Introduction

This introduction, and much of the behavioral insight presented throughout the course, has been provided by Jamie Wright, D.O., MS, FACOOG, ABAARM, who has over 20 years of experience in the medical field. Dr. Wright is double board-certified and holds a Master's Degree in Metabolic and Nutritional Medicine from Michigan State University / College of Osteopathic Medicine.

The Principles

1. There is no secret: Our modern culture, its stressors, and the lifestyle we've created are the obstacles keeping us from seeing and doing what will self-evidently lead to a more fulfilling and healthier life.
2. The 4 Pillars of Wellness: These are the foundational categories that support wellbeing.
3. You already know most of this: Much of what you will be taught is somewhat self-evident and intuitively obvious.
4. Making the change is the real challenge: This course is designed to help you make these changes gradually and permanently.

My Style

You need to understand how I think about health and change. People tend to make changes because of two primary forces in their life:

1. Overwhelming pain
2. Overwhelming desire

Why "overwhelming"? Because the pain or desire must be potent enough to change your current lifestyle, beliefs, and habit structure. Habits are powerful, and there's strong evidence in behavioral sciences suggesting that we never truly change a habit-we replace it.

We replace a habit with another behavior, which must persist long enough and be powerful enough to establish itself as the new habit. However, many of us have experienced changes that lasted only briefly. The new behavior may have worked for a few days or weeks, but its power weakened, and the old habit reasserted itself.

One way to understand why this happens is to think about power. A weakening of the new habit's power, or the overwhelming persistence of the old habit, causes the new behavior to fail to establish itself fully. We often say we "lost our willpower." But it's not that we lost willpower; it's that we stopped believing in or feeling the overwhelming benefits of the new habit. Either the pain lessened, or the desire for something different and better diminished.

So the question becomes: How do we maintain and strengthen the desire for something new and better? How do we feed the power of the new habit?

Since I don't know where you stand-whether you're driven by overwhelming pain or desire-I've built this Wellness Course to bolster your power for something better. The information is designed to educate, inform, and inspire you to believe that a brighter future is possible and within your reach. Change will come when you believe a brighter future is possible.

The course is organized to show that there is scientific evidence supporting what you probably already know or believe: "It is normal to be well."

My Journey

This course also follows my path of discovery. As a physician with a background in biology and genetics, I faced an early dilemma in my medical career: I could diagnose symptoms and disease but didn't fully understand what was driving these problems and perpetuating them.

In 2008, my wife developed a mysterious chronic disease with a shocking array of neurological, pain, and fatigue symptoms that defied logical explanation. This experience sparked my journey to find real answers, driven by overwhelming pain, fear, and suffering.

How you choose to think about the problem will help or hinder you from discovering your solution.

The first step is to shift your thinking from the "disease" to the question: What could be preventing my body from healing and functioning in a state of well-being? What is holding your body back from performing how it was designed to perform?

Think of your overall health as a balance of stressors. When balanced with proper nourishment and recovery, stress can make us stronger. However, too much negative stress and little nourishment can prevent the body from adapting, leading to a dis-ease state.

Next Steps

This introduction provides the foundation for your wellness journey. As we move together, this course will help you understand the various stressors that impact your health, where they come from, and how to reduce them while implementing sustainable, healthier behaviors. Keep the principles, your motivations, and the importance of lasting change in mind as we explore the keys to well-being.