Summary

  This chapter emphasized the importance of living a healthy lifestyle. This includes getting regular exercise, eating a healthy diet, ensuring a moderate use of alcohol and other drugs such as caffeine, stopping smoking, restricting the use of prescribed medication as far as possible and getting enough rest and sleep. These recommendations are based upon the latest evidence of what constitutes a healthy lifestyle. Health promotion programmes run by many workplace organizations and health care organizations aim to educate individuals about the importance and benefits of adopting a healthy lifestyle. This is particularly important when one is working in a stressful occupation. Many larger workplace organizations now offer a range of staff benefits. Examples of these include reduced cost gym membership, stress management advice and workshops, life coaching, access to dietary advice, healthy options at the staff canteen, educational campaigns aimed at offering advice to employees about safe limits for consumption of alcohol and smoking cessation clinics. Are you aware of the range of staff benefits on offer in the organization in which you work? If not then you are encouraged to find out what they are and to make use of them where possible.

An exercise

  Some of the main learning points with respect to lifestyle habits covered in this chapter are summarized in Table 4.2. Please read through the checklist and circle a ‘Yes’ response for those which you feel you are already achieving and a ‘No’ response for those which you identify that you need to do more work on. This will allow you to identify those unhealthy habits that you need to change.

Table 4.2 Checklist of lifestyle habits

 

  Note: This table is available to view and print from the following website: www.routledgementalhealth.com/9780415671781

Developing your own ‘Healthy Lifestyle Plan’

  If you have answered ‘Yes’ to every question in Table 4.2, either you are already living a very healthy lifestyle or you are not being honest to yourself. However, for most of us there are likely to be at least a few questions to which we have answered ‘No’. Where you have answered ‘No’ to a question, this indicates that there is some work that needs to be done in that area if you are going to be able to claim that you are living a healthy lifestyle. The first step therefore is to make a list of the changes that you need to make in order to achieve this and these will form your goals. Once you have identified the goals, go back to the appropriate sections in this chapter and identify the interventions that you need to implement. The next step is to start implementing the interventions that you have identified in the plan. Set yourself a timescale for achieving each of your goals and review your progress towards achieving them on a regular basis. If you are determined, focused and disciplined enough you will be successful.

Chapter 5 Developing effective time management skills

Introduction

  Time is a precious, limited and non-renewable resource. It passes quickly, so it is important that we make the most of every moment given to us. If we use our time wisely, it can have long-term benefits on psychological wellbeing later on in life. Knowing that we have made the best of our time and not wasted it leads to greater self-acceptance, fulfilment and feelings of achievement in later life. On the contrary, if we have wasted time, it can result in feelings of dissatisfaction, a longing to turn back the clock and a desire to live our time again. However, making the most of our time is not just about being busy. It is possible to be extremely busy without being very productive at all. The key to achieving is being selective about the tasks that we take on rather than simply being busy in an unfocused way. Two case studies in this chapter aim to illustrate the differences between being busy and being productive. The first case study is of John, who works as a middle manager for a firm of accountants. He prides himself on working hard under pressure but often feels that there are simply not enough hours in the day to do his job and frequently feels angry and resentful about the demands being placed on him. The second case study is of Peter, who has a very similar job to John but rarely reports feeling stressed. The case studies describe a typical day in the life of each person.