The Integra Blog

The Sad Irony of Selfishness

Seth Godin:

More often than not, the selfish person is insecure, fearful and filled with doubt. The selfishness springs from his belief that this is his only good idea, his last dollar, his one and only chance to avoid failure. “I need this, not you,” he says, because he truly believes he’s got nothing else going on, no other chance, no hope.

The irony, of course, is that selflessness (not selfishness, its opposite) is precisely the posture that leads to more success. The person with the confidence to support others and to share is repaid by getting more in return than his selfish counterpart.

Why, you may ask, is this relevant to health, fitness or wellbeing?

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The Art of Nutrition Coaching

Long-term, successful nutritional coaching is about much more than just ‘follow this diet’

Motivational Interviewing assumes that every client already has the reasons and abilities to change within themselves. That all they need is a safe place to consider change. A caring, attentive coach to gently guide them in envisioning a better future. And an increasing self-motivation to actually achieve that future.

To me, this style of coaching was a revelation. It shook up everything I thought I knew about coaching. It forced me to change – and to grow – myself. And it made me an exponentially better coach. So, in this article, I’d like to share the top lessons I learned from Motivational Interviewing.

Read More: The Art of Nutrition Coaching

(via Dr. John Beradi)

For those interested in the topic of coaching and change, check out: Switch: How to change things when change is hard, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.

Some Things You May Not Have Realised About Pain

This is an article written by Richmond Stace, who I met last year on the David Butler lecture on pain.

Pain is multidimensional. Pain is 100% produced by the brain in response to a perceived threat. The brain allocates a location using the cortical maps, hence why we feel pain in our backs or knees. The brain tries to make sense of the situation, scrutinising what is going on on the basis of past experience (learning) and comparing to the information being received from ALL body systems. This is the reason for the term ‘multisystem output’ as a way of describing what is happening when we are in pain.

Read more here: Pain – some things you may not have realised and check out the research articles Richmond has gathered at the bottom of the article.

Whilst we are on the topic of pain, check out our colleague Paul Argent’s thoughts following the David Butler course.