A Contentious Divide?

Touchy? Yes. Controversial? Maybe. Debatable? Almost certainly. What? Our collective wellness and well-being. It is a contentious conversation when it comes to our shared wellness and well-being. We’re all there, and we’re all in this together. We all have a part to play. And, all of us are playing from a unique perspective.

Yes, we are a contentious culture. We disagree on any number of issues—yet we still must find enough common ground to move on so that we can solve what really are enormous problems. Right now, healthcare and healthcare spending, driven in part by our lifestyle choices, is one of the most massive. It has the potential to drive our country to bankruptcy. And, at the heart of it all are two sets of values, motivations and behaviors that have the capacity to split, or divide us. These are values that drive our personal “wellness behavior choices.”

First, a couple of questions:  Do we trust what we know?  Do we trust what we think?  Do we trust ourselves to make the right decisions? Do we trust the solutions available to us?  (Technically, that’s more than a couple.) 

When focusing on our wellness and well-being (which is what this Blog is about), these are hard questions to answer. There’s a lot of information “out there” about what we should and should not do, a lot of dis-information, a lot of bad information, and a lot of information that is just plain wrong. How do you know the difference?

Well, you could listen to us…we try to distill all this information and make it simple (maybe not easy, but still simple), or you could listen to yourself. You really are the expert here, and you know what you will and won’t, can and can’t, do. You also know what you should do and must do, for reasons that may be personal and private, but surprisingly, are more than likely very much connected to reasons held by our entire population. 

No one wants to be unhealthy. No one wants to suffer from poor lifestyle behavior choices. No one would choose to put their lives at risk because of those choices. Yet some of us do. And, those choices will cost us all as we try to navigate our way through the staggering, and growing healthcare costs we’re facing together as a nation.   

When it comes down to it, maybe we’re not so divided after all. Maybe we just have to act on what we know we need to do.