W4: From Awareness to Action
It’s Week Four of the Health Shift Book Club!
We’re talking about chapters 10-11.
Find this week’s Live Session link here!
Have a question/comment to add to this week’s live session? We’ll answer it live. Ask it here!
Welcome, everyone!
This week we’re moving from awareness to action. This is the actionable part of your health journey. Ready?
If you’re just joining us, hello there. I’m the author, Dr. Alice Burron. You can catch up on last week’s notes here.
If you didn’t read this week’s chapters in their entirety, no worries at all…. we’re breaking it down in the Quick Read Notes below!
Let’s get into it.
Chapter Ten: How Is Your Health…Really?
Strategic health decisions begin with an honest assessment of where you are today, using both your body’s signals and objective information to understand your true health status before deciding what to do next.
Big Idea: Learn to accurately assess your current health instead of relying on assumptions.
Health changes over time, and many people continue to view themselves through the lens of who they used to be rather than who they are today. Symptoms, energy levels, blood work, mood, sleep, digestion, immune function, and physical discomfort all provide valuable clues about what is happening beneath the surface. The body is constantly communicating, but those messages are easy to miss when life becomes busy or stressful.
Building health awareness requires both subjective and objective assessment. A full body scan can help identify subtle pain points, changes in function, and early warning signs before they become major problems. Just as importantly, symptoms should be described with specific language rather than vague labels. The more clearly a problem can be defined, the easier it becomes to understand, communicate, research, and address. You can’t solve what you can’t clearly define.
Big Idea: Use the Health Spectrum Pyramid to determine the right level of intervention.
Once health has been assessed honestly, the next step is understanding where you fall on the Health Spectrum Pyramid.
This framework organizes health into four levels: Level 1 (Healthy), Level 2 (Mostly Healthy), Level 3 (Not as Healthy), and Level 4 (Not Healthy).
The goal is not perfection, but clarity. Knowing your current position helps prevent both overreacting to minor concerns and underestimating serious ones.
Each level calls for a different strategy. Someone at Level 1 should focus on maintaining health and building a “health savings account” through healthy habits. As health declines through Levels 2 and 3, lifestyle interventions, preventive care, and complementary approaches become increasingly important. At Level 4, medical care becomes the primary focus, with lifestyle practices serving a supportive role. Progress should then be monitored over time, allowing interventions enough time to work before making major adjustments.
Big Idea: Emotional intelligence helps us make better health decisions.
Strong health decisions require more than knowledge—they require emotional intelligence. The first half of emotional intelligence is learning to recognize, understand, and manage our own emotions, like we discussed last week in chapter 9. The second half is understanding the emotions of others so we can better navigate relationships, healthcare interactions, and sources of influence.
Rather than suppressing difficult emotions, we are encouraged to acknowledge them, listen to the message they are trying to communicate, and then intentionally guide ourselves toward emotions that support healing. Practical strategies include gathering evidence, seeking encouraging stories, engaging with spirituality, surrounding ourselves with positive people, and building habits that strengthen emotional resilience.
Most importantly, emotions should be acknowledged without being allowed to take control. Fear, anxiety, anger, and grief often serve an important purpose by drawing attention to a concern, but once they have delivered their message, we can choose to respond with more empowering emotions such as courage, curiosity, confidence, motivation, and hope.
Emotional intelligence is ultimately a skill that can be practiced and strengthened. By learning to recognize our emotions, understand their causes, and respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively, we become better equipped to make sound health decisions and continue moving toward healing—even when the journey feels uncertain.
Chapter Eleven: CREECS + Defining Your Health Approach
Good health decisions require more than knowing your options—they require understanding your own preferences, limits, values, and circumstances before choosing a path forward.
Big Idea: Define your health approach before choosing an intervention.
When facing a health decision, it's easy to be influenced by fear, urgency, marketing, or the promise of a quick fix. Instead of jumping directly to solutions, begin by clarifying what matters most to you. The CREECS framework provides six questions that help reveal your personal decision-making style and ensure that any intervention aligns with your goals and realities.
CREECS stands for:
Commitment — How dedicated are you to following through long-term?
Risk — How much uncertainty, side effects, or downside are you willing to tolerate?
Effectiveness — How important is achieving the best possible outcome?
Effort — How much time, energy, and lifestyle change are you willing to invest?
Cost — What financial investment feels acceptable?
Support — What level of guidance, accountability, or assistance will you need?
Answering these questions before researching treatments helps narrow your options, prevents impulsive decision-making, and creates a clearer path toward interventions that genuinely fit your life.
Big Idea: There is no universally “best” intervention—only the best fit for your preferences and circumstances.
Different people can look at the same health concern and arrive at very different decisions because they value different things. One person may prioritize effectiveness above all else, while another may place greater importance on minimizing risk, reducing cost, preserving time, or maintaining independence.
By understanding your CREECS profile, you gain a realistic picture of the types of interventions you are most likely to follow through with successfully. An intervention that perfectly matches your preferences is often more valuable than an ideal solution that demands a level of commitment, risk tolerance, effort, cost, or support that you cannot realistically sustain.
Strategic health decisions begin with self-awareness. The better you understand your own priorities, the more confidently you can choose interventions that align with both your health goals and the life you actually live.