Why indeed! Answering the “why” question is often difficult because it is often painful. What is it about us that keeps us from being the healthiest that we can be? Why does it seem so difficult for us to achieve high levels of nursing wellness either physically, emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually? Even if we know the data, why is it so hard for us to change? For example, there are a lot of data available to anyone who wishes to read it regarding the status of worldwide obesity and the profound negative effects that this epidemic alone has on individual and community wellness. Here are a few key facts according to the World Health Organization (WHO):
– Worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980.
– In 2008, 1.5 billion adults, 20 and older, were overweight. Of these over 200 million men and 300 million women were obese.
– 65% of the world’s population lives in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight.
– Nearly 43 million children under the age of 5 were overweight in 2010.
Obesity is preventable!
But really, don’t we already know this, at least anecdotally? Don’t we already know the devastating health and social effects of obesity and what it means for us as individuals and communities? Haven’t so many of us really felt like we tried to lose weight and keep it off? And to this end, don’t we continue to spend countless sums of money on weight loss? According to Worldometers real time world statistics, the weight loss market in the US alone is estimated to reach over $60 billion per year. And despite these enormous expenditures one third of adults in the US still remain overweight or obese, and rates are still climbing!
Perhaps it’s time to have a different kind of conversation about wellness.
When trying to improve our own individual health and wellness, like losing weight for example, we have to first figure out what the real problem is before we can find a solution. Sounds fairly basic, doesn’t it? Well, as it turns out, it’s not so simple and it’s not something that we do as a matter of course. More often than not, we are reactive to the problem and try to find quick and easy solutions that are too often outside of us and have nothing to do with the real problem, like joining a club or going on a diet. The data and our own personal experiences make this abundantly clear.
Barriers to Individual Wellness
To truly understand something one must first set the context surrounding it. In this case, we must first set a foundation for understanding by looking deeply at and reflecting upon those things that may be barriers to nursing wellness. And this, to be sure, is not an easy thing to do. A wise consultant once told me that the work for us is not in what’s actually working, rather it in what’s not working. So, to uncover what’s not working, in order to create solutions, like how to really lose weight and to keep it off forever, perhaps we can step back and set the context for understanding some of the actual barriers to personal wellness. It’s vital to remember that while this is a no fault and no blame approach to understanding through self-reflection, it is an approach that challenges our sense of personal accountability and ownership and in so doing, may touch an individual in ways that are both revealing and painful. And too often, because of the pain that may result, we actively avoid these types of potentially helpful processes. As human beings don’t we tend to avoid things that hurt even if, in the long run, it can help to make us better?