to positive initiatives for optimal well-being. Few people appreciate the extent to which lifestyle allergies are barriers to personal excellence. They don’t realize that such “pollens” lead to rash decisions, to sneezing at life-enhancing opportunities, to sniffing their nose at common sense, to getting red in the face during needless emotional outbursts, to quick irritation with others and even to itching for revenge (a self-defeating trait) -- and these are only a few of the dysfunctional attitudes that arise without the protection of a wellness lifestyle.

Too often, when people think of allergies, they focus only on the seasonal factors or possibly on food allergies; now you can appreciate that the lifestyle variety are just as or even more likely to compromise health and well being as the usual (microscopic) suspects. A wellness philosophy provides year-round protection against these afflictions of complacency, mediocrity, self-pity, boredom and slothfulness. As with the other, more publicized allergies, you can practice avoidance as one strategy for controlling lifestyle allergies. You can, for instance, avoid the obvious threats to your physical and psychological well-being, such as sedentary living, high fat diets, smoking or excessive drug/alcohol intake. This is only prevention, though, and it is harder to give up certain attractions (tasty but high fat foods, for example) if the major justification for doing so is but avoidance of a negative outcome (such as weight gain). Prevention, in other words, protects against lifestyle allergies by seeking to avoid negative outcomes. The alternative way to avoid such outcomes (poor health, low energy levels, dysfunctional habits of all manner) is to choose a proactive lifestyle -- wellness. Wellness is designed not to avoid negatives but to achieve positives (vigor, fun, self-efficacy, personal responsibility and so on).

As if you did not have enough good reasons to build up these wellness antibodies, there is more good news: You don’t need a doctor’s permission, a prescription or a pill. It’s yours for the taking. Enjoy.

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

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