Assessment- Unit 10

After reviewing my Unit 3 Health assessment and comparing it to now, I see a few differences here and there. My physical health and fitness is pretty good. I rate it about a 6, compared to 4-5 back then. My psychological wellness is rated about the same as before, an 8. Also my spiritual wellness is rated the same around and 8. I think this is because I focused a little more on boosting up my physical daily activities with my son. We walk around, play outside when he wants to play, and we spend more quality time together stretching or doing silly things that he likes around the house.
My main goal back then was to excel in all three areas of my health to balance them out more and involve my son into them as well. I did achieve my goal in some way, but I know it could have been a little better. I like how my son learns from what I do and I know that it's healthy for him. I even got my sister and mother into doing relaxation exercises and focusing on making themselves healthier within all three categories.
I still want to implement new hobbies into my life for my spiritual and psychological well-being and make more time to do my exercises. I know it's hard being in school and being a full-time mom doing loads of stuff everyday, but I have a feeling I will have more time later on.
I would have to say that I enjoyed this course. I learned a lot more than I thought I would. I enjoyed the experiences and I plan to keep up with all the stuff I learned and learn new ways of keeping myself healthy. My health has boosted a lot. I have noticed my mood changes, my way of thinking, and just the more positive outcomes of viewing my everyday activities. I feel more accomplished at the end of the day and I think that's very important to me.

Unit 9

I.                        Introduction:
It is very important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually, and physically because they all work together as a unit in helping achieve overall health and wellness. All aspects of them help in maintaining an effective and healthy person. A professional in health and wellness will definitely see the link such as how the body needs certain chemicals from the brain to function efficiently, and how the brain benefits from spiritual practices like meditations, breathing, mind games, etc. They all bring a much positive vibe to a person and continue to bring a health and wellness efficient atmosphere to others around them as well.

Some areas that I, personally, need development in is a more spiritual and psychological awareness for myself. I find it hard to make time to be myself and enjoy my own thoughts and relax in a stress-free environment. I also lose my spiritual guidance and find it hard to find the motivation to do anything for myself. So, getting myself into a concrete routine would be the best plan for me, such as meditating in the mornings to relax and start my day out right or finding time to pray and rekindle my soul with daily activities. I think if I did more activities to benefit my mind and soul I would be healthier on the inside and out. I have a couple hobbies to get into that I think will help also, such as painting/drawing, just being more creative and artsy. I also want to start walking and finding alone and quiet time to myself and stretching and practice breathing more to relax myself and get more energized.

II.                        Assessment:
Since learning more about overall health and wellness I have measured my expectations with reality. Physically, I expect to be active and do physical activities or workout daily (at least 3 times a week). However, I find myself unmotivated or too busy to keep those minimum requirements. But, I walk around and spend more time with my child outside and either walking or playing with him. I would like to enjoy more fitness exercises like walking/jogging for 30 minutes or doing simple at home weight lifting exercises to keep my muscles toned and working. I would score my physical wellness as better than I was last year. I grade myself with my overall wellness over time. Last year I didn’t have that great of physical fitness, but now I am getting much better at it. I try not to compare myself with others but with just myself.

Psychologically, I spend too much time thinking of the past or stressful events. I don’t give myself time to quiet my thoughts and enjoy meditations or visualizations that are healthier for me. My expectation for creating a healthier mind is staying stress-free, not worrying, and giving myself time to do some brainwork- such as doing crosswords, spelling, learning new words, reading, practice breathing exercises and relaxation. If I have not at least completed one of those brain exercises twice a week then my health is not looking that good. I found that enjoying some math time to keep my math skills up does the trick every now and then too. It helps me feel like I accomplished something. My psychological health right now, would be scored as better before I knew about psychological health. I think as long as I keep measuring my psychological health with my past and I excel from where I was then I will be doing just fine. However, I know there’s always more I can do.

Spiritually, I like to measure up to how my mood is at the end of the day. If I feel positive, happy, friendly, or exceptional than my spirits are great. The different ways of keeping my spirituality healthy are providing myself with the right nutrients during the day, keeping myself doing the right things and being honest, treating others the way I want to be treated, and helping them. Being a kind, loving, and caring person is the way to keep myself thriving spiritually. I try to make this a daily thing but at times, I need a push or it won’t happen as much. I tend to me selfish at times, but I understand what needs to be changed and accepting myself as who I am is better than what others think of me. To score my spiritual part of wellness, I would say it’s a bit poor but I am on my way on planning and making an improvement for myself. It’s going to be a little hard at first, because I am not much of a giver at times and I tend to hold my anger or frustration on past events. I also tend to keep the past to learn and make sure it never happens again, but I think as soon as I let all that go it would be a lot easier to move forward and let others in and treat them as equals.

III.                        Goal development:
I have different goals for myself involving the different areas of wellness. For my spiritual wellness my goal is to do more things for others so that I can feel better about myself. I want to practice Love and Kindness to others that are strangers and include more of my spirituality in my overall health. My psychological wellness includes goals that will better my mind and thinking. It includes adding time for myself to cherish my well-being as a person (my “me” time) and relaxing and thinking things through before acting and becoming stressful. I would like to diminish my anger and negative issues of my past and present and work on being in the present moment. I also have goals to empower my creative thinking and bring on more hobbies to enjoy. My physical wellness has a few goals that I would like to share as well. First, I want to enjoy new activities that I can do with my son and that are safe for him to get into. I also want to make time for myself to do exercises that I like to do alone, such as breathing and stretching and focusing more on the moment of bliss. The last goal is to stay strong and committed to being healthy physically. I don’t want my muscles to get drained and bored from not working so much.

IV.                        Practices for personal health:
There are some strategies that I intend to apply to help further my healthy growth physically, mentally, and spiritually. They would have to be stretching and doing easy muscle toning exercises every other day (physically), think before I act to minimize stress every day (mentally), and doing random acts of kindness for others whenever I possibly can (spiritually). My physical plan will include waking up and stretching for 10-15 minutes before starting my day and during the day do some squats, lunges, push-ups, etc. for about 20 minutes to keep myself lean and toned. I think doing these simple exercises will definitely help keep me moving and keep my muscles working. It’s good because I hardly have time to do anything else with being a full time mom and not having time for myself to do any running yet. It will also work with my pregnancy as well, because I know intense exercises are not recommended for me anymore.

As for my mental practices, I like to focus on stress-free practices to help with my thinking. I understand stress is not that healthy for me and keeping my thoughts focused on the positive things will help fight that. Just by reminding myself I don’t need the stress every day and remembering what pleases me more will help. Anything else that is hurtful or negative, I would prefer to stay away from. I can always control my thoughts and way of living but I can’t control things out of my control. With my spiritual practices, my plan is to keep my heart open and do good things for others and myself. It could be hard but I think doing small things like giving nice comments to people, giving hugs, giving gifts, or such will help someone in the long run. Even giving a person a ride or feeding the hungry will help as well. I think if I feel a little down or not feeling much love from myself as a person, it would help to love myself and love others by doing kind acts like this.

V.                        Commitment:

Assessing progress in these areas of health and wellness will be simple. Physical examinations could be done for my physical plan. If I see toning and progress in my muscles or notice the size of muscle increase or nothing happen at all  in the next six months, I will know whether I achieved my goal or not. By assessing my level of stress and positive thinking at the end of the days or how I imagine my life going somewhere in six months will help assess my plan. If I notice my mood or my stress level worsen or still the same, I know I wasn’t trying hard enough. Also that would be a great indicator of how well my spiritual plan is going too. Lack of love and determination in myself will be an indicator of how low my spirituality is. All these come together in assessing my overall wellness and health. If one of them is knocked off balance, there’s a good chance that the others may be knocked out as well. They all help each other progressing and implementing health and wellness in myself. If lack or progress occurs in any of these areas, there are always new and different strategies to undergo. Maybe a different activity or practice could be done or a mixture of other tactics to keep things fresh. Long-term practice of any method would be healthy and it wouldn’t be going to waste.