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Dealing With Change

Wellness coaching

Chaotic lifestyles can cause some of us to overlook our fundamental driving force – our health and wellness.  It has always been said that prevention is far more advantageous than cure but a disorderly lifestyle seems to stop us from being active.

Some may find themselves turning to convenient and short-lived ways to tackle health issues, such as alcohol to reduce anxiety or a weight loss pill to dampen appetites.  Unfortunately these are fruitless ineffective solutions. The weight will creep up again and the underlying anxiety issues will remain.

One of the main reasons why people fail to uphold a resolution is because they try to accomplish it themselves, as motivation wanes and it becomes easier to abandon the resolution.

Wellness Coaching has become a major force in health management and disease prevention because it addresses long term behavioural and cognitive change.

The reason for this is because the individual receives ongoing and continued support where the coach and employee work as partners to address and improve the employee’s health and lifestyle behaviour.  Wellness Coaches use problem solving and solution orientated techniques and strategies to help people decide whether they want to create some change, what would that change look like and how they can take the small steps to achieve their goals.

Wellness coaching is very different to other forms of health education. Not only do the coaches advice and support the individuals through their journey, they will educate and train coachees to look within themselves to formulate an answer.

There is evidence that this solution works as scores of people have been able to alter the way they think and behave which is very important in an evidence-based health field.  Altering behaviour in one aspect of an individual’s life can successfully provide the foundation to allow change to occur in other aspects of a person’s life. 

Further research has shown that Wellness coaching is significantly more effective than personal training or dietician consultation in delivering sustainable behavior change. Principles of Behavioral Psychology in Wellness Coaching

Coaches are trained to follow a motivational counselling methodology which focuses on helping the individual self-evaluate, create a positive self-image and increase their self esteem. How they do this is through the following:

• Establish the desired results/outcomes i.e. I would like to quit smoking
• Pinpoint the behaviours that will lead to those outcomes; i.e. I must have a cigarette after my evening meal
• Understand the influences on that individual’s behaviour; i.e. always smoking with friends
• Develop a plan to start and sustain desired behaviours; i.e. explain to friends that you are planning on quitting
• Track and celebrate progress; i.e.  Purchase a gift from the money saved by not buying cigarettes.

So in short, Wellness Coaching enables employees to:

• have the motivation to transform and increase their confidence in their capacity to change.
• take control of their health and related behaviours.
• focus on their achievements and the positive aspects of the change to enable them to create lifelong changes.

To talk to one of our qualified experts about Wellness Coaching or Ceridian LifeWorks, (our Employee Assistance Programme) please contact 0800 0482 737