#Live Whole Health #150: More than you have imagined

We know the Whole Health approach is successful when Veterans achieve outcomes they never even imagined.

When you think about how you want to live your life—what you want to accomplish, what goals you want to reach, how you want to spend your time—what limits your imagination? Maybe it’s doubting you have the necessary skills and abilities. Maybe it’s remembering times when you tried and weren’t successful. Maybe it’s looking at your current situation, comparing it to when you were younger and felt healthier, and deciding you can’t get back to where you were.

We all set up barriers for ourselves

We list reasons why our goals are unrealistic and what will prevent us from achieving them. But Whole Health says we can be different. Whole Health suggests that when we identify what matters most to us and why we want our health, we’ll find ways to reach our goals—and then go beyond them.

There are two important steps in this process. First is believing you can reach your goals. This takes vision, optimism, building on strengths, using available resources and deciding that the goal is worth the effort. The second step—the one that’s harder—is knowing it won’t be easy. The ability to balance faith in achieving your dreams with the discipline necessary to confront your challenges is what will lead you to achievements that were once beyond your imagination.

Do more than you imagined you could do

A wonderful example of doing more than you imagined can be found in this 16-minute video from Lori Enloe, a Whole Health Coach at Wisconsin VA. Enloe guides you through a Tai Chi routine that can be performed with a walker, giving you a way to increase strength, balance and flexibility.

If pain is stopping you from achieving your goals, check out this resource: Goal Setting for Pain Rehabilitation: https://www.va.gov/WHOLEHEALTHLIBRARY/tools/goal-setting-for-pain-rehabilitation.asp.