When you lose yourself in an interest you love, you find yourself. When you enjoy work, home, or play interests so intensely that you forget your problems, where you are, and what is going on around you, you come alive as a person. Inhibitions fall away, self-confidence, self esteem and sense of self worth soar, enthusiasm abounds and creativity is set free. We often call it a 'state of flow'. This feeling doesn't stop at the end of the experience. It generates a positive ripple effect through everything we do, long after the experience has ended.
The sustained health benefits of such experiences can no longer be ignored in business, public, or personal health policies and practices. People are positively focused on finding and pursuing ways of staying healthy, to be able to enjoy work, life and relish the prospect of living well into their 80's and beyond.
Good health - like life - is strengthened by proactively accentuating and building on the positives.
Enjoyment is
• a life-expanding experience.
• an experience created individually by each person in their own unique way for their personal benefits.
• a three-phase experience - planning, doing and reflecting. Think about your last holiday.
• Deeper than fun or pleasure, the latter two being automatic responses to enjoyment
• Vital in any program to minimize the risk of becoming ill.
• Helps people not to just feel good but to feel good about themselves - a feeling that continues well beyond the experience enjoyed, affecting every part of a person's daily life, sometimes for life
• Is a natural means of stress management - the 'flight' part of the 'fight and flight' syndrome.
Our perceptions and ideals of what good health means have changed. 21st century people are now recognizing health as far more complex than simply physical fitness. We are more aware of the the need for sound mental, emotional and spiritual health. For mature people, the desire to keep the mind active and alert is at least as important - sometimes more - as physical mobility. This complexity is being compounded by the effect on our health of the increased stress, pressure and rapid changes in our daily life and work.
We are likely to live much longer than previous generations. 60 years of age is now middle-aged and people are continuing to live highly productive lives well into their 80's and beyond. The two main issues of people planning for retirement are:
• having sufficient money to enjoy a long life, and
• the ability to stay sufficiently healthy in mind, body and spirit to be able to maximize their lifestyle, right to the end.
Nobody admits to being old these days. Society might be ageing but people want to stay young and healthy. Older people often exhibit greater health than many younger people. Maturity brings with it a deeper appreciation of the true joys of life enrichment. This outlook provides a strong foundation for stable good health.
The healing power of laughter and enjoyment has become well known through the film "Patch Adams" based on the work of Dr Patch Adams in establishing the Gesundheit Institute in the USA. His work - and the film - has done much to strengthen the link between enjoyment and good health. But also the film highlighted the need to overcome the attitude shown by the training hospital board, who so strongly resisted the work of Dr Adams because, in their eyes, health care was a matter of life and death in which fun and enjoyment had no place.
Health has become a huge factor in the impact that the ageing society is having on workforce management, particularly to do with:
• the availability of skilled people in the workforce
• attracting and keeping good staff
• re-thinking the benefits of employing and retaining mature staff - and the previous preference to employ younger workers.
We need to keep older people healthy in every sense of the word if we want to have them stay in the workforce for as long as possible. People today are less inclined to retire and more inclined to retain some form of involvement in work. The difference is they would like to work on their own terms. Their major bills in life are largely paid. Now their financial needs are mainly to support daily living, travel and the pursuit of enjoyable interests. Working helps pay those bills but all it keeps the mind, body and spirit healthy.
The issue of work life balance - I prefer to talk of work life harmony - is also of great importance here. This issue goes beyond the publicized issues of childcare and eldercare, important though they are. The broader, gender-neutral, issue is the mental health of workers' increasing exposure to excessive prolonged stress, tension and imposed change. Such health issues are insidious and often go undetected until 'the lifestyle cracks appear'. There is much in common between the concepts of workaholism and alcoholism.
People want to take the ‘tired' out of retired. Retirement is no longer a matter of 'stop work and start dying'. It's now more like, as one client put it to me, "what's for dessert? I've finished the main course and I'm still hungry!" Such people want to continue having an active involvement in society - preferably paid - but on their own terms rather than on an employer's terms. Total health is a critical factor in this issue.
A growing health issue here is what's called the Retired Husband Syndrome - the man (usually) who has left work and finds himself with no interests to pursue. He develops a “me too” attitude, seeking to become involved in the interests of his wife or partner. Sometimes he assumes the role of an efficiency expert, advising his partner how to better run the home. If unresolved quickly, strong emotional issues can arise, leading to possible divorce or even death.
The Retired Husband syndrome highlights the fact that preparations for a healthy retirement need to be in place long before the event. This opens up another wider perspective on the value of enjoyable interests as a means of promoting, developing and maintaining good health.
The future belongs to the young. Much of this discussion has dealt with mature people. However the answers for a healthy long term health health policies and practices lie in the education of the young. Think about the dramatic growth of the typical child in their first five years of life - from birth to starting school at age 5, with most of the basic essential life skills. Yet in those few years they did little more than eat, sleep and enjoy life through play. Kids live for the moment, they want to try everything, no matter whether or not they are good at it.
We can learn a lot from children in developing health practices that recognize and maximize the importance and life-enriching value of enjoyment, creativity and spontaneity.