Dumbing down your wellness goals

happiness health wealth

PRACTITIONER WELL-BEING IS OVERLOOKED TOO MUCH.

In previous articles, I have spoken in great depth about how you need to carve out time for yourself in order to build a sustainable professional pathway for yourself that will lead to happiness, health and wealth.

This is an incredibly overlooked area for performance practitioners, especially those in the early stages of their careers. The attitude is pedal down, make hay whilst the sun shines, I am only young once so got to work hard. Insert any similar metaphor you can think of.

What actually ends up happening is that the foot goes flat to the floor and sooner or later the gas runs out of the vehicle (you) starts to break down physically, mentally, emotionally or all. This is not a fun experience for anyone, and your clients/athletes are not getting the best from you in the build-up to the “bang”, during or after.

No one wins.

Goal setting is a cornerstone of professional practice in most professional fields. Athletes set markers and yardsticks for distances, times, results, championships, and their careers. As for performance practitioners, we are no different.

This article aims to simplify two often over-complicated areas in one hit.

Goal setting
Performance practitioner well-being

More specifically how you can simplify your goal setting to improve your own well-being.

SIMPLIFYING THINGS

In my personal opinion, in life, there are complicators and simplifiers.

A complicator will add layers and layers of intricacy and structure to things that don’t require it. They will use far too many words to describe a basic concept, often in an attempt to fluff it up or make it seem like something it isn’t. If we were talking in training terms it might be someone who will over science all explanations over someone who will dumb things down so a 10-year-old can understand them.

A simplifier on the other hand is someone who tries to take a complex topic or theory and dumb it down so anyone from any field can understand it if they are over the age of let’s say 10. A simplifier will avoid overcomplicating things with science (not because they don’t know it), use shorter words and sentences, and generally try to make things easily understood.

I am most certainly a simplifier. I have been for my entire career and, will continue to do so. What is enjoyable for me about this article is that both goal setting and well-being are two areas I feel get really really over complicated for no real reason.

So I am going to dumb things down (maybe to my level), to what I think are the absolute basics of both goal setting and well-being.

So here goes.

WHAT IS WELL-BEING?

There are many definitions but mine is quite simply

‘Giving quality time, effort and energy to your happiness, health and wealth’

This article isn’t about listing all the different ideas of how to optimise your well-being, it is about dumbing things down on what has become a really overwhelming topic. By grouping things into happiness, health and wealth you get to think about things in a fluid yet defined manner.

Providing you with very clear guidance and simplicity is the aim. With that in mind here is my interpretation of what happiness, health and wealth mean which may help to provide some context for the next section.

Happiness

Enjoyment and fulfilment personally and professionally
Satisfaction and contentment with what you have
Feelings of joy, meaningfulness and worthiness

Health

Physical health
Mental health
Emotional health
Healthy relationships

Wealth

Pursuit or attainment of an abundance of
- Love
- Laughter
- Knowledge
- Experiences
- Family
- Friends
- Kindness
- Finances
- Investments

SIMPLIFYING GOAL SETTING

Goal setting is widely researched in sport, business, and social psychology. It gets a lot of airtime, and rightly so. We have all come across different goal-setting principles and frameworks which usually involve some sort of time measurement, direct action or outcome which are in line with what is feasible at that point in time. You can apply whatever acronym you want to for this.

As I said, I like to simplify things so it is easy and transparent for you.

Short, medium and long term goals, with specific actions attached to each. Simple as that. What short, medium and long term means to you is very much dependant on your own interpretation, how quickly your goals move or are met and how far in advance you actually like to plan.

For ease, an example might be

Short term goals: 1 week

Medium-term goals: 1 Month

Long term goals: 6 months

This method will require consistent re-setting of your goals along the way to your long-term goals. For others with different targets, it could be a day, week, and month or even 1 hour, 4 hours, 1 day.

The actions.

The actions are what hold your feet to the fire. What hold you accountable to your goals and what exactly it is you are going to do to reach your goals. The actions need to be very specific and fold into your longer-range goals.

Below is a breakdown of how you can set up your well-being goals to make things nice and simple.

WELL-BEING GOAL SETTING

Happiness

Short term goals

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