Try wellness coaching

(Takudzwa Hanyani)

At the beginning of each year we all have goals, objectives and different resolutions which we want to meet before the end of the year. Some of the goals are personal, some business-related and others health-related.

 In the health-related goals many individuals might be interested in losing weight, eating more healthy food stuffs, reduce alcohol consumption, happier marriage and stop smoking.
 However, half way through the year people often find themselves falling back into the trap which they desperately desire to escape.

In 2009 a study in South Africa and Botswana revealed that 78 percent of people in both countries set out health related goals at the start of each year but only 12 percent were successful.
Failure to meet these goals is a major cause of depression, anxiety and at times low self esteem. However, besides the failures of your health-related goals in the past, the good news is there is still hope for many through wellness coaching. We talk—you listen. What’s wrong with this picture? When it comes to helping people get healthy the “expert talks, everyone listens” model may not be the best. Here’s an idea: actually listening to what a participant needs to be successful — and then helping them follow through — may be the best way to improve health. That’s the idea behind wellness coaching.

In the past we have attended all types of behavioural change classes from guiding and counselling, lectures and presentations from gurus but in the end we find ourselves in the abyss of strife to adopt and change health behaviours.

Information and advice often don’t get us the results we want.

For example on every cigarette pack sold in Zimbabwe the following words are imprinted in front, “Danger: Smoking Is Harmful To Health” and at the back of it “Tobacco smoke contains harmful chemicals such as carbon monoxide, cyanide, nicotine and tar which can cause disease and death”.

Nevertheless besides these cautions statistics in Zimbabwe prove that the number of smokers is on a rise. So what do people really need to improve health behaviours?
In Zimbabwe most practitioners look at people’s limitations and this deficit approach has not been able to produce sustainable results.

 People’s limitations are the focus of attention because limitations are seen as a challenge to success while people’s strengths and resources are ignored because they don’t present a problem.  This approach leads to conversations that focus on shortcomings, problems and obstacles, with most practitioners talking a lot, providing information and advice that should make a difference, if only people would act on it.
However, wellness coaching uses the asset approach which maximises human performance because it increases people’s ability to learn in the present while also increasing people’s capacity to learn and make better choices, independently, in the future.

Additionally, the benefits are multi-directional in that an asset approach increases everyone’s capacity to think better about choices, whether or not they are the intended beneficiary of the support.  Wellness coaching provides a way of building personal capacity to create better results, and those results last. These coaching cultures generate better wellness thinking organisation- wide, and those benefits both stay and multiply.
-Takudzwa Hanyani is a Corporate Wellness Consultant and Certified Wellness Coordinator writing in his own personal capacity. Feedback:takudzwa.hanyani87@gmail.com Blog: www.wellnesspeople.wordpress.com