Living Well Center Behavioral Health Counseling

Program: Empowering Yourself to New Health Habits 

Having a hard time sticking to your diet or exercise plan? Are you struggling to make positive lifestyle changes? With this five-week course, you'll learn how to use your values and strengths to establish goals and create healthy, sustainable habits in your everyday life. This course is led by Juliana Varela, LCSW, who is skilled in helping individuals achieve their health and wellness goals through behavioral changes. View our events calendar for upcoming class dates.

Cost: $125 for the full five-week course
Format: In-person or virtual

 

Class Agendas

Class 1: Why is it hard to make changes? Understanding and navigating the pleasure trap 

Objectives:

• Understand the motivations behind our instincts.
• Be able to articulate how the pleasure trap challenges our desired health behavior changes.
• Learn to take action and have strategies to navigate the pleasure trap that align with your desired outcomes.

Exercises:

• Identify one to three outcomes you want to address with your overall health/wellness.
• Complete VIA strength assessment to prepare for the next session.

Class 2: Identifying your character strengths and values 

Objectives:

• Learn the importance of understanding your character strengths.
• Understand what values are and how they guide behavior, thoughts and feelings.
• Be able to identify your character strengths and values.

Exercises:

• Reflect/journal: How have your strengths have helped you achieve things? How will you use them to achieve desired health outcomes?
• Complete value clarification sheet.

Class 3: Establishing goals and the power of habits

Objectives:

• Understand your intentions (WHY), SMART goals (WHAT), and plans (HOW).
• Understand what habits are and how they comprise our behavior.
• How to establish new healthy habits.

Exercises: 

• Write the appropriate number of SMART goals and plan to address your desired outcomes that meet a value in your life.
• What new habits will need to be developed or reignited to meet goals? 

Class 4: What works for you with health behavior change and what doesn't

Objectives: 

• Learn how to break free from bad habits.
• Identify potential obstacles and strategies to address these obstacles. 
  
• Understand the power of self-belief, self-compassion, action and intrinsic motivation to propel you towards your outcomes - while fear, force, and facts don’t always work.
• How our stress response, poor sleep and lack of social support derail our best intentions.

Exercises: 

• Identify and celebrate a win or multiple wins to continue your momentum. 
• Complete a stress exploration sheet and coping strategies to neutralize their effect.

Class 5: Complementary Session

Roundtable discussion – personal comments and reactions.

Objectives:

• Status of progress.
• Articulate key learnings.
• Ability to articulate how this information will continue to fuel and sustain habit change.

Post Class Survey

• Most helpful items or sections of the class
• Least helpful items or sections of the class
• Time offering adequate
• Prefer virtual or in-person
• Any additional resources needed
• General suggestions for improvement
• Offer a three-month or designated time to follow up

Conquer your health goals. Join our program today!