Issues to address with REAL wellness include topics that stimulate, guide and inspire self-managed advances in quality of life. The whole point of wellness should be to promote/facilitate and otherwise boost this mission - better life quality. Corporate wellness programming today, at least in the US, is weighed down with features designed to reduce company health insurance costs. These efforts are well and good and should be continued. However, expanded endeavors would follow if wellness were recognized as larger than a health concern. With a greater perspective and higher expectations, the orientation would not be limited to testing, monitoring, lecturing, pressuring or even coaching and mentoring. All of these are fine, dandy and possibly even helpful to ROI and productivity. But, these priorities are not all there is or could be. Important areas are overlooked that affect quality of life. REAL wellness would take quality of life beyond existing activities. It would also shift some of the focus from employees mired in poor habits to those seeking life-enhancing advances.

It may seem uncharitable, but I wonder if too much attention is given to minimizing self-destructive attitudes and habits and too little to REAL wellness education for quality of life enrichment. For some, REAL wellness might not be a reasonable option or attainable objective. Life is not fair. Everyone is not equally poised to pursue or sustain a philosophy for optimal functioning. Most problems need the old fashioned, risk-focused form of sub-wellness currently on offer. For many, REAL wellness might come later, after certain pressing medical and mental health challenges have been addressed.

Who, then, are the people who seriously need remedial medical/mental health attention at the workplace and elsewhere? For whom should the same old boring, mediocre wellness messages be directed? In my opinion, which I recognize might be somewhat controversial, the remedial target group must be those Americans who: 1) look to unproven "alternative" medical treatments; 2) are influenced by ancient superstitions and 3) would even think about voting Republican in November.

REAL wellness promoters will want to divert existing wellness initiatives from risk reduction, disease management and the limiting areas of physical health. Let's transition toward those initiatives (e.g., programs, activities, forums and other ways to promote constructive change) that engage citizens in human betterment. Such a renewed and expanded focus for the wellness movement would be a far-cry from matters of weight-loss and diet, smoking cessation, exercise, stress management and nearly everything else that forms the basis of wellness today. The American corporate "wellness" legacy established over the course of three or four decades might, at best, be considered a preliminary step. It now seems that the time has to move to another level.

There is no way of knowing the best way to start, but I would begin with the promotion of reason, or critical thinking, effective decision-making or whatever term or phrase seems most comfortable and appropriate. Critical thinking helps in resisting fraud, superstition and all forms of deceptive advertising. The latter probably involves 97 percent of all marketing - and that's a conservative estimate. In addition to understanding these skills, Americans and others require an attendant willingness to apply these capacities whenever assessing large and small life choices.

If we can't do it in this country, let's try the next best thing - encourage our friends in Europe, Down under, in Japan and anywhere else wellness has the promise of being REAL, to do it for us. Then, after the merits of such a mindset are self-evident and proven in empirical ways, we in America can copy what they've done - and be grateful for the favor.

Be well. Always look on the bright side of life.

(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the MEANING DOMAIN under the skill area of relationships. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)

(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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