HouseDrive

Enjoy the right house and home

The UK house and home market is different from that in the rest of Europe, and is changing. Constant increases in house prices and values have encouraged people to ‘get on the ladder’ and constantly buy more expensive properties, secure in the knowledge that even if they struggle to afford payments the value of the property will quickly increase and generate equity value.

This has also led to people buying properties and renting them out, again secure in the knowledge that increases in capital value and ongoing rental income make this a good investment, leveraged with a mortgage.

This has led to problems buying a house

This constant increase in prices has meant that many people now can’t afford to buy their first house, and have to rent, or stay living with parents for longer.

Social housing is low cost rented housing aimed at people who can’t afford the private sector – whether buying or renting. See our section below on this.

Click on a heading below and see a summary, and if you're interested you can GO and read more about it!

Here are some facts and stats  about houses. GO!

See how changes in the housing market have transformed lives. GO!

See details on social housing. GO!

Look at the government’s policy here. GO!

See how the market has changed over the years. GO!

Look at the financial implications of buying.  GO!

See bothe sides of this critical decision.  GO!

We have a video on choosing whether to rent or buy.  GO!

If you’re a visitor to our site you can join and download information, assess your own health and create your own action plans, and even contribute to our site.  GO!

See a testimonial.  GO!

See what you can do next.  GO!

We have some additional information and stuff on this subject. GO!

Facts About Housing

£ 1 ,000

The average UK house price was £277,000 in February 2022, which is £27,000 higher than this time last year.

Millionaires
90%

Real estate investing has created 90% of the world’s millionaires

1 months

The art of ‘flipping’ is defined as buying, renovating and selling a property within 12 months.

Average profit
26%

The average profit this year is £40,955, a 26 per cent return.

0.1 %

London continues to be the region with the lowest annual growth at 8.1%. UK House Price Index

House price rise
10.9%

UK house prices have risen at their fastest rate in over seven years – increasing by 10.9% compared to this time last year – seven capital

house price peak
100

“House prices will peak in 2026, that is at the end of a 14-year cycle in house prices within a business cycle of 18 years.” Fred Harrison in MoneyWeek

Top rental yield
7.27%

The top UK city for profitable rental yields in 2021 was Sunderland – 7.27% annual rental yield.

house door

The dynamic housing market and how it has transformed lives

In the early 20th century less than 10% of UK homes were owner-occupied – this rose to 62% by the early 21st century, reaching over 27 million households in 2017.

Privately owned property is freehold or leasehold (where the owner buys the right to use the land and property for a time). Most is bought with a mortgage. Since the 1980s securitisation of mortgages led to repackaging of mortgage debt to provide an income flow, which was involved in the 2008-9 financial crisis.

Property is also rented, either privately, where landlords typically use short term (often 6 months) tenancy agreements, or local authority rented, where tenants pay a weekly or monthly rent, often subsidised and below market rate. Housing Associations offer affordable properties partly owned partly rented.

The housing market
The housing market is an indicator of household wealth – when prices rise or fall it creates a positive or negative wealth effect, even as far as moving into negative equity, where the mortgage has a higher value than the house, as in 1990 and 2008. Rising equity can give rise to increasing housing equity withdrawal.
.
Other factors affecting home ownership include population, income, interest rates and social trends.

Social Housing

The amount of social housing for rent has been slowly rising for the last ten years – over 4 million homes were rented from councils or housing associations in 2017. Social rents are about 50% of market rents.

Housing associations are independent, not-for-profit organisations that provide social housing for people in need.. They are sometimes called ‘registered social landlords’. They sometimes offer shared ownership schemes and have to be registered with Homes England. They were re-classified as private rather than public in 2016, removing £70 billion form public debt and allowed them to increase borrowing.

This is mainly due to an increase in homes rented from housing associations. Around 5,000 new homes were built for social rent in 2017, and another 1,00 were bought or converted.

Affordable Housing

There is also ‘affordable housing’ where the rents can only be around 80% of market rents.

To see an explanation of what these are, click the button below for an explanation from the Designing Buildings wiki.

There were 24,000 homes built for affordable rent in 2017 and 2,000 bought or converted.

Intermediate rent’ is defined as ‘above social rent, but below market levels’ (House of Commons library), and these are counted as affordable homes.

Social housing can be sold, with the best known scheme being ‘Right to Buy’ for council housing, with an equivalent scheme for housing associations. Over 16,00 homes were sold under right to buy in 2017/18, which is less than the year before. Around 5,00 were sold under different schemes.
The government committed to replacing all homes sold under right to buy after 2012, but this target isn’t being met.

Social Housing

Shelter have an article on social housing which tells the story of social housing. We provide an excerpt below and a link – it’s explained in the video here.

“For generations, social housing played a vital role in meeting the housing needs of people across the country, giving millions the quality and dignity of life that insecure and unaffordable private renting could not. Today, England’s much-reduced stock of social housing is continuing to shrink, making it tightly rationed and unable to play the same role.

Last year we lost around 17,000 more social homes than we built. Combine this with rising house prices and it’s easy to see why more and more people have no option but to try getting by in insecure and often unaffordable, privately rented housing.

Too many working families still have to rely on housing benefit (Local Housing Allowance) to keep up with sky-high rents. What has happened to the solution that once existed: low-cost social housing?”

renting cost

Facts from Shelter:

4.4 million
In the 35 years following the end of the Second World War, local authorities and housing associations built 4.4 million social homes

94,140 homes
In 1980, 94,140 social homes were built. But by 1983, supply had halved to just 44,240 new social homes

6,287 homes
In 2018/19, just 6,287 new social homes were delivered – nowhere near enough for the 1.1 million people on the waiting list

There is a House of Commons Briefing paper on Social Housing Reform in England dated 25th February 2022 mentioning a green paper and a white paper which you can download.

mixed housing

Governments policy on mixed community housing - does it work or is it a nightmare?

This heading sounds tame to be honest but it is the biggest social reengineering project that has taken place, ever. This is a government policy started back in the 90s when several projects were conducted around mixed community housing.

In simple terms instead of having defined areas where people of a certain group live and congregate such as council estates with generally lower income population and estates with elderly people living together. The Government ran several projects to aid the research on policy decision making. Over the last 25 years this policy has grown and developed into a life form and clearly has been modified and altered accordingly.

The feedback from many reports and reviews have been criticised because they are insufficiently evidenced based but have been emphasised positively to maintain government policy.

What does this policy mixed community housing mean exactly?

When a new housing development is proposed the government and local councils insist under the policy that the independent house builders build affordable housing for all people. There is agreement between house developers, governments and councils as to how big the percentage of affordable housing will be. Once this is concluded houses associations from all area can apply to take a section of the affordable housing for them to allocate to their local community which could be a significant distance from the development site.

New housing developments are now a mixture of detached, link detached, bungalows, 2/3 storey terraced properties, flats and apartments. They all vary in price and up to 40% are used for rental housing in the affordable market section.

There has been an independent review of the research carried out as to the effectiveness of mixed community housing, and the link is below. It is a hard read but clearly demonstrates that there are fundamental flaws in the benefits of mixed community housing.

We suggest before buying a house on a new housing development that you do your homework and check out what the mix of mixed community housing will be.  See this article.

Different housing trends and how the market has changed over the years

Younger people are renting in preference to buying even though interest rates are low and mortgage offers are up to 95% and there are several government joint ownership schemes.

House Prices
You might be interested to know what's likely to happen to house prices. Money To The Masses explain what affects house prices:
The overall health of the economy: Unemployment and wage growth affect consumer confidence, which affects people's attitudes to moving and prices
Interest rates:The Bank of England set the base rate and if this is low people can afford to spend more which pushes prices up.
Supply and Demand: Local house prices are determined by a location's desirability and by how many similar properties there are.

The UK House Price Index is probably the most accurate measure as it is calculated on completed sales and includes cash sales and mortgages. There is however a time lag.Other indices include Nationwide, Halifax and Rightmove.

Buying a house is a win-win situation based upon the long-term market trends

When money is this cheap to borrow why wouldn’t you. Over a 30-year period if you earn good money and the latest mortgages only require 5% deposit then buying a home is a good investment. Especially when you consider that you house will increase without you doing a thing by on average 5 to 10% each year. .

If you buy a house in a good developing area that needs modernisation then you can make even more money after 5 years.

An excerpt from the UK House Price Index:

“The latter half of 2020 saw the UK’s average house price growth accelerating. This trend continued into 2021; the UK average house price for February 2022 was £277,000, up from £275,000 in January 2022.”

However, there is a sense that things may change:  This is an excerpt from MoneyWeek in May 2022.

“House price growth is starting to slow, reckons Nationwide – in April, annual growth fell from 14.3% to 12.1%.

Cash-strapped first-time buyers will not be rejoicing any time soon.

But is this a sign of things to come?”

It believes the main reason for markets doing badly is not Ukraine or higher energy prices, but central banks raising interest rates.

Rates have been low for some time now – see the chart below.

house prices
interest rates

Let’s look at the average mortgage plus interest monthly payments in the UK

As of April 2021, Lloyds Banking Group reports that:
• The average UK monthly mortgage repayment is £753.
• Renting a property cost £821 on average.
• Monthly mortgage costs have increased 31% in the last ten years.
• The average first-time buyer deposit is £58,986 – increasing by £11,677 since March 2020.
• While buying a home will cost an average of £753 a month, these statistics show that it remains more affordable in terms of regular expenditure than renting.
• The average mortgage cost has climbed 31% in a decade, but the comparable figure for rented housing is 36%.

So which is better - buying renting your house?

This is a key decision – for some the most important financial decision they might make. It can be life-changing – it certainly can cause a huge amount of commitment. The information below is based on what’s happened in the UK housing market in the last 10 years, and might help you to make a decision.

Why rent when you can buy - which is the best over the long term? Is it worth it?

The simple answer is that everyone’s circumstances are different. Some people have low paid employment and don’t meet the criteria for lending. Others have bad credit records or don’t have the deposit. Some people don’t like the scary responsibility of having a huge liability around their necks for 30 years. Whilst some people don’t want to be tied to a specific location and prefer to move around. Everyone is different.

Financially it seems to make sense to buy:
As a financial model buying is best because interest rates are low. The housing market in the UK is very progressive and always on the rise.

The average UK monthly mortgage repayment is £753.
Renting a property cost £821 on average.


If you can afford a mortgage, get one and buy a house. Try to buy a place that is resalable. Buy in a decent area. A property that may need a little bit of work doing to it and hang onto it for 5 years. In most instances you will make money.

However, it comes with strings attached:
See the video below.

Only Buy Your Home If You Answer ‘Yes’ To These 6 Questions | Rent vs Buying UK

Only Buy Your Home If You Answer ‘Yes’ To These 6 Questions | Rent vs Buying UK

Is buying a property always better than renting? In the UK we’re obsessed with home ownership, and you’ll have heard people say that renting is just throwing money away. But is this really the case?
Because of this belief many young people stay living within their childhood bedroom well into their late 20s because they can’t afford to buy and yet refuse to rent.
Saving for a house deposit is a tall order but let’s assume you have been saving diligently and have managed to put aside enough to secure a home.
Before taking the leap into home ownership you need to answer ‘yes’ to the questions in this video.
Plus, we’ll finish up with our best less-talked-about financial tips for when buying a home. Let’s check it out…

For visitors

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You can register to join us as a member, when you’ll be able to download our stuff and comment, or as a YouDriver when you’ll also be able to check your health and set up your own action plans to make some improvements.  If you’ve already registered, sign in below. Or let us know what you think.

"Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."
abraham lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
US President

Next Steps

It doesn’t matter what stage  you’re at – it’s important to be the best you can be.  At the end of the day it’s about taking personal responsibility – You Drive!

It’s really your choice. You can find out more information about the subject, or see other institutions that can help by going to Support. There you will find organisations, training, coaching, self-help courses and other items to support your personal change. We have also started developing a panel of experts to provide info, advice, help and support. 

Get Support

There are times when you need some help to meet your aims –  a helping hand. That might be  an organisation that can provide you with some help,  some specialised information, a particular book or tool to help, or just getting some background reading material.

We have a lot of items which appear on our Drives and other pages, which you can go to by clicking on the picture or link.  Some contain affiliate links and we may receive a tiny commission for purchases made through these links.

If you know of anything which could help you or our other visitors then please click the button on the right, which will take you to a Contacts page where you contact us.

Experts

We are compiling a list of experts who can provide advice, help or specialised services.  You will be able to access these experts from anywhere on our site you see our ‘Experts’ symbol.  Click the green E to see what our Experts list will look like, with a couple of imaginary ‘experts’ added!

More Information

Scroll down to see more information on this Drive. 

If you register you can also download reports, white papers, quizzes and other collaterals.  We will never ask you for any financial information, and we’ll only send you the information you want. You can register for our site either above or in the footer below.  You can provide your own questions and experiences in order to help other members.  We only moderate for spam and inflammatory language – see our moderation policy.

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More information

How to Buy Your First Home

(And How to Sell it Too)

Phil Spencer, property expert and co-presenter of hit series Location, Location, Location, provides everything you need to know to help you buy (and sell) your first home


Go to Amazon

Let’s Buy A House

Everything you need to know when buying your home .

In his book “Lets Buy a House, Everything You Need to Know when Buying your Home” Tom Archer licenced Mortgage Adviser explains the process for buying your home from start to finish. In his book he explains the role of each profession involved to help you understand what it is they do. With this knowledge you will be able to make more informed decisions during critical points of the process.


Go to Amazon

Help me, I’m buying a house

A practical guide for buying your own home in England and Wales. From First Time Buyers, for First Time Buyers and those who don’t know what they are doing.

Almost 300 pages of hands-on guidance. An essential and fun read about buying your own home – from First Time Buyers, for First Time Buyers. Illustrated by Ben Jones to make you smile.


Go to Amazon

45 Ways to Buy Property

Strategies and tactics to build your property portfolio

Property provides a rare opportunity to create wealth and replace your income, do you want to replace your income in 2022?
But, it’s an area shrouded in mystery. How do people grow a portfolio of 20, 30 or 40 properties?


Go to Amazon

General advice on buying a home from MoneyHelper

Overall advice on housing issues from Citizens Advice

Information on council housing and housing associations from the government

See how to apply for council housing – from Shelter

You can download your own Excel calculator which allows you to model whether it’s better to rent or buy there’s one from Excelexperts.  There are two – one with blank values which you should use, and one with example values entered. The third button will open a YouTube video explaining how to use the calculator.

Stuff you might want regarding smoking

Now you’ve read about smoking you might want to make a bit of a statement.  Have a look at some stuff below we think has some humour value!  We may make pennies on commission, but that’s not the point really.  Click on the image to see more details.

Quit Smoking Gift Stop Smoke Free T-Shirt

In many colours and sizes

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quit smoking tee shirt

Proud Quitter – Quit Smoking T-Shirt

In many colours and sizes

This graphic is the perfect for someone who recently quit smoking cigarettes.
Lightweight, Classic fit, Double-needle sleeve and bottom hem

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quit smoking tee shirt

I Quit Smoking Wow What Funny Novelty 11oz Mug

11oz Mug
Hand Printed in the UK
Highest Quality in the Market
Microwave & dishwasher safe

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quit smoking mug

Dorothy Spring Never Quit You Can Do It Inspirational Quote Plaque Metal Sign Perfect Gift Size 15x20cm

Length: 20cm / 7.9inch | Width: 15cm / 5.9 inch
Metal Wire Included / Easy Hanging
Perfect gift 
High Quality Beautiful Gloss Finish Print

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sign

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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Stuff you might want for your house

Now you’ve read about houses you might want to make a bit of a statement.  Have a look at some stuff below we think has some humour value!  We may make pennies on commission, but that’s not the point really.  Click on the image to see more details.

Inspire Your Home

Easy Affordable Ideas to Make Every Room Glamorous

Instagram star and founder of Inspire Me! Home Décor shares her creative and elegant interior design secrets so you can create a glamorous yet cozy home without spending a fortune.

Go to Amazon

inspire your home book

Spirit of the Home

How to make your home a sanctuary

Home is a reflection of the self. It tells us, and other people, who we are. The type of home we live in, the style of the furnishings and colours, all work together to remind us of our personality, our taste, our values and interests.

Go to Amazon

spirit of the home book

Home Insulation Manual

How to cut energy bills and make your home warm and comfortable (Haynes Manuals)

The Sunday Times review of this book concludes: “Spending £14.99 – or less – on a Haynes Home Insulation Manual might just be one of the most cost-effective investments you will ever make.” Rocketing energy prices look set to be a fact of life for the foreseeable future. Fortunately there s a solution.

Go to Amazon

home insulation book

Interior Design Masters: A Practical Guide to Decorating Your Home

Tricks And Tips To Make Your Home More Comfortable

Hardcover or Kindle

Spending more time at home in the past few years has led to a greater focus on decorating. We want our homes to feel cosy but stylish, refined but with a sense of personality.

Go to Amazon

interior design book

Let’s Buy A House

Everything you need to know when buying your home .

In his book “Lets Buy a House, Everything You Need to Know when Buying your Home” Tom Archer licenced Mortgage Adviser explains the process for buying your home from start to finish. In his book he explains the role of each profession involved to help you understand what it is they do. With this knowledge you will be able to make more informed decisions during critical points of the process.

Go to Amazon

let's buy a house

Help me, I’m buying a house

A practical guide for buying your own home in England and Wales. From First Time Buyers, for First Time Buyers and those who don’t know what they are doing.

Almost 300 pages of hands-on guidance. An essential and fun read about buying your own home – from First Time Buyers, for First Time Buyers. Illustrated by Ben Jones to make you smile.

Go to Amazon

buying a house book

45 Ways to Buy Property

Strategies and tactics to build your property portfolio

Property provides a rare opportunity to create wealth and replace your income, do you want to replace your income in 2022?
But, it’s an area shrouded in mystery. How do people grow a portfolio of 20, 30 or 40 properties?

Go to Amazon

45 ways to buy property book

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

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

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.

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

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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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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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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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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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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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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.