Health & Wellbeing reaching your goals

22 Health & Wellbeing

Small steps to reach your goal By Heather Smith

When making what could be a pretty significant lifestyle change, one of the many reasons people fall off the wagon is confidence. Making a big change can feel like a huge opportunity to fail. Instead, try making changes which are so easy, it’s almost impossible not to make them. What could you do this week to take you a step closer to your overall goal? And how confident are you that you can do those things? If you’re not completely convinced, take it back a bit until it feels ridiculously easy to achieve. Set yourself up to succeed. Let’s say you’re a bad vegetable eater, and you’re aiming to improve your health. Of course, eating 8 portions of veg every day is going to get you closer to your goal. But that feels like a really big commitment which you’re not sure you could make long term. How about including one vegetable with each of your meals this week? If that is a step

forward from where you are now, but seems so easy you couldn’t fail, then you have your starting point. If it still feels like too much, don’t be afraid to step it back even further. You’re aiming for guaranteed success, which will leave you feeling good about yourself. Now you have had a positive experience in moving towards your goal, it becomes easier to take another step. Next week, you might feel like it is so easy to get one vegetable with each meal, that you feel totally confident you could actually increase to two vegetables with dinner every night. Other times, it might take longer to get really comfortable with the change before you’re ready to move on. Often, the slow route is the route which leads to the longest lasting changes. Aim for repeated positive interactions with your goal. Be kind to yourself. Take things slowly and celebrate each victory, however small, along the way. Heather Smith is a fat loss specialist Personal Trainer. Get in touch for a free five-day meal plan www.fitbiztraining.co.uk

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24 Legal

Powers of attorney By Emma Wells MIPW Will Writer

Many people confuse having a Will with having arranged Lasting Powers of Attorney (LPA); however, the two things are entirely separate. In simple terms you need a Will for when you die and an LPA for when you’re alive. One in four of us is going to lose capacity at some point during our lives and whilst we know these statistics, what we don’t know is which of us are going to be the unlucky ones. There are two main types of lasting power of attorney, health and welfare and property and finance. You do not have to have both kinds; however, if you are taking the time to do one you may find it efficient to get both done at the same time. When it comes to appointing attorneys the most popular scenario is for people to use their spouse as their first choice with their children or a family member as their replacement attorneys so should their spouse predecease them or be unable to act they have a safety net in place.

I consider lasting power of attorneys to be a bit like an insurance policy, you hope you never need to use it but if things go wrong you’re pleased that you have it. You don’t want to be one of the people whose loved ones are frantically phoning round companies hoping that someone can sort out LPA’s for their parent as they’ve lost capacity only to find out it’s too late. It’s like not having holiday insurance because ‘it won’t happen to me’ and falling ill abroad and being stuck expecting your family to have a whip round to fund your extortionate medical bills and get you home. Don’t be that person when you don’t need to be. You can put restrictions and guidelines in place for your attorneys, such as certain amounts of money needing to be agreed by at least two of your attorneys before being spent or in the case of Health and Welfare Attorneys all must be in agreement to end life sustaining treatment. If you haven’t arranged Lasting Power of Attorney documents or would like more information on this or making your Will please don’t hesitate to contact me for more information or to make an appointment. emma.wells@nsure.co.uk or on 01903 821010. www.nsureestateplanningservices.co.uk

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