Health

Physical, financial and mental health

One definition of health is:

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

The NHS define health as: ‘We use a broad definition of health that encompasses both physical and mental health, as well as wellbeing. This means we are not only interested in whether or not people are ill or have a health condition, but also in how healthy and well they are.’

We believe we also have to consider financial health, as this can easily impact physical and mental health. Click the button to see an example of how these are connected.

It gets more complicated…

What is Health? How about Wellness, Wellbeing or Happiness?

The Active Wellbeing Society (TAWS) define Health as a state of the overall mental and physical state of a person; the absence of disease. They define Wellbeing or wellness as a way of life that aims to enhance well-being and refers to a more holistic whole-of-life experience which also includes emotional and spiritual aspects of life. We expand on this definition of health to include financial health and mental health, to make it synonymous with wellbeing or wellness.

If you’re interested in finding out more information about the health (or well-being, or wellness) of people in the UK, and see how this is measured and the results.

We use ‘Health’ as the same as wellness, or wellbeing. A lot of work has been done trying to define what ‘wellness’ is. The Cambridge Dictionary defines wellness as the state of being healthy.

More than ever before, we hear the word ‘wellness’ in the news, in conversation and even at work. There is no universally-accepted definition of wellness. There is, however, a set of common characteristics seen in most thoughtful attempts at a definition of wellness. We generally see a reference to a “state of well-being,” which is vague, to say the least. Also frequently seen is a “state of acceptance or satisfaction with our present condition.”

The truth is wellness is a tough word to define. That said, we’ll leave it to Charles B. Corbin of Arizona State University who gives this definition of wellness: “Wellness is a multidimensional state of being describing the existence of positive health in an individual as exemplified by quality of life and a sense of well-being.”

Another definition we like: “Wellness is an active process of becoming aware of and making choices toward a more successful existence.

• Process means that improvement is always possible
• Aware means that we are continuously seeking more information about how we can improve.
• Choices means that we consider a variety of options and select those in our best interest.
• Success is determined by each individual to be their collection of life accomplishments.”

You need to understand how healthy you are, and how you make make improvements

Since caveman days, we have striven to improve our quality of life. We have evolved to seek the safe life, the good life, the happy life. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs set out survival first, then fulfil our needs, then thrive.

We know things can go wrong, but our resilience can enable us to overcome adversity. We can navigate unpredictability by using our mindset, attitudes and values. By making minor tweaks to these we make ourselves MORE resilient, MORE capable of dealing with problems as they occur.

At YouDrive Health we believe physical health, financial health and mental health are all linked – click the button to find more.

If you are to make any improvements, we need to understand more about ourselves. First of all – what makes us tick? What are our core values? Do we even know what values really are?

We need to know how healthy we are, where we are strong and where we are weak in terms of health, and what could stop us making improvements.

How healthy are you now?

We use questionnaires to allow you to determine how healthy you are. For example:

You can download this personal wellness quiz, which was drawn up by Plymouth University in the US and aims to make people aware of their position and think about their choices which could lead to a better lifestyle.

After this you can download a Wellness Recovery Action Plan from Community Mental Health Peer Advocacy and Support Service (COMPASS), which allows you to plan what you want to do and who can help you achieve it.

It’s all very well working out what needs to change, but CAN YOU CHANGE? We all know about ewsolutions that don’t last. Learn about your attitude to change.

Our last section on understanding yourself – what is your ‘locus of control‘? This reflects the fact that some people belive that they can make changes in their life, while some think that things just to them.

Health or Wellness or Wellbeing - its aspects

Dimensions of Health or Wellness or Wellbeing

If wellness is multidimensional, what are the dimensions of wellness? There are many sub-dimensions or domains, but we like the Dimensions of Wellness site which has the following:

1. Emotional Wellness: Awareness and acceptance of feelings
2. Spiritual Wellness: A search for meaning and purpose
3. Intellectual Wellness: Recognition of your creativity, knowledge and skills
4. Physical Wellness: Need for physical activity and balanced nutrition
5. Environmental Wellness: Positive awareness and impact on your environment
6. Financial Wellness: Debt reduction, cash flow balance or financial future planning
7. Occupational Wellness: Personal achievement and enrichment from your career
8. Social Wellness: Contribution to your community

You can decide for yourself how you fare in each of these domains, or you can take our simple questionnaire to see whether this backs up your feelings.

Dimensions of Health or Wellness or Wellbeing

Prioritise your domains

You can’t change everything at once. We believe you should focus on one area and address that, then move on to the next. So you need to prioritise.

As well as thinking about which domains you are strong and weak in, you can consider which you should address first and which you want to address.

Health Areas within Domains

Within these domains we have specific health areas – a varying number in each domain. For each health area we have information and a questionnaire to determine how healthy you are in that area.

You can see which health areas we have in each domain.

List the health areas you might want to addresss

Although you define the health area when you start an action plan (see below), here you can list the first few health areas you think you will tackle.

Improve your health in a specific area

We let you build your own action plan. You create an action plan and give it a name you’ll remember.

Then you choose the domain and health area you will focus on.

You also set out what your issue is in this area, and the outcome you’d like to achieve.

You can look at information on this health area. This will typically include general info, videos, reports to download and links to related sites.

It will also have a questionnaire on that health area, which you can take to see how healthy you are there.

Having chosen your health area to work on and looked at the information on that area, including taking the questionnaire, you can look at exercises related to that area.

You can see a full list of exercises, or simply look at those we believe to be related to the health area.

Once you decide on an exercise, you can incorporate it into your action plan.

Having looked at the area and perhaps made a start, it may be that you are struggling to make the changes and need some help.

We are building a panel of experts who can provide you with the help and coaching you need, and you choose an expert to help you.

Once selected, this expert will again be added to your action plan.

Your action plan may have a ‘main activity’ – the thing you’ll do most often to improve things.

You can start doing this activity and keep a record of each time you do it as part of your action plan

Once you feel you’ve made enough progress on your action plan, you can summarise it and then review whether you’ve made any progress, by re-taking the original questionnaire on that health area.

When you’ve finished, you can download a PDF of your action plan.

YouDriveHealth

At YouDriveHealth we can provide you with information, tools, calculators and also support for may aspects of health – physical, financial and mental. If you register by entering your email address then when you sign in you can comment and contribute.

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Website : YouDriveHealth Limited

All areas of health are interlinked

Find your initial focus

You might think that physical, financial and mental health are quite separate, and for some people they are. However, often a problem in one area has a knock-on effect on others. Losing your job can lead to anxiety and depression, which can turn you to drink and impact your health.

You might have a severe issue in one area but that can lead to problems in other areas, and the people treating you for the first problem won’t be equipped to deal with these linked issues.

For example, doctors and nurses can treat you for a physical problem but can’t advise you about your job or finances. Nor for the anxiety that comes with it, apart from prescribing some drugs, which might or might not be the best solution.

We encourage you to take a holistic view – we look at all areas and offer support across the whole spectrum.

Even this view of health is simplistic, as you’ll discover later if you go down that route. You might want to consider overall health, or wellness or wellbeing, which include additional types of health, such as occupational health (how you are in your job). Then there’s happiness and quality of life – how do these fit?

If you’re interested in that, click the link here to see more information.

Values, Attitudes and Beliefs

We all have our beliefs, attitudes and values – these have developed throughout our life based on who we are and what we have done. Let’s look at what these are.

The University of Reading explain: “People’s values, beliefs and attitudes are formed and bonded over time through the influences of family, friends, society and life experiences. So, by the time you’re an adult, you can hold very definite views on just about everything with a sense of “no one is going to change my mind”.

The combination of your personal values, beliefs and attitudes are your moral principles that guide you in life and affect your behaviour. However, your views can wildly differ to others and in an institution such as a school, these beliefs may be counter to the values of the school, child development or indeed the law.”

Let’s look more closely at the differences between beliefs, attitudes and values.

Beliefs

These come from real experiences – we think our beliefs are based on reality, but in fact our beliefs colour our experiences; also, an original experience e.g. when we were a child is not the same as what’s happening now. Beliefs can be moral, religious or cultural and reflect who we are. They can be rational (‘it gets colder in winter’) or irrational (‘I am never going to make something of myself’).

Attitudes

This is an immediate belief or disposition about something specific. It is a recurring group of beliefs and behaviours aimed at specific groups, people, ideas or objects. They will normally be positive or negative and we will always behave that way to the target group. Examples of attitudes include confidence (I can or can’t do something), grateful (I an entitled to / grateful for XXX) and cheerful (I am generally happy / miserable).

Values

These are things (principles or qualities) that we hold in high regard or consider to be worthwhile or right / wrong. They are formed by a belief related to the worth of something – an idea or behaviour. Some values are common (e.g. family comes first, the value of friendship) or cultural (which the whole community have – see video at Study.com here)

The theory

Links to Wikipedia

Expectancy Value Theory suggests you balance your beliefs about something with the value you attach to it. The Theory of Reasoned Action suggests that beliefs and evaluation about behavioural outcomes determine attitudes, and intentions lead directly to behaviour.

Beliefs

Expressions of confidence – can change over time

Attitudes

Learned predispositions to something – are subject to change

Values

Ideals that guide our behaviour – Generally long lasting and often need life changing experience to change

Iceberg demonstrating implicit and explicit bias – from Owlcation

Locus of Control

We want to help people in all aspects of their health – physical, financial and mental. We also provide detailed explanations of how overall health (or well-being) is measured.
We believe these things are often linked, so we try and address health holistically. We are building templates, questionnaires and exercises to help you identify what’s important to you.
We think people should try and take responsibility for of their own health as much as they can. See below for what that means.

People look at things differently. Some people believe things happen to them, while others believe they can influence what happens to them. Technically this is called the ‘locus of control’. People can have an Internal or external Locus of Control

So how do you see things?

Psychology Today have a 15 minute test which gives you a summary of your position you can buy the detailed results if you want to.

My Personality Test have a 10 minute test which gives you a summary.

People tend to take more responsibility (locus gets more internal) as they get older. However, external isn’t always bad – for example if you are physically unable to do some things you can accept it and focus on the things you can do. This American video explains the concept and gives examples of how this can affect relationships.

Internal

More likely to take responsibility for actions
Tend to be less influenced by others

External

Blame outside forces for what happens
Don’t believe they can change their situation themselves

Health Areas in Domains

Domains

We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about. The first level we call health domains.

We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.

Health Areas

Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle. Within each health area, e.g. Depression, we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area. You can create your own Action Plan to address this area, and see

Emotional: Anxiety, Compassion Fatigue, Depression, Gambling, Laughter, Narcissistic, Personality Disorder, Sleep, Stress

Environmental: Environmental Issues, Greenness

Financial: Debt, Family Finance, Financial Planning, Financial Wellness

Intellectual: IQ, Personality, Procrastination

Occupational: Jobs for Different Personality Types, Retirement Income, Work Life Balance

Physical: Alcohol, Disabilities, Dizziness, Drugs, Fitness, Food Preferences, General Health, Healthy Ageing, Illness, Nutrition, Sleep Apnea, Smoking

Social: Communication Skills, Communication Styles, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Love Partnerships, Mental Abuse, Parenting Styles, Sexual Addiction

Spiritual: Are You Sensitive, Mystical Guidance, Spirituality

Each health area has supporting information and its own questionnaire.

Physical, financial and mental health

One definition of health is:

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

We believe we also have to consider financial health, as this can easily impact physical and mental health. Click the button to see an example of how these are connected.

It gets more complicated…

What is Health? How about Wellness, Wellbeing or Happiness?

Health domains

We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about. The first level we call health domains.

We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.

Health Areas

Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle. Within each health area, e.g. Depression, once you have subscribed we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area.

See which domains you should address

Having established that we use 8 domains, you need to understand which you should concentrate on.

The 8 are:

Emotional
Environmental
Financial
Intellectual
Occupational
Physical
Social
Spiritual

You can take a questionnaire, which scores you in each domain. You can decide which domains you are strong in, and which you need to improve.

Another analysis shows which domains you should look at, but also which domains you want to look at.

Add your attitude to change - see how you view changes in your life

Do you need to change?

No matter how healthy you are at the moment, the chances are that there are some areas you could improve. It may be that you have a real problem in one or more areas, and you would like to make some improvements.

At YouDrive we accept that there are many different degrees of ‘not wellness’ in a large number of different health areas, ranging from physical illness such as covid-19 through mental illness such as anxiety through to financial problems like debt. We try and help where the problem ranges from ‘slight’ to quite bad’ – after this expert help and intervention may be needed.

However, especially in these times, we have to try and make these changes ourselves, possibly with some help from others, whether remotely or face to face.

The thing is, to make an improvement we have to change some things.

This involves changing our behaviour in some respects, and that’s not always easy.

Henry Ford, the creator of the assembly line, is quoted as saying “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.

Another way of looking at this: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” – attributed to Albert Einstein.

Consequently we need to make some changes. The problem is that we have already developed a lot of habits, some of which we need to break and replace by better ones. Some of our bad habits have become entrenched, and the bad results they create in turn engender further bad habits to develop – in effect the bad habits can feed on themselves.

We need to understand how we can make changes and stick to them, and that’s what this part of your health profile is about.

It will involve some learning, through reading, some videos and some additional information and also seeing how you react to change currently.

It will also ask you to consider whether you feel you are in charge of your future, or whether you feel it’s all fate.

Assess your overall health using a health questionnaire

At YouDrive we try and help people improve their health. We use ‘health’ but we understand there are other terms such as wellbeing or even happiness that reflect how we are doing in our lives – if you’re interested in the different definitions and ideas see our page on the subject.

We want to help whether you have a particular problem – physical, financial or mental – or if you just want to improve some specific part of your life or just make some improvements overall.

You’d be surprised, but there has been a serious amount of scientific work done in this area over the last twenty years.

So first we allow you to assess your current health (or wellbeing, or happiness). We do this by questionnaire. Which one is determined by the type of person you are:

You understand yourself well and want a quick overview of your health and wellness, and will drill down in any areas needing work
You want to do a more detailed assessment and then focus on areas you’re already aware of
You want to look at the whole situation in more detail across all the health domains.

By the way, we take your privacy seriously – we collect information that you choose to provide but we de-identify it as much as possible and will never share it with anyone without your explicit consent.

You can then drill down into some specific areas and there are more questionnaires to see your situation in these particular areas. We provide you with specific information and refer you to other potential aspects of help. Our next step is to build a personalised action plan – for now we will make a suggestion for you to develop your own plan and then after a time you can see whether this has had a positive impact by retaking the test.

In future we will be engaging with medical and behavioural specialists to devise action plans for individual people with specific situations.

We have an overall questionnaire which you can complete which will assess your current state.

A Butterfly Life: 4 Keys to More Happiness, Better Health and Letting Your True Self Shine

Times of change can be a challenge, no doubt! Whether it’s a relationship breakup, job loss, or being diagnosed with a serious health issue. Or you may WANT things to be different, but it feels a little scary or overwhelming. The butterfly reminds us change can be beautiful, even necessary, in order to realize our full potential and live our best life.

Health

Physical, financial and mental health

What is Health? How about Wellness, Wellbeing or Happiness?

You need to understand how healthy you are, and how you make make improvements

How healthy are you now?

Health or Wellness or Wellbeing - its aspects

Dimensions of Health or Wellness or Wellbeing

Dimensions of Health or Wellness or Wellbeing

Prioritise your domains

Health Areas within Domains

List the health areas you might want to addresss

Improve your health in a specific area

YouDriveHealth

All areas of health are interlinked

Find your initial focus

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

Values, Attitudes and Beliefs

Beliefs

Attitudes

Values

The theory

Beliefs

Attitudes

Values

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

Locus of Control

So how do you see things?

Internal

External

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

Health Areas in Domains

Domains

Health Areas

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

Understand Health

Physical, financial and mental health

What is Health? How about Wellness, Wellbeing or Happiness?

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

Health domains

Health Areas

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

See which domains you should address

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

Add your attitude to change - see how you view changes in your life

Do you need to change?

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

Assess your overall health using a health questionnaire

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

A Butterfly Life: 4 Keys to More Happiness, Better Health and Letting Your True Self Shine