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You Drive Your Journey To Health

This is where you can choose how you want to assess your own health and start to take steps to make improvements.

Before you can start, you have to create a health record. To do this as additional security we will send you an email with a password you will need to enter for the first time to access your health record.

You can add as much or as little as you like into this record. No-one will see it. You can edit it later.  You will be able to view it and print it.

You will see whether you have a health record in the section below.

There are three stages, and you can choose which to do when  (just click GO! to go to the relevant section!) or complete the whole process.

1 Understand you and your health. This can involve doing a questionnaire to see how healthy you are now, looking at what has made you the way you are now, what your values are, your strengths and weaknesses, some aspects of your personality and how likely you are to change.   GO!

2 See how healthy you are in different areas. You can learn how your overall health is made up – we talk about physical, financial and mental health but there are other aspects to health (domains) and also specific areas within these domains, and you need to understand exactly WHAT you want to focus on.   GO!

3 Improve your health in a specific health area. Once you decide which specific health area you want to address, you can find out more about it, do a questionnaire to see how you score, then start making some changes!  GO!

4 Complete a full process.  The first time you look at this you may want to follow the full process,  which has been developed after extensive research into different worldwide approaches to determining overall health.  The process is very interactive, and covers all three of the above approaches – understanding yourself, looking at different health areas and then completing an action plan.  Just start at the top and work down!

1. Understand yourself and your health

1 Understand yourself and your health.  This can involve doing a questionnaire to see how healthy you are now, looking at what has made you the way you are now, what your values are, your strengths and weaknesses, some aspects of your personality and how likely you are to change.  You will see all these aspects below in more detail.

We don’t look at any details, and nor can anyone else. You can start vague and add details as you go.

Background Info

You can enter more details about yourself, only to make your profile more complete. You can even add a profile picture! We won’t look at it, use it or do anything with it at all!

This just starts you thinking about your health – feel free to add details at any time.

Your Values

Your values form your attitudes on life and determine how you think, the decisions you make and what you do.  It’s important to understand what they are – we help you to do that and give you choices in how to do it.

What’s the difference between values, attitudes and beliefs?  See more by clicking the button below.

Analyse your health

When going for an interview, you’ll often be asked for strengths and weaknesses.  It makes sense to understand these about your health, too.  You should know where you need to focus your efforts to improve.

Berkeley give a good example of strengths and weaknesses, with some good examples and videos.  Click to go have a look.

Overall health Questionnaire

You can do a questionnaire to see how healthy (or well) you are overall.  We have three options, depending on how much time you want to spend and how much detail  you want to go into.

What’s the difference between values, attitudes and beliefs?  See more by clicking the button below.

Attitude to change

It’s good to want to make improvements in your life and health, but some people just can’t change how they behave – eating, drinking or pure slobbery!

You can see some information on attitude to change, and even take a questionnaire to see what yours is!

Locus of Control

Some people believe things happen to them, others believe they can influence what happens.  This is your ‘locus of control’

You can see some information on locus of control, and even take a questionnaire to see what yours is!

Your Health Record

You’ll see your health record below if you’ve created one – click the green button to go to your health record.  If you’ve created more than one by mistake click the red button to delete the superfluous one.

Download Health Profile

Once you’ve completed your health profile, you can download a PDF copy of it. Click the button on the right to go to a page where you can select your health profile, then you can go to your profile and download a PDF.

2. See how healthy you are in different areas

See how healthy you are

We talk about physical, financial and mental health but there are other aspects to health (domains) and also specific areas within these domains.  You can go through these, understand them better, see how healthy you are in each and understand exactly WHAT you want to focus on – i.e. prioritise them.

See how healthy you are in different domains

We’ve broken overall health or wellness into 8 different domains: Emotional, Environmental, Financial, Intellectual, Occupational, Physical, Social, Spiritual.  Take a questionnaire to see how you do in each area.

Click below to see how we have come to our definition of health domains and why.

Prioritise your health domains

You can look at the different domains and decide which you should tackle in what order

It’s not just the ones where you’re strong or weak – there are some you might WANT to address and some you SHOULD address.

Review domains and health areas

Here you can see which health areas we have included in each domain, and look at what info we have on each area if you want.

Click below to see a list of health areas in the  health domains

Select health areas for action plans

You can choose a number of domains and health areas that you think you might want to prioritise.  These should be the first ones you use in your action plans.

You can see some information on action plans here.

Your Health Priorities

You’ll see your health priorities below if you’ve created any – click the green button to go to your health priorities.  If you’ve created more than one set by mistake, you can click the red button to delete the superfluous one.

Download Health Priorities

Once you’ve completed your health profile, you can download a PDF copy of it. Click the button on the right to go to a page where you can select your health profile, then you can go to your profile and download a PDF.

3. Improve your health in a specific area

Create your own action plan

Once you decide which specific health area you want to address, you can find out more about it then start making some changes!

First you have to choose which health area you want to focus on

As you know we have 8 domains, each with a number of health areas, 

Click below to see our definition of health domains and specific health areas.

Look at info on that area and do questionnaire

Having chosen the leakth area, you can look at the info we have on that area.  You can also see how healthy you are in that area by doing a questionnaire.

Click below to look at the different information

Look at exercises which can help you in that area

We have a number of exercises which you can do which can help you in that health area as part of your action plan.

Click below to see our exercises.

Look at experts who could help

It’s possible you might need some help making the improvements you want to in your action plan.  We are building a network of experts who can help.

Click below to look at how the experts panel will work.

Set up main activity of action plan

You can set up a main activity that you need to do as part of your action plan, then start doing it and record how you get on with it.

Once you’ve done it a number of times you can summarise it.

Review your action plan

Once you’ve completed your action plan, you can review it and see how you’ve done, by re-doing the healthh questionnaire you took and seeing whether there has been any improvement..

Click below to look at how the experts panel will work.

Your Action Plans

You should see any action plans you have created below, and you can either go to it from there or go to a specific area by looking at the options below.  If you haven’t set one up you’ll see a form where you can set one up. 

Test34 action plan called Before yoga

Created on: August 30, 2023
at 5:45 pm
Domain: Intellectual
Health area: IQ
Initial thoughts: You didn’t enter any!
Issue:

I need to prove how smart I am

Ideal Outcome: Proven smart

LindaB action plan called test action plan

Created on: March 9, 2023
at 4:45 pm
Domain: Intellectual
Health area: IQ
Initial thoughts: You didn’t enter any!
Issue:

This is a test issue

Ideal Outcome: Get smarter

Next you’ll start to build your first action plan.  Be patient – we’ll build the template and then you’ll go there.

On the next page you’ll first choose which domain and health area you want to focus on. You can refer to your priorities if you’ve set these up. 

After this, you can look at info on this health area and even complete a questionnaire if you want to. You can do some exercises associated with the health area and even engage an expert to help you. Finally you can review whether doing this action plan has made any difference!

Create another action plan

Here you start to build another action plan. 

Again the first thing you have to do is to name your action plan. make this name relevant to what you’re doing.  Remeber, if you call the plan “My Plan” you will see it referred to as [your user name] action plan called [My Plan].  Then again just make a note of how you’re feeling at this minute.  You’ll be able to change it as things progress!

Once you’ve done that, hit the green button which says ‘Name your action plan’.

After a short while (this is where the template of your action plan is being built), you will be redirected to your action plan, so please be patient! 

See your exercises

When you go through an action plan you can choose to include an exercise as part of that action plan.  If you’ve chosen any they’ll be shown below.

See experts you’ve chosen to work with

You can choose to work with an expert to help you as part of your action plan. If you have, they’ll be shown below.

Download Action Plan

Once you’ve completed your health profile, you can download a PDF copy of it. Click the button on the right to go to the relevant action plan, from where you can  download a PDF of that action plan.

Values, Attitudes and Beliefs

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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

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Assess your overall health using a health questionnaire

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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:

  1. You understand yourself well and want a quick overview of your health and wellness, and will drill down in any areas needing work
  2. You want to do a more detailed assessment and then focus on areas you’re already aware of
  3. 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.

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

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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”.  

henry ford

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.

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Locus of Control

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  • 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.

locus of control

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

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All areas of health are interlinked

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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.

health areas interlinked

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.

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Health Areas in Domains

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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.

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

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.

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Understand Health

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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.  

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Health domains

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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.

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

wellness wheel

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.

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See which domains you should address

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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.

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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.