Let’s Get Real About Health and Longevity

In fact, these types of perfectionism pressures, are exactly the reason why I work hard to reframe health and wellbeing; getting back to what it actually is, how it actually works and sharing ways we can feel good as we navigate our days - and plan a long life.

Health and wellbeing have become an industry, one that can often feel inauthentic, unachievable and unrealistic; often devoid of any understanding or recognition of what we are all coping with as part of modern world living.

Well, enough is enough.

In this Health and Longevity column, I am going to disrupt, deconstruct and ditch the myths, and then support you to discover and do health and wellbeing differently. Let me explain my method:

Disrupt

What is health, happiness and being well? Well, health is defined by the WHO as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, not just the absence of disease’. Health is holistic and not only about physical fitness. Happiness is not constantly and consistently feeling pleasure; rather it is a by-product of living a healthy and meaningful life. So, when we are told to chase happiness or that we ‘should be happy’ all the time it sets us up to fail because this state is unrealistic and unachievable. If we expect to be happy all the time we will be guaranteed to be the opposite.

How do we shift this dial? By recalibrating our expectations of ourselves and how we exist. Yes, life will be hard from time to time, and we can’t expect it to always go our way. When we take the pressure of perfection off, we become more open to living well and healthily, which means we are likely to live longer. Let’s look the evidence, science and research around happiness and health.

ACTION

According to research* there are 10 keys to happiness. Focus on these, without too much pressure, and you will already be moving in the right direction:

Giving (doing kind things for others)

Relating (connecting with people)

Exercising (taking care of your body)

Awareness (living life meaningfully)

Trying out (keeping on learning new things)

Direction (having goals to look forward to)

Resilience (finding ways to bounce back)

Emotions (looking for what is good in your life)

Acceptance (being comfortable with who you are)

Meaning (being part of something bigger)

Longevity research shows what we know about a healthy diet and exercise helping us to live longer. But there are also other factors too. For example, having meaningful and authentic relationships reduces inflammation and biological ageing – which reinforces the research above. Other factors are good quality and quantity of sleep, laughter as well as stress management, and having a sense of purpose and curiosity in our lives.

Take a moment to reflect on how often each of these appears in your life, how much time and space you dedicate to them, and whether your ideas about health and wellbeing are accurate, true, or indeed useful.

Deconstruct

What does being healthy and feeling good mean to you? It’s important that we each have the words, images, activities, memories and hopes to hold around this. Not least because one size does not fit all, but also because we need to know where we are heading before we can start to change things up. The truth is, in a wellness industry that is booming and expanding quickly, there is too much noise and not enough substance, too much complexity and not enough effectiveness. Deconstructing wellness in your own image and aspirations must be your logical starting point.

ACTION

Take a moment to reflect on a time when you felt your healthiest and happiest – what was going on for you then, who did you have in your life supporting you to feel that way, what specific habits were you employing day to day?

Meditate or visualise what a healthy and happy life would specifically look like to you; what would your work life look like, your friendships, your finances, your relationships, your self-care structure, and your purpose.

Discover

It’s time to really get into the nuts and bolts of what is going on for your own health and wellbeing, and crucially, to do it via specific metrics. It is important to reframe general health and wellbeing advice into personalised, bespoke, and directed focus and measures.

ACTION

There is a coaching template called ‘The Wheel of Life’ which separates areas of your life into 8 sections; friends and family, health, money, career, home, leisure and fun, personal growth and significant other. Think about what satisfaction and happiness would look like in each of these areas and give it a score out of 10. Draw a line across each segment that represents your satisfaction currently, imagining the centre of the wheel is 0 and the outer edge is 10, and write the number next to it. This is a brilliant way of discovering what is going on for you with regard to your wellbeing and health right now in each of these areas. It can also help you to assess the level of balance you have in your life, and to start to consider what areas you would like more happiness in and what that would look like.

It is important to note that no one will measure 10 in all areas, that is impossible when you consider the constraints we live within. This then becomes an exercise in prioritisation; if you want to flex and develop one area, which may need to take a back seat for a while?

Ditch

Thinking about what we need to take away and remove can be vital to better overall health. Think of yourself like a bank balance, you not only want to save money, you also want to reduce the outgoings. This includes negative thoughts about ourselves, outdated stories we have told or been told about who we are and what is possible, and resistance to or a feeling of us not deserving happiness and health.

ACTION

Consider and take time to answer the below questions honestly:

1) What habits in my life are self-sabotaging?

2) What psychological thought patterns do I need to or want to ditch because they don’t serve me?

3) Who in my life isn’t supporting or nurturing me in the way I need to be well?

4) What unrealistic goals and strategies are stopping me from taking the first step forward?

Write down what obstacles or challenges seem to take you away from the place you want to be; it could be internal like your narrative or story of your life which may be coming from low self-esteem, it could be external like time management and space, or difficulty forming habits.

Ask yourself what is making you ‘hang on’ to these self-sabotaging and unhelpful patterns – often it is fear of stepping out of your comfort zone, of conflict if you say no, or the unknown. What is the worst that could happen if you ditched them? Start doing just that; start small and with things, people or structures that are low hanging fruit and won’t cause too much disruption, then as you build confidence and courage, work on the bigger things. Seeing that what happens isn’t that scary, and that it can change things for the better allows us to continue on that path.

Do

This is all about action and setting out your goals after your reflection and reframing. It is helpful to make these goals SMART; specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound. This step is all about finding your motivation, your why. Evidence has shown that when a goal is ours, when we take ownership and develop this ourselves, we are more likely to be successful, rather than feeling we ‘should’ do something, or because we are comparing ourselves to others.

What is your why?

How are you going to change things?

How will you sustain this new state?

From where will you find motivation to persevere when things get difficult?

ACTION

Really focus on your Why? What would be better with your health and wellbeing if you changed something, and what would happen if you didn’t change things up?

What do you not want to change? Take that pressure off yourself and be clear where you are going to focus your energy and time.

Make it authentic and work for you – how will you integrate this into your daily life.

How will you make it work for you including when you find it harder to find motivation?

* Action for Happiness

Dr Radha Modgil is the medical expert for BBC Radio 1’s Life Hacks, and the trusted voice for BBC Radio 5Live’s weekly Mental Health Clinic, as well as ‘The One Show’. She has been an energetic, trusted and creative voice for health and wellbeing since 2008 and is on a mission to bring about positive change in the world. Her work focuses on empowering people to make small, tangible yet powerful changes to improve quality of life. As a woman of English and Indian heritage, Radha is motivated by the desire to connect people across the world by highlighting our universal human need for authentic community.