Personal health checklist

Eating: Are you eating a nutritionally balanced diet, regularly and unhurriedly? Unlikely. Consider taking a daily multivitamin/mineral/omega 3 fish oil/ B complex and check for possible food intolerances.

Smoking/Drugs/Drinking: Do you avoid smoking and drugs and aim to drink in moderation?

Sleep: Are you regularly getting enough sleep? Too little sleep affects thoughts and behaviour. Are you dreaming a lot, waking early and feeling tired? If so, what is unresolved from the day before?

Exercise: Exercise is important to enable the mind and body to work efficiently. It doesn’t have to be strenuous, just regular. Are you taking any exercise? Just 20 minutes of the right sort of exercise can release endorphins - the ‘feel good’ chemicals.

Introspections and Ruminations: Are you challenging negative thoughts and preventing them acting as self-fulfilling prophecies? eg: What is the evidence for that view? Is there an alternative view? Are you forgetting your strengths and concentrating on weaknesses? Are you over generalising? Are you being excessively pessimistic? Am I spending too much time in the past? You cannot change the past, only your attitude to it.

Aims/ambitions: What gives you a sense of purpose in life? Can they be realised? Have short term and long term aims. What is your potential? Keep your mind/body stretched and challenged by work or learning. Are they SMART goals? Specific. Measured. Achievable. Realistic. Timed.

Own time: Do you take ‘time out’ for yourself and do something using your own skills/interests that isn’t work related. Discover unused resources. Find time for relaxing. Are you working to live or living to work?

Social interaction: People benefit from being involved in something greater than themselves eg: community/charities/school/church. Do you meet and mix with people other than in work situations?

Beliefs: Having a belief/religion can give people a meaning to life. Use reflection, meditation and prayer. It can reduce anxiety and be relaxing too.

Support: Can you talk over things with friends, family or colleagues, away from where any problems may lie?

Physical contact: Touch is important. Do you have appropriate physical contact with anyone? If not a person, then pets can provide therapeutic contact. Also therapeutic massage treatments eg: aromatherapy, reflexology, back and neck etc.

Stress: Stress induced chemicals can do long term damage to the mind and body.  Stress can kill.  Do you manage the stress in your life or does it manage you? How do you react when emotionally aroused? Do you know how to relax? Can you see the bigger picture or are you only looking through the letter box eg: narrow viewpoint? How much personal control do you have over situations?

Self observation: Are you aware when your emotional life is becoming unbalanced? Are you honest with yourself? Can you see the bigger picture?

Family and colleagues: Do you bring the best out of other people in your family and/or workplace? Make the most of people’s strengths not weaknesses. If there is something or somebody that can't / won't change, then change your own response.

Status and self value.  You cannot expect others to value you if you do not value yourself first. Be aware of valuing self worth only on material worth.

Needs and Wants: Can you separate what you actually need from what you want? Are your needs being met? Don't know that they are? Then look above. Can the wants wait?