Health

CHANGING BEHAVIORS TO IMPROVE HEALTH
What It Means to be Healthy:
The definition of health is as follows: the ever-changing process of achieving individual potential in the physical, social,emotional, mental, spiritual, environmental dimensions. As a result, to be healthy means to be at a sufficient state of being within all of these categories.
Benefits of Optimal Health:
There are manybenefits to reaching optimal health. Such as feeling healthier, more energy, or a higher self-esteem. Motivation comes with optimal health as well as better relationships with family and friends. Thereare numerous benefits to optimal health including less prone to disease along with other qualities like a longer life expectancy.
Factors Influencing Behavior Change:
Plenty of factors have aneffect on behavior. There are predisposing factors, enabling factors, and reinforcing factors. Predisposing factors are our life experiences, knowledge, cultural and ethnic inheritance, and currentbeliefs and values. One example would be knowing that cigarettes cause cancer will prevent someone from promoting them. Enabling factors are skills and abilities; physical, mental, and emotionalcapabilities. Positive enablers encourage one to make the correct behavior change while negative enablers clearly work against it. An example of a positive enabler would be the child of the owner of a fitnesscenter. Finally, reinforcing factors are the presence or absence of encouragement or discouragement that significant people in your life bring to a situation. Parents telling you that working outwith the football team every day is a great idea is an example of a reinforcing factor.
Strategies to Behavior Change:
One strategy to positive behavior change would be handling stress in an efficientway. The book suggests that one identifies potential sources of stress, then find constructive ways to lower their stress level. Also, gathering support of friends can help avoid peer pressures and...