Personal Health Plan

7 Pages 1629 Words

Personal Health Plan
How are you doing today? This question is asked by many people everyday. Most respond with nothing more than “good”, “great” or “fine”. But how are we really doing? I used to think that I was 100% healthy until I learned about the various dimensions of health. There are several areas that contribute to our overall health and/or wellbeing. Physical, psychological, spiritual, social, intellectual and environmental are all components of health (Hales, 2001).
So what is health? Dictionary.com (2000) defines health as a condition of optimal well-being. This being said, one might assume total health can be achieved by maximizing our strengths and controlling/eliminating our weaknesses within the dimensions of health. In this paper I will summarize my strengths and weaknesses within the physical, psychological and spiritual dimensions. I will also develop a plan that will allow me to reach and maintain total health.
Physical health may be the most well known area but it is often overlooked by many. I always thought I was in perfect physical health because I have always been actively involved in several sports or some other form of physical activity. Boy was I wrong. It was only in the past two years that I have actually started to listen to my body. Last November I broke my foot while playing basketball. This was the first time I had ever broken anything like this. Not only was I sidelined from sports for more than three months but I was barely able to walk and sleeping also became a task.
My doctor recommended surgery several times and also referred me to a specialist for rehab. I declined the surgical option and missed every rehab appointment. There were two reasons for this; the obvious one was financial but there was also a bit of fear. If the surgery would have been performed I may have missed several weeks of work which could impact my finances. My fear was based solely on “what if”. I have a...