personal assessment and goals

     My role as a health professional is to fully develop my own skills regarding my psychological, spiritual and physical health.  The attainment of these skills will allow me to incorporate internal peace and love into my daily nursing practice. According to Dacher (2006), We are learning that our psychological and physical life are not predetermined and permanent, our ability for health is flexible. As a health care professional it is my duty to lead a life style that is conducive in flourishing and transforming my inner being . Positive integral enlightenment through mediation and the practice of mind-body exercises will lead the way to better personal health. I now see my success as a healer and care taker differently. My success is based on reaching out and touching patients and making them feel loved. The Dalai Lama once stated “ The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds”.

   Having a strong mind and training my brain will allow me to reach a place of robust health. To reach the highest level of health I can not just actively pursue my physical health but must also pursue my inner self and acknowledge my inner capacity to heal others. "If we want a more profound health and life, we must believe in the possibility and then learn how to develop our consciousness" (Dacher, 2006). My personal emotional distress can affect my spirituality therefore leading to the inability to create an atmosphere of loving kindness to those around me. My goal is to develop my mind at a higher level of consciousness so that I may obtain a natural wisdom that will allow me to experience happiness on a daily basis. By developing the outer and inner self I can be more aware of the anxiety, stress and mental factors that can impair my integral development. I believe as my mind-body connection becomes stronger I will be able to achieve all over health wellness when a higher level of love, positive nutrition, and mental peace are reached and sustained. Peaceful loving actions and positive mind set through the subtle mind will allow me to reach my highest potential thereby influencing the lives of all that touch me.

    Having an open and honest assessment with myself is a difficult task. I think all four areas of my life psycho spiritual, biological, interpersonal and worldly need to be personally focused in on and worked on. Looking at each level with an open and honest assessment means that I need to dig deep to discover what areas that I am lacking in. An honest assessment of my health during the course has led me on a trans formative process that has affected every relationship in my life. Weekly assessments of my spiritual, physical and psychological wellness have been accomplished through writing exercises, reading, performing mind body exercises. My weekly assessments led me to realize that I lacked discipline in each area and therefore chaos was ensuing where it need not exist. An honest self assessment through reflection in meditation led me on a path to find a level of spiritual enlightenment that would positively influence every aspect of my life.

     My physical well being I would rate as a 4. I have not devoted as much time as I once did regarding my physical health. This year I lost 45 pound by cutting out junk foods and eating only real foods such as fruits, vegetables and meats.  The first week was so difficult but as time went on it was a challenge to see how many days I could do this for. I owe to positive thinking and imagery for my loss of weight in the last year. Positive rewards included choosing to drink glasses of water and choose something that was healthy instead of eating sugary snacks. Guided Imagery allowed me to see myself as a thinner and healthier person.

   My spiritual well-being I would rate at a 6. I practice calming behaviors that help to regulate my inner being. By having a positive helpful attitude I believe that you can bring about positive life choices. Growing spiritually for me is a difficult process. My parents did not instill any spiritual beliefs. They were very self centered people who held materialism as their god. Neither one had a strong moral base from which to operate from. In turn I feel that I have largely taught myself how to be spiritual. A spiritual belief is important for me because it places a power higher than me in charge. I find I am most out of balance in this area. By not being in balance spiritually it makes all the other areas in my life become out of balance.                                                                                                           

 I am working extensively and actively on my psychological well-being through therapy with myself and with my daughter. Last year I began taking Wellbutrin due to my severe anxiety and my life has changed. I no longer have feelings of extreme anxiety and I am able to cope with family crisis much easier.  I would score my psychological health as an eight because I feel that I have made huge strides regarding the calmness of my thoughts.

   My goals are all inclusive for all three areas: Physical, Psychological and Spiritual. The goals would be to incorporate integral medicine in each one of the three areas. Exercising the brain and the body simultaneously will bring about positive changes to all three areas that will be mutually dependent upon each other. My goal for my spiritual health includes exercising my brain to remain still and quiet with meditation. Exercising the right to shut out the world is a difficult for task for me to accomplish. I have learned to train my mind to focus on the task at hand and to shut out the electronic world in order to accomplish that task. My goal is to increase my meditation time from ten minutes a day to thirty. This quiet time alone will allow me to perform the self reflection that is necessary in order to continue my positive progression forward in attaining inner peace.  

   My main physical goal is to start working out at the gym at least four times per week. When I was on a regimented schedule of exercise I felt much better about myself and made overall life choices much easier. I need to make it a scheduled appointment to work out at least four times a week doing exercises that I enjoy so that the gym is not a horrible experience that I dread. 

My psychological goal involves developing a sense of independent thinking that frees me from co-dependent relationships. Continuing to take the Wellbutrin that has been prescribed to me will help to reduce my depression. Enabling myself to flourish into a loving independent person who loves herself will enable me to become a more productive person for everyone in the world. The anxiety that have experienced in the past can be controlled with positive imagery and through meditative exercises which calm the mind. Removing toxic people from my life has been helpful to decrease the amount of negative energy that I receive.
   Dacher (2006)  makes an excellent analogy about the preparations needed to incorporate integral health: the analogy of a garden.  Our inner-self is like an integral health garden waiting to be planted and cultivated.  In order to get the most out of this garden, we have to do a little prep work.  The skills that are needed for this prep work are: loving-kindness, skillful action, silence and solitude (Dacher, 2006).

The first exercise that I will be practicing daily will be to open my heart up to others with kindness, care, patience, and generosity. These actions continue to be a difficult task for me to perform. When I practice loving-kindness to others I begin to focus on others instead of myself and I begin seeing the happiness and fulfillment of others which makes my heart full of happiness. Respecting other peoples sensitive feelings enables me have a warmer heart. Loving-kindness is an attitude that is expressed through our actions towards ourselves and others.  “Loving-kindness includes sensitivity and openness to others and their differences, a warm heart, and the qualities of respect, fairness, honesty, patience, and acceptance” (Dacher, 2006). In order to show loving-kindness to others, I must first show it to myself.  Performing acts of loving-kindness directly relates to my personal health because it becomes the framework from which my thoughts and actions spring from. Loving myself and respecting myself will allow me to respect others.

 The second exercise that I can actively perform each day is to strive to create silence and stillness within my head. Creating an atmosphere of silence and solitude allows me to have the opportunity to quietly reflect on what I am trying to accomplish in my daily journey.  This moment of reflection is a necessary part of my daily personal health.  Reflection allows me a chance to look back over my day and assess whether my actions helped me remain calm and positive or did it they cause me harm and stress. Skillful action means to be mindful of my daily actions, especially those that tend to be more negative and harmful.  Negative actions build on one another and onsets you on a negative thought pattern for the rest of the day.  Being more aware of my negative actions gives me an opportunity to change my negative actions into more positive ones. My daily activities now include taking ten minutes out for silent reflection. Some days this seems like an impossible task.  I am only in control of my actions, and my mood can influence many people that surround me. I have the knowledge and understanding now that the only person I can fix is me. This core knowledge makes me feel empowered to make positive changes for myself.

    Personal assessment regarding my progress will be through self observation from the changes in my life as a result of the principals taught in this course. Continuing to follow the integral path of health over the six months will help to foster a better understanding of my strengths as well as my weaknesses. Building on my strengths is the positive action to take for my inner success.  Minimizing yet acknowledging my weaknesses will help to aid my quest in flourishing spiritually and psychologically.  “We are discovering that our mental and physical well-being are not predetermined and fixed, and our capacity for health is flexible, dynamic and expansive. Therefore we know that the brain is trainable and that robust health can result from the systematic training of our mind through planned, systematic inner development “(Dacher, 2006). Continuing to actively participate in the exercises that I have down loaded onto my computer will help me to reach my goal of inner peace and overall happiness by strengthening my mind.  

      Cultivating warm loving relationships will to enable me to maintain my own independence and not allow others to make life choices for me. It is through this independence that my self esteem will begin to soar and growth opportunities will present themselves accordingly. These opportunities will be recognized immediately by myself and acted upon in a timely basis. Through out the course I have come to the realization that I have total and complete control over my happiness and my misery.  This course has been more meaningful than any other course that I have taken at Kaplan and has truly changed the way I think and live my life.  

References:

Dacher, E. (2006). Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing. Laguna Beach, CA: Basic Health Publications, Inc.