Lifestyle Audit


IS YOUR LIFESTYLE A HEALTHY ONE?

In 2006 the government developed a framework of outcomes that contribute to the "Creating Sustainable Communities Strategy"

The five outcomes that were agreed are:

ECONOMIC WELLBEING
• Maximised income
• Reduced dept
• Obtained paid work

ENJOY AND ACHIEVE
• Participate in chosen training and/ or education, and where applicable achieving desired qualifications
• Participate in chosen leisure/cultural/faith/informal learning activities
• Participate in chosen work like/voluntary/unpaid work activities
• Establish contact with external service/family/friends

BE HEALTHY
• Better manage your physical Health
• Better manage your mental health
• Better manager substance misuse
• Better manage independent living as a result of assistive technology/aids and adaptors

STAY SAFE
• Maintain accommodation and avoid eviction
• Comply with statutory orders and processes
• Better manager self harm, avoid causing harm to others, minimise harm/risk of harm from other

MAKE A POSITIVE CONTRIBUTION
• Greater Choice and/or involvement and/or control at service level and within the wider community.


As well as linking to a wide range of other government objectives these outcomes link nicely to the Human Givens Framework of Organising Ideas:

Given physical needs: As animals we are born into a material world where we need air to breath, water, nutritious food and sufficient sleep. These are the paramount physical needs. Without them we quickly die. In addition we also need the freedom to stimulate our senses and exercise our muscles. We instinctively seek sufficient and secure shelter where we can grow and reproduce ourselves and bring up our young. These physical needs are intimately bound up with our emotional needs.

Given emotional needs: Emotions create distinctive psychobiological states in us and drive us to take action. The emotional needs nature has programmed us to connect to the external world, particularly to other people, and survive in it. They seek their fulfilment through the way we interact with the environment. Consequently, when these needs are not met in the world, nature ensures we suffer considerable distress, Anxiety, Anger, Depression, etc., and our expression of distress in whatever form it takes, impacts on those around us.

People whose emotional needs are met in a balanced way do not suffer mental health problems. When teachers and Psychotherapists pay attention to this they are at their most effective.

In short it is by meeting our physical and emotional needs that we survive and develop as individuals.


There is widespread agreement as to the nature of our emotional needs and the main ones include:

• Security-Safe territory and an environment which allows us to develop fully
• Attention (to give and receive it) - a form of nutrition
• Sense of autonomy and control - having volition to make responsible choices
• Being emotionally connected to others
• Feeling part of the wider community
• Friendships, intimacy - to know that at least one other person accepts us totally for who we are,
   warts and all.
• Privacy - opportunity to reflect and consolidate experience
• Sense of status within social groupings
• Sense of competence and achievement
• Meaning and Purpose - which come from being stretched in what we do and think


Along with physical and emotional needs nature gave us guidance systems to help us meet them; we call these "resources"

The resources nature gave us to help us meet our needs include:

• The ability to develop complex long term memory, which helps us to add to our innate knowledge and
   learn
• The ability to build rapport, empathise and connect with others
• Imagination, which enables us to focus our attention away from our emotions, use language and problem
   solve more creatively and objectively
• Emotions and instinct
• A conscious, rational mind that can check out our emotions, question, analyse and plan
• The ability to "know" - that is, understand the world unconsciously through metaphorical pattern matching
• An observing self-that part of us that can step back, be more objective and be aware of itself as a unique
   centre of awareness, apart from intellect, emotion and conditioning
• A dreaming brain that preserves the integrity of our genetic inheritance every night by metaphorically
   defusing expectations held in the autonomic arousal system because they were not acted out the
   previous day.

It is such needs and tools together that make up the human givens, natures genetic endowment to humanity.

Over time they have undergone continuous refinement as they drove our evolution on. They are best thought of as inbuilt patterns, biological templates that continually interact with one another and in undamaged people seek their natural fulfilment in the world in ways that allow us to survive, live together and flourish.

It is the way those needs are met, and the way we use our resources that determines the physical, mental and moral health of an individual.

As such the human givens are the bench mark to which we must all refer in education, mental and physical health and the way we organise and run our lives. When we feel emotionally fulfilled and are operating effectively within society, we are more likely to be mentally healthy and stable. However, when too many innate physical and emotional needs are not being met in the environment, or when our resources are used incorrectly, we suffer considerable distress and so do those around us.