Change is often an unexpected but constant presence when you experience the onset of a serious health issue. There is a lot you need to change, but also a lot you don’t know. So making that change can feel very difficult. Sometimes impossible given it’s hard to know what you need let alone where to find that information and support.
It’s understandable. You won a ticket in a health lottery you didn’t even know you were playing. If you had known that lottery was out there, you wouldn’t have chosen to play it. So the question is…
Where do you start?
“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
Whenever I have to make a change, whether it happened to me (enforced change) or one that I chose, I find this quote by MLK a form of support. Change can be destabilising because it introduces so many unknowns, and we humans often don’t like uncertainty. It can be scary. But taking that first step into the new world with all its uncertainty is key. You don’t have to know the final destination when you take that first step, i.e. see the whole staircase. Seeing that whole staircase rarely happens. We end up building the staircase as we go.
Another reason it can be hard to take that first step is it is acknowledging that the change has happened and the outcomes may have resulted in a lot of loss, i.e. of what your body used to be able to do, job, relationships, sense of independence and being in control, confidence, etc.
Making the change easier
I set up Return to Wellness® to make taking that first step or first roll easier and to help you build your own staircase to where it is you want to go. (If you feel using a path metaphor is better for you, particularly if your mobility has changed, then use that. I appreciate the staircase theme might not resonate for everyone.)
This came from my own and a loved one’s experience of serious illness, plus witnessing many others with the same or similar condition as me struggling to find adequate support to make sense of everything.
I support you, whether you have the health issue or are in the caring role*, to:
- Deal effectively with the emotional impact
- Navigate the many changes
- Create a ‘new normality’
- Reclaim meaning and purpose in your life
I empower you to return to wellness, and stay there. Hence the name, Return to Wellness®. It is definitely a return to something we once had and knew. A return to having hope and dreams for the future, restored confidence, having purpose and meaning in your life, a sense of happiness and wellbeing, work you enjoy, valued relationships, enjoyable hobbies, a return to yourself.
*Our carers need just as much support too. They are often the hidden heroes.
Why make this change?
Because you are important. Because your life matters. Because we have this one life for all we know. And it is precious. You know the value of life. So let’s live it, and live it as well as you can within your changed body.
How Return to Wellness® can help
NEW! Return to Wellness® newsletter
Return to Wellness can help you identify changes you need and wish to make and to navigate them whether it’s about managing the health issue’s impact and learn to accept that, finding an emotional balance, getting your needs met with doctors, returning to work or finding a new job, managing your career, reducing stress, enhancing relationships, creating a ‘new normality’, or something else.
Return to Wellness offers you this support through:
- 1-1 coaching where I help you figure out what is best for you to do. Clients have found this very empowering because they learn they do have their own answers of what will work for them and this restores a sense of control. I help you find those answers.
- Offering you the opportunity to take part in research about acceptance in the context of health issues. And by taking part in the research, you get a free 1-1 coaching session in exchange. It’s a great way to get a taster of this kind of support.
- I have also just started a newsletter which will give you first-in-the-queue access to these kind of articles, practical strategies and advice to manage your health and wellness, updates, offers and freebies. You can sign up here. You will receive the newsletter every 2 weeks. I don’t forward or sell your email to third parties.
- There’s a free Wellness Appreciation Workbook which you can do on your own to identify your levels of wellness in various aspects of your life. It’s available from the homepage of the website. When you download it, you are also subscribing to the newsletter (which you can unsubscribe from at any time).
- I am developing an online workshop to help you return to wellness in various aspects of your life. If you want to help shape what that programme could look like, how you want it to help you, get in touch here and we can have a chat about it. And if you sign up to the newsletter, you will also get updates on it there.
Make the change – Take that first step/roll
Support is available to help you take that first step or first roll in making the change you want. And you don’t have to do it by yourself. Return to Wellness can help and partner you on that journey.
Here is an important reminder when making change. It’s important to do it in stages. At each stage, you get used to where you are, you become comfortable with it, it starts to feel natural, and then move to the next stage. This helps make everything that much more doable because you are not trying to do everything all at once. This approach also makes it much more likely you will make your change happen. And that first step, it’s such an important step to take.
Taking that first step/ roll in faith is the best thing you can do for yourself.
What’s it like for you?
What is the scariest thing you find about change? Or do you find it an opportunity? In the past when you have made a change, what enabled you to take the first step/roll?
If you are living with a chronic illness or the after effects of a serious illness, or are caring for someone who is and would like support to take that first step in making change, have a look at how we can work together and get in touch for a free no obligation consultation.
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© Copyright Barbara Babcock 2017
