To close out 2020, I thought I’d test an idea with my readers:

An email series where I curate the latest news in health and wellness from around the web, so you can become a powerful wellness architect and help your team perform their best and thrive.

This curated content will be synthesized into a digestible archive of actionable insights for you - a key wellness champion for your team. Your team could be your family, your friends, your coworkers, or yes, even a sports team!

We’re talkin’ topics like nutrition, exercise, sleep, mindfulness, creativity, productivity, leadership, culture, the environment and nature, and much more!In order to help you go from information to transformation - a state where you can move beyond getting paralyzed by too much information and towards taking meaningful action, I included a call to action section at the bottom of this report.

You will also be able to comment on these threads so we can get discussions going around how we can apply these strategies to our unique situations, wherever each of us may be.

How to navigate this report

Information: Your weekly archive of the newest wellness content. You will learn about a wide-array of health and wellness topics, respecting the Deep Health Model.

Comprehension: A quick glance at the information worth observing and contemplating more. This is highly subjective as these are my takeaways, but I simply aim to extract the most relevant materials that most of us can apply. This leads into…

Transformation: Where the magic happens. Your call to action, and steps to better leverage these new findings to better influence your health.After reading this issue, feel free to share content amongst your social media, in your company wellness newsletter, or just take some small healthy action!

Let’s dive in!

Information

Your curated wellness archive update

Pick a couple of pieces to read whenever you have a chance, or read it all!Estimated reading time for all materials: 45 - 60 minutes

Organizational Well-being / Workplace Wellness / Work-life Integration

5 Ways to Measure the Success of Your Wellness Program (Article)

Sleep and recovery

Transform your sleep: The scientific way to energize your body, sharpen your mind, and stop hitting snooze (Article)

The Power of Sleep (Infographic)

Effect of restricting bedtime mobile phone use on sleep, arousal, mood, and working memory (Research)

Physical Well-being

Self-care Saturday is a walk in the park (Article)

Don’t let weather keep you indoors (Article)

Social-Relational Well-being / Diversity and Inclusion / Culture

COVID-19 Must Not Delay Diversity and Inclusion (Article)

How to Be an Antiracist Educator: An interview with Ibram X. Kendi (Article)

Mental & Emotional Well-being / Mindfulness / Creativity

4 Post Pandemic Mental Health Trends and Predictions for 2021 (Article)

In 2021 We Need to Focus on Remote Work Creativity (Article)

The Path to Enlightenment is an ego trip: Meditation and mindfulness linked to narcissism and feelings of ‘spiritual superiority’, study finds (Article)

Finding Meaning and Happiness in Old Age (Article)

Environment / Climate Change / Nature

Vertical Farms Run by AI and Robots to Solve the Land Crisis (Article)

Comprehension: The Key 3

Highlights worth contemplating this week

Mindfulness is at the centre of pretty much everything we do. Self-improvement doesn’t occur without self-awareness. Just don’t let that attention to self-improvement enlighten your ego. How are you going to make mental health, diversity and inclusion a more prominent subject with your team?

Measuring the success of your wellness programs depends on many variables, but they should not rely on incentives, rewards, and punishments. Seeing positive behaviour change in your team that lasts long after an initiative is over is one measure, as well as seeing unexpectedly exciting ideas from others on the team as this shows deeper engagement. How can you measure the long-term behaviour change of your team that doesn’t rely on extrinsic motivators?

Sleep is important. We need to ensure that we are taking ownership of the influences we have control over that help or hinder our sleep quality and quantity. Exposure to blue light can suppress melatonin and affects the time it takes us to fall asleep (sleep latency), sleep quality (REM and deep sleep), nighttime resting heart rate, and more. What resonates the most with you after learning more about sleep?

Transformation: Your call to action

What to do today

Leverage your self-discovery/guiding question to make yourself one percent better

“What would a healthy person do in this situation?” This is a great question as it cuts through a lot of the paralysis analysis and gets to the point: What would a healthy person do in a situation like this? These identity-based questions help us navigate the moments in which we have decisions to make that either nudge us to becoming more or less healthy.

For example, when you are watching Netflix and are contemplating what to snack on: chips or the freshly cut vegetables in your fridge… “what would a healthy person do?” Another example: an entire bag of chips or a portioned amount of chips in a small bowl… “What would a healthy person do?”

What to do this week

Integrate one new habit (around sleep or mental health) into your routine, or build upon an existing healthy habit. You could try leaving your phone out of your bedroom, or wearing blue light blocking glasses.

Come up with ideas and an action plan to ensure you are being inclusive in your teams initiatives - wellness or otherwise.

Do some form of activity outdoors.

Let me know if you followed through on any of your call to action items!In health,Paul

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