CHOICE = Health promotion and prevention VS Disease Treatment
What happens when a physician focusing on Preventive Medicine and Lifestyle Medicine decides to change her career? She takes those years of experience and becomes a Lifestyle and Wellbeing Coach. Welcome Dr. Shelly Bhowmik to Coach to Coach as we discuss how to take control of your lifestyle and health and be your own health advocate.
Dr Shelly Bhowmik chose to put her own emotional wellbeing and mental health on the TOP of her list. Her goal was to treat her own burn-out and depression, and re-learn that she is enough; she is capable; she is worthy and she is healthy. What she discovered is a path to help others on the same journey, yet this time, based on her own experience and medical track record.
Shelly is now an advocate for a whole person approach to health. What’s needed is: emotional support, friends and family, medical advice, spiritual guidance, and psychological therapy and counseling.
Here are a few of her key strategies:
- Meet yourself where you are. Invest in self-awareness and reflection to determine how you’re really feeling physically and mentally. Be truthful with yourself.
- Seek support from others that will also “meet you where you are”, rather that those that try to fix you, soften the reality or brush off your concerns.
- Have a healthy relationship with technology – yep, you heard it right. Ensure that YOU control your technology and it doesn’t control you. Turn off alerts, sounds and vibrations which cause constant distractions. On a regular basis, invest time in a Digital Detox.
- Surround yourself personally and professionally (if possible) with people that are warm, caring, social, appreciative and positive. Limit interactions with negative and toxic folks that leave you high, dry and wiped out.
- Make social connections which lead to health, happiness and longevity. Check out the often called “Harvard Happiness Study”. It’s the longest study on adult health and happiness with its beginning at Harvard in 1938. (Technically, it’s entitled the Harvard Study of Adult Development.)
- Be patient with yourself. It takes time to adjust behavior and it takes practice.
We can learn to map and navigate our own lifestyle. And, daily lifestyle choices impact short-term and long-term health. There is a way to relieve the tensions we create ourselves and reduce the pressure of the world. Now, take a moment to breathe.