Book: Aging Beyond Belief by Don Ardell

If you plan to age, prepare yourself — it's later than you think. The challenge of aging well should be taken seriously, but not grimly! Whatever your age, it's never too soon, or too late, to learn and apply the fine art of aging well, really well. Discover what aspects of aging can't be changed and improve the rest that can. Mold your own realities with REAL wellness, Ardell-style.

The 69 tips — one for each year of the author's life — are thought-provoking, challenging, eye-opening, manageable and fun to read. And all provide practical guidance for intelligently designing your own life-style evolution.
Learn more

Don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.
Read Don's blog!

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

How I Am Going To Harness The Wellness Concept To Change (Save) The World

Saturday April 28, 2007

Good ideas often have a hard time succeeding in the world. Yet the ridiculous Kidney Heist (urban legend) tale keeps circulating, with no resources whatsoever to support it. Why? Is it simply because hijacked kidneys sell better than other topics? Or is it possible to make a true, worthwhile idea circulate as effectively as this false idea?
~Chip and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.

I sometimes get discouraged. Despite all these essays and my newsletters, speeches, books and media appearances, the wellness message has not made a big impression. People certainly are not a lot healthier than they were before my first book came out over 30 years ago. Worse, I have not become a wealthy celebrity, despite all the opinions I have offered here and elsewhere. This is an outrage and I wish I did not have to put up with it.

How do I manage to stay happy, cheerful, fit and productive, despite the reluctance of the public to adore me? Simple. I try not to think about the injustice of it all. This works quite nicely, until I come upon a discouraging word -- or two. This happened recently when my buddy Bob Ludlow responded to an essay I had sent for his review. After the usual pleasantries and kind words, Bob provided the following "tough love:"

One more point that I have made before: Your platform, so to speak, is wellness; and everything you write, as far as I know, is within a wellness context (make that a somewhat expanded wellness context). Sometimes I get the sense that this limits you, that you could say "it" better and more effectively if you dropped the confines of your wellness-guru role and just wrote what you wanted to say, how you wanted to say it.

Let me put this in a close-to-sixty-eight-year perspective: I can't think of a single time I have ever heard anyone I know utter the word "wellness" other than you. I have seen the word in print from time to time, but it's always in a phony advertising context.

So I ask you, are you not limiting your potential audience by linking your thoughts and insights to the mostly ignored "wellness movement?" Especially considering that your take on most issues seems to be a minority position within the movement you helped to found?

My impression is that wellness just hasn't caught on; it's not something people think about; it's not in the forefront of many people's consciousness, and it probably won't be for the foreseeable future. Nobody's saying, or thinking, "Wow, a new wellness book has just been published; I sure hope Barnes and Noble still has a copy left."

Question: Is working within the confines of wellness limiting you? Is it limiting your potential audience?

As I told you, except for your writings, which I value and enjoy, I could not care less about the rest of "wellness.

As you might imagine, this sparked some reflection, if not an immediate sense that I needed some career counseling. Yet, being less than a year and a half from seventy years of age, it might be a little late in the game for me to apply to medical school, seek leading roles in Hollywood, try out for the New York Yankees or get started on any of the other fun careers I fantasized about when I was in high school.

I wrote to Bob and explained that he provided a valuable service. He motivated me to think about some important issues personally as well as about the future of the wellness movement. I did not disagree with anything he described. Perhaps I am indeed too closely identified with the word "wellness, which could be off-putting. However, I also pointed out that I do write what I want to say, how I want to say it. I also insisted that I try not to come off like a guru of wellness or guru of anything else.

I admitted his assessment was scary and that I needed to break out of the wellness box, that the concept has not and probably won't catch on (in time, at least, for me to benefit from it). The burden is on me, I realize, to think about ways to escape the wellness confines that limit my potential audience.

I told Bob his advice was welcomed and appreciated even if it scared me, particularly because it reminded me of the error of my ways and futile career paths!!!!

Shortly after this exchange with Bob Ludlow, and just in time to redirect my hopeless career path, I came across a new book entitled, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath. This work suggests that there are six principles that might make my message much more effective, thereby eventually harnessing the wellness concept to change (and maybe even saving) the world. Or something. The six principles are:

Simplicity -- Strip an idea to its core, prioritize and create proverbs if possible that are both simple and profound. The Golden Rule is the ultimate model of simplicity.
Unexpectedness -- To get an audience to pay attention and maintain their interest, I must violate their expectations. This involves being counterintuitive.
Concreteness -- Ideas must be communicated in terms of human actions, sensory information. I must avoid jargon (for examples, mission statements, synergies, strategies, visions) that can seem meaningless. I need concrete images, the kind that turn up in memorable urban legends (guys with missing kidneys waking up in ice-filled bathtubs after messing around with women not their wives, for instance).
Credibility -- People are more likely to embrace wellness ideas if believable images are conveyed that give the wellness appeals a convincing stature. Memorable phrases ("Before you vote, ask yourself if you are better off today than you were four years ago", for example) can do the trick.
Emotions -- Why should people care? You have to make readers or a live audience feel the message, or something, such as disgust at the unhealthiness of one thing or another or resentment at the duplicity of the villain depicted.
Stories -- Get people to act by telling stories to build a richer, more complete feel for the situation or mentally rehearse what will have to be done. This will enable an audience to respond more quickly and effectively when the real thing is encountered in daily life.

The authors of Made to Stick offer these insights as the six principles of successful ideas. In a single sentence, they review these six keys that I can use to break out of the doldrums of wellness: "Create messages that are simple and unexpected and concrete and credentialed and that contain an emotional story." That's it. How hard can that be?

Well, we'll see. If you spot me on Oprah or on late night with Jay or Larry in the weeks to come, you will know I figured it out. Otherwise, look for more essays right here forevermore or until I wear out, whichever comes first.

Meanwhile, stay well and, like me, look on the bright side of life, whether or not anyone's paying attention.

Domain: mental
Subdomain: factual knowledge

Search other reports in the Don Ardell report archive.

	Custom Search