Contract For A Healthy Life

With the information learned about choosing high quality behaviors that improve our health, a complete definition of optimal health is: Balancing our physical, mental, and spiritual health with selected high quality behaviors to nurture food, rest, exercise and elimination in each health component.

  As new experiences alter our physical, mental and spiritual health, it is important to adjust behavior patterns that promote optimal health. Sooner or later unhealthy health patterns produce negative outcomes. It’s time to practice applying our health knowledge and predict how this could affect our future.

Let’s imagine that we’re in high school. Two students, Tom and Sally, attend the same high school and each is very different from the other. If both Health Pie Graphs are placed next to one another they might look like this:

As we examine each graph carefully one can learn a lot about each individual. We can actually identify some of their health strengths and weaknesses. Let’s examine Toms health graph.

Toms graph illustrates that he is very strong mentally but limited physically and spiritually. He is a high school student who has terrific grades. He enjoys reading and using the computer. He actively participates when researching and designing projects. The mental piece of his graph is large because he invests a lot of time nurturing food, rest, exercise and elimination in this area of his health. But Tom’s graph also indicates neglect in his physical and spiritual areas of health.  Tom might be a junk food junkie who gets little sleep or exercise because he spends so much time exercising his mental health. He is smart and successful in school and other students recognize this. The time Tom spends on his academic performance affects the quality of his interpersonal relationships. He doesn’t socialize much and has few friends. He rarely practices high quality behaviors that would enhance his spiritual health. Unaware of his imbalance, Tom continues to cultivate his mental health with little regard for his physical and spiritual health.

 Sally’s strength is in the physical area of health. She gets a lot of exercise because she plays soccer and basketball. She eats a balanced diet and gets lots of rest. Sally practices high quality behaviors in hygiene and is not sick frequently. She spends much time focusing on her physical health and not enough time on high quality practices that would enhance her mental performance. Her grades are low and little time is spent reading and reviewing her school assignments. Sally barely gets by academically. But Sally enjoys spending time with her family and friends and often pitches in when they need help. Her spiritual graph indicates that she is happy personally and socially.