Wellness Book Review

Summary

The key points made in Arloskis (2007) Wellness Coaching for Lasting Lifestyle Change are that wellness is determined by lifestyle, psychology, and principles. In order to promote wellness, a coach must be an ally of the individual and promote lifestyle changes that facilitate wellness objectives. The book covers everything from defining wellness to models of wellness to the role that preventive health plays in wellness, how to coach wellness, why a wellness coach should seek out coaching, how to implement a lifestyle improvement model, how to create a wellness map, and how health and medical coaching contribute to wellness coaching. The book covers so much ground in short order that it really does serve as a good primer on how to think about wellness coaching.

Arloski explains that choice of lifestyle is what determines or affects ones heath more than anything else. Health information can provided people with details about what a healthy lifestyle looks like, but coaching is really needed to help keep a person on task, focused, centered, motivated, and moving forward with lifestyle changes that need to be implemented but that may require some assistance. Coaching helps because intrinsically, Arloski (2007) argues, it is about wholeness and wellness.

The book also explains that one-on-one interpersonal skills are needed to help with creating wellness plans for individual clients. Wellness coaching is about mapping the course of changing ones life. Its psychology is rooted in the idea of self-actualization from Abraham Maslow: everyone has needsphysiological needs, safety needs, social needs, and esteem needs. Only when all of these needs are met can one attain self-actualization. Part of the coachs job is to help the individual make sure those needs are being met.

Concrete Response

One important idea in the book is that when we coach someone towards higher levels of wellness we are, in fact, helping them discover increasingly effective ways of getting their basic needs met (Arloski, 2007, p. 6). I have personally experienced how this is true, because I saw that during periods when I struggled in life it was mainly because I lacked certain fulfillment in specific areas of my lifesocial areas, self-esteem areas, or even basic security areas. When I saw that my struggles toward self-actualization stemmed from this lack, I began to focus on satisfying those needs I was missing. How could I make myself feel more protected? What could I do to have more...

…their potential so that they become hungry for self-actualization. When they begin to see results, they will want more. They will want to keep going, to keep thriving, to keep that energy up.

But there is another way this book applies: it recommends that coaches work should to shoulder with clients (Arloski, 2007, p. 130). I like this idea a lot because it is really about serving the client and not just about standing on the sidelines barking orders or directives. It is more about being part of a team and working together with the client. However, I want to be able to help the client identify good goals that will help to unlock potential.

That is why I see the mapping exercises as particularly helpful, too. I can see myself applying them both to my own life to help me unlock my potential and in my career as I help clients unlock their potential. The mapping exercises can be creative ways to see where we are, what is holding us back, where we would like to be, what resources we have to act on, and where we can obtain even more resources if we want to meet our needs and achieve self-actualization. I see the…