Fantastic 40th National Wellness Conference!

I attended and presented at the 40th National Wellness Conference in Minnesota June 15-18 20015. It was great as they all have been. I learned a lot at the many sessions and wonderful keynotes and thought it was great to catch up with my yearly friends. Once again, it was a “once in a lifetime experience”.

My presentations seemed to go well. I was honored that an organizer informed me that half of  “aha” moment sheets turned in from the whole conference were from people who attended my session. I was also honored that Don Ardell posted this in his #702 Ardell Wellness Report:

Postscript Two: I also found time at the NWC to attend several excellent breakout sessions, the most memorable being a comprehensive presentation on the nature of health and well being by Dr. Craig Becker entitled, Prevention Cannot Create Wellness: Here Is What Does! Becker’s artful use of media (music, video clips, nature sounds and all manner of special effects were Disney-worthy and always added, never detracted, from the substantive evidence cited to support an impassioned call for REAL wellness programming. The latter was described by Becker as salutogenesis or paneugenesis, as opposed to the pathogenesis in which the wellness movement is currently stuck.

The keynotes were great. Todd Kashdan’s information about the value of embracing our dark side and how we can grow from this was enlightening. I look forward to learning and reading more about his work. Michele Segar gave me great language to look at how to move toward creating well-being and how to sustain motivation.  I look forward to learning more about her work. I also learned much from Thomas LaVeist‘s information that explained health disparities. He did a great job of clarifying it is about the situation not the person that creates differences. His great analogy was to those who survived the Titanic.  He showed that 97% of first class survived on the titanic and less that 20% of 3rd class survived. This of course is just like society today, those that were able to survive did so because of how it was designed. M

My point however is we need to design to help people THRIVE, not just survive and that is the focus of my work. If we help more survive, disparities will have to dissipate.

As always, I learn a great deal preparing and making presentation. The Prevention Cannot Create Wellness presentation has helped clarify pieces for the creating all good model article that I will be submitting soon.

If you are interested, here are PDF’s of both presentations:

1.  Serendipitous Wellness: Can we cause it to happen? – at 1:00pm on 6/15/2015

Presentation PDF

Brief Description

Serendipity, a word coined by Horace Walpole in 1754, is the occurrence of chance beneficial events. Serendipity is associated with the surprising discovery of penicillin and also can be applied to wellness. At this presentation you will learn strategies like those used by late Steve Jobs to organize your work environments, develop communication styles, and lead a life that makes serendipity more likely. Even if you don’t create serendipitous wellness, you will learn how to build a better life.

2. Prevention Can Never Create Wellness: Here is What Does! at 2:30pm 6/16/2015

Presentation PDF

Brief Description

By definition, prevention is the action of stopping something from happening.  Therefore, if prevention works, nothing happens.  Although, prevention is important, it cannot create positive health or wellness. Even without a prevention focus, multiple fields create better outcomes that also prevent without focusing on what to avoid. This presentation will review the evidence of these effective positive strategies and provide you with an idea of how to use these ideas in practice.

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Be Well’r,
Craig Becker

Be selfish, selfless, & synergistic so everyone and everything benefits!