Utilizing Your Personal Strengths To Build Chronically Well Habits
Do you ever feel like you don’t fit the mold of “wellness” due to life with chronic illness?
Even if you don’t feel the part of a wellness model, you can still navigate your own path by utilizing your personal strengths. You can find your unique balance by adding in wellness practices that support your wellbeing and embrace your personal strengths and experiences. It's all about knowing yourself and using that knowledge to guide you as you form new practices that are tailored to meet YOUR personal needs.
So if you are motivated to make positive changes in your life while living with chronic illness, this post is for you! Let's explore how playing to your very own strengths can positively shape the way we take care of yourself each day from here on out.
You don’t need to create a new persona to meet your goals.
You don't need to live on a mountain top and go shoeless to meditate.
You don’t need to buy an expensive outfit for your workout.
You don't need to be cured of your chronic illness to start living your life.
Just be your wonderful self.
Utilizing your personal strengths will make your efforts easier, more natural and more likely to fit into your life. And, it will make your efforts more successful.
When making changes in our lives and health, we can facilitate the process by playing to our personal strengths. What I mean by this is using your inherent creativity, organizational skills, stubbornness - or whatever your personal strengths are - to help you achieve your goals.
Here are some client examples -
A client who is task-oriented set a goal for meditating because of the benefits she experiences when she maintains a regular practice. Once she added meditation to her to-do list, she not only received the benefits of meditation, but felt good about completing the task.
Another client is very social. She uses her walking time simultaneously as time to catch up with friends. She walks and talks. This combined activity passes the time quickly. She gets in an enjoyable workout while being her social self.
Another client uses a hybrid between a journal and a calendar in her daily life. When she began adding her daily wellness goals into this format, it worked well for her. She utilized her routine of writing to-dos and observations in order to support her practices. Incorporating her wellness practices into something she was already doing, made it a lot easier for her.
Each of these examples seem like somewhat obvious things to do when you read about someone else doing it. But, coming up with these approaches took a little thought and experimentation by these clients.
Once these clients’ personal strengths were tied to their goals, barriers to achieving those goals started to fall away.
By simply realizing how much we bring to the table by being ourselves, utilizing our strengths, and drawing on our experiences, we may realize that we are much more capable and knowledgeable than we give ourselves credit for.
noticing your strengths
When you think about your personal strengths, it can be helpful to write down a few of them and then think about how you can use them to make things happen in your life.
Think about what you know about yourself. Think about what you excel in or receive compliments about. List your top 5 -10 qualities. If this does not come easy to you, maybe ask your friends or family what they consider your strengths to be.
If you find yourself struggling with naming your personal strengths, or you love a good quiz, you can take a survey that will help you determine your personal strengths. Here’s a link to a free one: The VIA Character Strengths Survey. It includes questions to determine your top character strengths out of 24 options.
When you look at your list of personal strengths, ask yourself which ones can be utilized to help you realize your goals?
It is okay to experiment with what this looks like. Let’s take for example, if you value learning, you might want to research the best ways for you to incorporate a movement habit. And, you may love experimenting with different modalities, the timing and what impact it has on you. Or, if you appreciate beauty, you may be drawn to walking in beautiful scenery or working out to an aesthetically pleasing workout video.
Embracing Your Past Experiences
A really helpful way to recognize some of your personal strengths is to consider how you made something similar happen in the past. For example, if you are working on adding in a regular movement habit into your weekly routine, consider other habits you have added to your life in the past. How did you make that happen? What challenge(s) have you conquered? What did you do that you can bring to bear on adding a new habit?
I think about clients who have overcome something pretty amazing like quitting smoking or were a competitive athlete before chronic illness. Or, what about the tenacity involved obtaining a diagnosis and treatment for a rare disease? These are important experiences that you can draw on. Your past experiences can translate to how you show up for something now.
What do you know about yourself from similar experiences in the past? How can you leverage how you got through those experiences?
It’s all about the path of least resistance
Living with a chronic illness can make establishing healthy habits challenging. However, it's all about finding the path of least resistance. When it comes to adopting a new habit, taking the least difficult route is often the wisest. This means incorporating a habit into your lifestyle in a way that is somewhat familiar. Making small adjustments to your routine rather than changing everything at once can also lead to greater success in the long run. By finding what works best for you, you will feel more confident in your ability to reach your goals and live a healthier life with chronic illness.
For more reading about finding your balance with wellness and chronic illness
check out another blog post - Wellness And Chronic Illness: The Good, The Bad, The Reality.
Living with chronic illness is hard enough without having to feel the pressure of living up to some unattainable standard of wellness.
But that doesn't mean you can't make meaningful changes in your lifestyle in order to support your wellbeing. Taking inventory of your personal strengths is a great place to start. From there, you can draw on those natural assets to take full advantage of the path of least resistance when making positive changes for yourself.
If you're interested partnering on finding your unique path to living well with chronic illness, schedule an exploratory call today!
You can capitalize on your individual strengths, build confidence and find your version of living Chronically Well!
What personal strengths can you bring to your life and goals this week?
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