Choosing to be Ridiculously Healthy and Unreasonably Happy

Over the last decade, I have been focused on studying the most highly regarded scientific authorities on the topic of optimal living. At the same time, I developed and taught a PhD level course on wellness counseling. This book is a synthesis of the most important ideas I have discovered. I have organized the chapters around a wellness tracking, goal setting, and progress monitoring tool, called “Looking Good/Feeling Good,” that I developed and have used for over 20 years. I have personally seen the positive effects of on my energy, mood, aging, and overall wellbeing by monitoring my nutrition, fun/playfulness, exercise, social support, and sleep/rest. I have also used this tool in my university teaching with 100s of graduate students and have seen consistent positive effects with them. Because I have implemented these powerful ideas into my own life and seen their effects with myself and many others, I believe the ideas in this book to be, not only based on solid science, but also practical wisdom that can help you live your most optimal life. While I am a professor, this book is not purely academic, but rather I designed it to be a practical book to help you apply in your life amazing knowledge and wisdom related to optimal living. My hope is that you will choose the ideas/lessons that best fit your journey to health and happiness. It was very validating when, in 2009, Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD, a molecular biologist, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine, for her research on protecting the tips of our chromosomes (telomeres). Blackburn’s research on telomeres led to the identification of seven factors that protect your telomere length and slow your aging at the cellular level. I was please to find that six of the seven factors Blackburn identified are found in my “Looking Good/Feeling Good” wellness-tracking tool. She later teamed up with and Elissa Epel, a psychologist, to write the book: The Telomere effect: A revolutionary approach to living younger, healthier and longer, which tells the amazing telomere story and how it affects your life and wellbeing. I highly recommend it. Telomeres are the tips of our chromosomes that protect them. Chromosomes are bundles of tightly coiled DNA located in the nucleus of almost every cell in our body. Cells divide over time, and each time they do, the telomeres are shortened. This process of shortening in your telomeres is associated with aging, cancer, and a higher risk of death. The good news is that we have quite a bit of control over the seven factors that protect your telomers and slow aging that Blackburn and Epel identified . The beauty of the “Looking Good/Feeling Good” wellness tracking chart is that it is a simple but powerful tool that allows you to track these five key areas each week and then see how those five ratings affected your mood and energy. We know that even very small positive changes yield significant increases in energy and improvement in mood. When you repeatedly see the direct connection between how you choose to handle your nutrition, fun, exercise, social support, and rest each week, and the effect those choices have on your energy and mood, you become much more aware. This can lead to your empowerment to change and make healthier choices. To get started, pick one of the five areas each week that you most want to improve. Then, write a simple but specific plan you think will help you see progress. Next, share your goal and plan with someone who is encouraging about your health and wellness. If possible, recruit one or more of your health buddies to goal-set with you each week. You can do this via email or texting. What we know about habit change is that writing specific goals weekly and monitoring/recording your progress is a key. Add to that the social support of friends/family when you share your goals, plans, successes, and brainstorm new strategies to improve, and you have a strong system to help keep you moving in the right direction of continuous improvement. Another habit to remember is to be kind to yourself when you do not achieve your goal. Nobody is perfect. When progress is not made, it is important to not doubt your ability. You can and should doubt your strategy or plan. In this case, instead of doubting your ability, you change your strategy. In other words, if what you are doing isn’t working, try something different. Another key to successful behavior change is to look for even very small improvements. We call this the “Kaizen” approach. Kaizen is a Japanese technique for achieving great and lasting success through small and steady steps. One of the keys to any behavior change is becoming good at noticing even very small improvements. This skill keeps us motivated. We sometimes throw out effective strategies when we do not see large gains quickly. That is counterproductive and undermines our growth. We use a saying to help remind us of this important principle: “Little by little, bit by bit, I’m improving every day.” For more on the “Kaizen” approach, I recommend Robert Maurer’s book, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way.