Wellness Assessments

The new pay boom for Wellness Coaching has reached grandiose heights. Wellness coaching is a form of life coaching specifically related to improving ones overall physical well-being and improving the quality of one’s diet and fitness lifestyle.

In recent years, Wellness Coaching has increased in popularity in the health community because of it’s foundation in holistic nutrition and alternative health. As more and more people become in tuned to the benefits of holistic health, career opportunities for Wellness Coaches, Holistic Life Coaches, and Holistic Life Counseling are sky-rocketing. Specifically, Wellness Coaches are reaping the tremendous benefits.

After teaching Wellness Coaching online since 2003, Carmellita M. Brown the lead instructor for Lose Weight While Becoming a Wellness Coach says: “Wellness coaching is now seeing a pay boom. More people are looking for someone to help whip them into shape.”

According to Carmellita Brown, Fitness Trainers are not the only ones able to earn by the hour. “Wellness Coaches can earn as much as $150 an hour for their services,” says Brown. With just 20 clients and twice a week visits, Wellness Coaches can earn a staggering $6,000 weekly.

So, what are Wellness Coaching clients looking for? Wellness Coaching clients are looking for eating plans for weight-loss and anti-aging, information on the lifestyle improvements, and a regiment for the entire family. Furthermore, the main focus on lifestyle improvements has included ways to increase live foods in the diet, promote natural weight-loss, and prevent disease through food and mineral consumption.

According to Brown, this is where the Wellness Coach shines, “Unlike Nutritionists who normally follow the Standard American Diet model, properly trained Wellness Coaches understand more about the benefits of live foods, food combinations, maintaining the body’s pH levels, detoxification, and mineral supplementation.” In addition, Brown emphasizes that Wellness Coaches who also understand spiritual principles and self-development techniques are the most effective in helping clients develop healthful habits and lose weight.

And how are Wellness Coaches building their list of loyal clientele? First, many Wellness coaches are using the internet as a viable resource for building clientele even in their own cities. With their own blogs, websites, and online social networks, Wellness Coaches are finding the internet a great resource for building clientele. Even in face to face transpersonal coaching (one on one coaching), Wellness Coaches can find clients in their own cities on the net.

Second, many Wellness Coaches use nutritional network marketing companies to expand their list of clientele. Many Wellness Coaches work with Network Marketing Sales representatives for nutritional products to reach new clientele. Many Network Marketers of nutritional products hire Wellness Coaches as speakers and trainers in order to increase sales. For this service, many Wellness Coaches may charge a fee of $200 to $500 for a 3 hour workshop.

Third, many Wellness Coaches succeed at writing books and e-books on subjects related to nutrition, physical health, mental health, and weight loss. Coupled with blogs and websites, this proves to be an excellent way for Wellness Coaches to build clientele.

And finally, the key to most Wellness Coaches’ success lies in their ability to articulate the anti-aging process, the science of losing weight, and the ability to transform one’s lifestyle. Training and access to the latest information about such matters can quickly evolve into a thriving career in Wellness Coaching and earn a Wellness Coach the new hourly pay boom.

When approaching a whole food diet, what do you hope for? Rapid results in 30 days or are you seeking prolonged results to last for a lifetime? And, what is the untold secret between lasting results and temporary results. And why is permanent success so elusive? Why are manufactures of diet pills able to depend on us to buy their latest and greatest product?
Consider the frustration of succumbing to the pressure to try the latest fad diet, and in a few months you are struggling with the same weight problem.

Clearly the lasting diet success rate would be huge if the answer was about taking the latest pill or potion. What if your diet success generator is in your total control? This could have a negative effect on social condition that led us to believe that the cure is elusive and outside of ourselves.

Here is a new thought about getting what you want with regards to success with your diet. It is the idea to use wellness coaching to help you recondition your brain to accept a new concept permanently.

Research on the brain has shown that it has the capacity to change its biology to accommodate us, when we change our mind about our every day choices. This concept of the biochemistry of the brain changing in a positive way, to guarantee our success with new challenges is called neuroplasticity.

The Neuroplasticity concept has yet to reach the social main stream. It is never the less significant. This is so, because to get the mind to change brain biology gives control back to the individual, without the use of pills and drugs. This is huge personal control. It is bordering on the realm of the miraculous.

Here is how this mind-brain interface helps humans to meet and beat any challenge.
It is not a miracle, and it takes more effort than taking a pill, but then this is what makes it permanent and you get to keep your biological profits.

Actually there are only two things you have to do well. Be totally focused and be serious about wanting permanent change.

With the help of your wellness coach find out what habits hinders you now. Accept that it is your block to success, and then give your mind an entirely new process. The neuroplasticity theory assures that without much more effort on your part your mind will change the biochemistry of your brain to override old unwanted habits and accept the new suggestion.

There is however the hard stuff. I once had a client that felt that she was falling apart bit by bit, and visiting her doctor far too often for minor ailments. As her wellness coach, I asked her to write down everything she drank for one week. Since this seemed like a no brainer, she did it. On her next session she said to me, I was so clueless about what I drank! I was so amazed that I drank so much Coke and wine.

I than asked her what are you going to do about this insight? She had accomplished the major milestone on change – gathering information without judgment. This is close to the Buddhist practice of mindfulness. She was at the point of clarity where she took the mental effort, using her mind to give her brain new information.

With my guidance she decided what and how much she willingly desired to drink, and how well she wanted to feel. With neuroplasticity or (change of neuronal circuits) the choice created by your mind changes the brain’s biochemistry.

The joyous news about this is that with this practice in mental effort, you can accomplish just about any milestone in your life. The scientific world is very excited about these momentous findings and is even investigating using this mind-brain interface on serious medical conditions like obsessive-compulsive disorder that does not respond to medication.

If you are struggling with a new diet it is wise to accept this neuroplasticity theory – The brain continually refines its neural circuitry to meet the challenges presented. This is the breakthrough that with a bit of coaching brings you to easy lasting success.

It is good news, that your mind has the capacity to influence your brain power, to help you overcome your specific challenges with great accuracy.

Recently I was involved in assisting in the curriculum development for a wellness program for indivuals with chronic medical conditions at a Chicago area clinic. The process was a marvelous opportunity for me to distill 25 years of work in the fields of healthcare, coaching, martial arts, yoga, meditation, psychology and philosophy into a cohesive package. As so many individuals are interested in the issue of wellness, I thought I would share my thoughts with you as well. While the early parts of this article speak to those with medical conditions, the latter parts outline my model of wellness independent of medical status.

What do health care professionals define as wellness?

It may come as a surprise to you, but with volumes of criteria established to diagnose medical and psychological illnesses there is no uniform working model of wellness! If you are not content to define health and wellness simply as the absence of disease (or pain), I could not agree with you more. No doubt you have met many individuals in your life who have no apparent disease condition but who are not living balanced, healthy lives. Similarly, there are many examples of individuals with chronic medical conditions who appear to have transcended their disease state to embody what many of us would identify as wellness.

Can I achieve wellness if I have a chronic medical condition?

Wellness does not require that you be free of all medical conditions. That is good news for those of us with bodies! In addition to the reality that accidents and illnesses can impact us profoundly, we are all aging and, of course, we do eventually die. While at least the last two are natural processes, we are not always comfortable discussing these issues in our culture. You may even be wondering why I would bring this up in a discussion on wellness!

Wellness is about embracing the natural unfolding of life.

The author, Byron Katie, states, “When I argue with reality, reality wins, but only 100% of the time.”

If you have a medical condition, it IS a part of your life. Understandably, you have likely spent a good deal of time on a quest to return to “your” life, the life you recall and identified with before your physical condition changed. Your physical condition was a misplaced chapter, maybe accidentally put in your life from someone else’s book! Now, if you could just find the editor-in-chief to take it out so that YOUR story can continue as you were writing it…

Wellness is about embracing YOUR life as it unfolds.

That doesn’t mean that you should become passive or give up. You may be familiar with the Serenity Prayer:

God give me the courage to change what I can

The strength to accept what I cannot

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Wellness is about learning the difference between what you can change and what you cannot and focusing your energies wisely.

You are so much more than the story of your medical condition. Whatever you are experiencing now IS your life. How you relate, or don’t, to your body’s condition and how you embrace or reject exploration your experience will determine the quality and richness of your life, regardless of the state of your body at any given time.

Even if a cure is not possible, healing is always within your reach!

Toward a Model of Wellness:

Most simply, wellness brings a sense of wholeness. Medical conditions are not a uni-dimensional phenomenon. Chronic medical conditions affect an individual physically, socially, psychologically and spiritually. Wellness is an integration of mind, body and spirit so that one has a sense of balance and harmony in life.

Wellness is a lifestyle. As you know, the world appears to be getting more complex every year. Developing a wellness lifestyle will allow you to revitalize and re-energize yourself so that you can continue to thrive in the face of the ongoing external demands of life, preparing you to cope with the changes that tomorrow inevitably brings.

Wellness is more than developing self-soothing techniques to get you through a rough day. You may have heard about or been taught self-help or stress management techniques that focus you internally and teach you ways to improve your self-care. Some people commit to taking hot baths or listening to music regularly to relax. Others write affirmations and stick them on their mirrors to promote positive thinking. Others may take up journaling. While these types of techniques are useful and certainly have their place in decreasing stress they can fall short for many people. First, new habits are hard to maintain. Just look at how many New Year’s Resolutions end up abandoned in 3 weeks time! Secondly, too often these techniques are used in isolation and don’t seem to relate to how a person is living day to day in relation to their family, their workplace or their circle of friends. The techniques then become little more than bandages for larger problems in a person’s life.

Wellness promotes self-understanding. You are not your body. You are not your thoughts. You are not your emotions. One key aspect of wellness is to learn how to control your thoughts and emotions. This does not mean that you stop having them, but that you stop being controlled by them. Being able to stand outside yourself and gain understanding of your life situation and your reactions to it is a critical piece of gaining control in your life.

Wellness promotes a sense of flow. In our “GO GO GO” culture, we tend to over-emphasize external productivity. Many people identify themselves as “Type A” and take pride in that. As a result, learning how to pace is a big challenge for many people. Another component of wellness is to be aware, respectful of and in tune with your flow between external productivity and rest periods. A well-paced life allows for a sustainable level of productivity so that surges of effort followed by extended “crashes” no longer define one’s life.

Wellness creates a sense of connection and meaning in life. Self-care and self-understanding alone do not define wellness. You are part of a larger system. You may have a family, friends, co-workers, a church or other community. Beyond our human connections, we also have connections with nature and you may also have a sense of spiritual connection to something greater than yourself.

Wellness is mind-body-spirit integration that promotes self-care and self-understanding and connects your life to the larger world. It is a state of being joyfully and enthusiastically engaged with your life, even when it doesn’t turn out exactly as you had planned.

Establishing standards is critical to the success of every business. That is why numerous companies go for ISO 9000 certification, which is a series of globally identified standards and rules that define an effective quality system. ISO standards themselves do not perform assessments or audits to ensure that they are applied by companies in conformity with the requirements of the standards.

Many testing laboratories and certification bodies conduct independent assessment services to provide evidence that services, goods, or systems match to ISO standards. The assessment of a quality system against the ISO 9000 standard is variously referred to as certification and registration. The certification corroborates that the system is in conformity with all the standard requirements. Agencies that issue ISO 9000 certificates are called certification bodies or registration bodies or registrars.

The registrars evaluate and validate an organization’s management (including quality, environmental, safety) system for conforming to the ISO standards. This verification, confirmation and the concluding validation are commonly known as ISO assessment auditing process. Generally, there are two types of assessment auditing – auditing by an external certification body and auditing by internal employees trained for this process. In the ISO 9000 context, the term accreditation refers to the work of national accreditation bodies. ANAB is a well-known accreditation body in the US, famous for its ethics and integrity.

All ISO 9000 series require measurements and assessments for customer satisfaction and management capabilities. Many private and government organizations carry out reasonably priced conformity assessment services. Most of these organizations have professionals who are experienced in working with very small organizations to multi nationals.

Choosing employee assessments can be complicated these days. The competition is immense with all the options available in the market today. However, there are a few tips to follow that will help your organization decide on the most appropriate assessment.

1. Know why you looking at assessments.

Having a specific focus or issue will help you choose the right assessment for your organization. Many companies choose assessments without really
doing their “due diligence” before selecting. Then they wonder why they did not work. Valid and reliable assessments are designed for specific purposes and do work when they are properly used.

2. Ask to see what kind of information the assessment provides.

Make sure the assessment you select will give you the information you are
seeking in regard to your focus area. Also, the information you receive from the assessment should be easy to understand. There are excellent
assessments in the market that do not require “a rocket scientist” to
interpret. Ask to see sample reports and/or to demo an assessment.

3. Check to ensure the assessment be used for the specific purpose you desire.

It is imperative that assessments are used in applications for which they
were designed. If an assessment was not designed to be a pre-employment
assessment, then it should not be used in the hiring process. And the
same goes that pre-employment assessments designed for JUST that
purpose should not be used with current employees.

4. Ensure the assessment has been validated in the specific application for which it was designed.

Check to ensure that the assessment has been validated for the application
in which you intend to use the assessment. Also, ask when
the assessment was last validated. Industry leading assessment companies
regularly review and validate their assessments. Be careful of assessments
that have not been validated in recent years.

5. Ask about the reliability of the assessment and a technical manual.

There should be reliability data available on the assessment you are reviewing. You should also be able to obtain a copy of the technical
manual. If this information is not available or they try to charge you
for the technical manual, find another assessment.

6. Find out how results will be delivered.

Choose an assessment that allows for flexibility and convenience in
administering. Also, find an assessment that offers immediate delivery of results versus you having to call someone to send and interpret the results. Once again, here is an opportunity to ask to demo the assessment.

7. Ask about the assessment in regard to adhering to Department of Labor Standards.

Be sure to ask the question. The DOL supports the use of valid and reliable assessments used in their appropriate applications. Industry leading assessment companies will most likely tell you their assessments meet the standards before you have to ask.

These are just a few tips to follow when choosing assessments. Following these simple tips will put you and your organization in the best possible situation to choose the right assessment.

WAAA!

When you own a car, you probably already know all of the little problems that your vehicle has and you have learned to deal with them and have gotten used to them. Chances are better than not that you do not even consider them at all but have grown so accustomed to the issues that it has become natural for you to not have any concern at all about such minor details.

However, when you go to purchase a car or sell a car, all of those little things suddenly begin to take on a much larger role. Each one of those little issues now becomes something that must be consciously figured into your decision about whether to proceed with the purchase or not. What was never even a consideration when you owned the vehicle, is now reflected openly and accurately in terms of a very real increase or decrease of the overall cash value.

So what does that have to do with writing or the content that you are either creating or paying for? Why is anything like that even considered as being relevant or important to content for your website? Take a look at what the real implications actually are and you will see what it really means to you, your reputation, your products, your promotions and ultimately, to your profits.

The point is that when you own something like a car, you know that there are certain issues and you learn to live with them and deal with them more often than not, subconsciously. That is to say that to you, they are not even worth mentioning, much less worthy of any real concern.

When you see someone else’s car, you probably understand that it has issues as well and do not really have any reason for worrying about those at all in most instances. At least, you will never have to deal with them until you are trying to get somewhere that you must get to in that other person’s vehicle. Then all of a sudden, you begin to see all of the imperfections more clearly and consciously or now, you become aware of them and think about the relevance of each one.

Most people will think about these things consciously. While you will rationalize matters in your own way, chances are better than not that you will at the very least, subconsciously compare it to your vehicle and make certain assessments. The same is true for the internet, especially for people who are writing their own material or buying material that has to be used in the realm of their internet marketing campaign.

You will probably never consciously concern yourself with all of the little errors that you have in your writing. Most people will not notice them at all you think. Except when they are forced to look for a reliable source for information that they can use in order to make an informed decision in regards to something that is covered by your particular niche.

Whether the visitors will consciously think about the “minor” errors on your site, they will notice them. Mind you, everybody that comes to your site is (Or at least should be) a potential customer and is buying a vehicle of some sort or another. Whether they are purchasing a product or information they are looking to buy a vehicle to get them from their current predicament to a more desirable location or situation in their life.

Whether they pay conscious attention to the details or not, they are going to notice them. When they purchase their vehicle, they are going to get the one that is most likely to get them to their desired location. They are going to look to purchase that vehicle from the person who seems most capable of delivering something that will fit their needs and get them their as comfortably as possible. In the instance of information, they are also going to want to seek out the most qualified person to purchase from.

Are you going to pay one of your friends to give their opinion about a vehicle or are you going to look for an expert who has already demonstrated a certain amount of expertise and knowledge above that possessed by the average person? When you buy something online, you are probably going to pick out the most professional and reliable source that you can find. The content that they provide you with is where you will base your decisions.

When people are coming to your web sites, they are looking for an expert, not someone who is “only human” and understands that “everybody makes mistakes”. If you want to be successful, you can settle for whatever you can get or you can make yourself stand out from the crowd and become “The Online Resource” for what they need. Think about things from their perspective and you will see that even small errors will hurt you more than they will ever help.