Your Dashboard Tools

You registered with us on 29th November 2022

Modified on: 1 February 2022 13:46

Title: Try this one

Created on: 1st February 2022
at 8:38 am

Your Background

Here you can add some background information about yourself.  You can add as much or as little as you feel comfortable with (you can always add more later), and you can even put random stuff in to see what it looks like!  No one will see this info apart from you.

Your main focus: Ageing
Your secondary focus: Mental
You haven’t entered a last name
You haven’t entered a location
You haven’t entered a phone number
Your feeling: quite OK
Date: 1st February 2022 8:27 am
You haven’t entered any general health info

Next Steps

There are five things you can look at as part of establishing your health – you will see these below.  You can tackle any or all of them now, or go back to your dashboard and address them later.

Go to dashboard

Your Values

Our values are what make us tick!  They are what we hold to be true – they motivate our actions and help us make decisions. They are universal concepts, which unite people. Values reflect how we have learned to think about how things should be, or how people should behave. It’s what we think is desirable.

Your behaviour is governed by your attitudes and values. You need to have worked out what these are, either by taking an online questionnaire, downloading a list and working out which apply to you, or just listing what you feel is important to you.

We show four approaches, and you can select which you would prefer to do. You can:
Enter your top 5 values (possibly after thinking about it for a time – we recommend getting paper and pen and brainstorming)
Download a list of possible values and select the 5 that apply most to you
Use the VIA Institute of Character approach – either download their list or do a test online
Use the Life Values Inventory approach – this is a complete programme in 5 steps which you sign on and complete online.

We would ideally like you to limit these to five values, although we’ll let you add a sixth if you feel you need to!

Click the button below to find out more about values, attitudes and beliefs.

Values, Attitudes and Beliefs

Add your Values

First we ask for some background info, just to get you thinking about what’s important to you. Then you can decide how you want to understand and enter your values

Download PDF list of values
Download VIA info

Now you’ve decided how to decide on your core values, enter them here. 

Your Strengths and Weaknesses

This is where you analyse your health.  We ask you to consider what you think of as your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to your health, and also what you feel you can build on and what’s holding you back.

This diagram shows a list of things which influence health.  In your case any of these could have a positive or negative influence. 

See WHO article on determinants of health

Diagram courtesy of Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts

Add your analysis of your current health

This is aimed at getting you to think about your health.   It’s like a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) but with a focus on health.  We’ll give you some more information as you go.

If you want to analyse your overall health then press the button below.

Overall health status and questionnaires

This is where you  look at your current state of health overall. This might involve taking a health questionnaire, and as explained there are three to consider. The first two you can download or do on our site – the third you have to do on their site.

You only want a quick overview of your health and wellness, and will dr.ill down in any areas needing work – use the Subjective Happiness Scale
You want to do a more detailed assessment and then focus on areas you’re already aware of – use the Oxford Happiness Scale
You want to look at the whole situation in detail – use the Testwell Holistic Lifestyle Questionnaire online. Select the most appropriate version – adult, older adult, teen or college. It has 50 questions and takes about 15-20 minutes.(note you can only do this on their site)

When you started to add your overall health status, there was additional information on the page. If you want to see this information again, click the button on the right and it will pop up. You can close it and continue.

See information about overall health

Add your analysis of your current health

First choose which questionnaire to take and how, then click the button which appears and take the questionnaire

Once you’ve completed the questionnaire, click on the button below then add details and then click on the button at the bottom that says ‘Add your overall health details’ and your results will appear. 

Your Attitude to Change

Your attitude to change affects how likely you are to make any improvements

Click below to see why this is important

Click here to see info on change

Add your attitude to change

This is where you  look at your attitude to change.  This is important – if you want to actually do something to improve your health, you have to make changes! You may know this already, but if not you can take a questionnaire to find out or confirm your view of what your attitude to change is.

Your Locus of Control

Your Locus of Control determines how you see life – whether you feel you’re in control of your own life or whether you think things will always happen to you that are outside your control.

See more information on locus of control by clicking the button below

Click here to see info on locus of control

Determine your locus of control

Your locus of control is an important part of how you see the world.  If it’s external, you see all sorts of external forces being responsible for what happens to you. If it’s internal, you believe you can influence hat happens to you yourself.  You can take a questionnaire to find out or confirm your view.

Save your health record

Once you’ve completed your health record, you can download it as a PDF. Click the button on the right to download it.

Download PDF
Go to dashboard
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Values, Attitudes and Beliefs

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

We all have our beliefs, attitudes and values – these have developed throughout our life based on who we are and what we have done. Let’s look at what these are.

The University of Reading explain: “People’s values, beliefs and attitudes are formed and bonded over time through the influences of family, friends, society and life experiences. So, by the time you’re an adult, you can hold very definite views on just about everything with a sense of “no one is going to change my mind”.

The combination of your personal values, beliefs and attitudes are your moral principles that guide you in life and affect your behaviour. However, your views can wildly differ to others and in an institution such as a school, these beliefs may be counter to the values of the school, child development or indeed the law.” 

Let’s look more closely at the differences between beliefs, attitudes and values.

Beliefs

These come from real experiences – we think our beliefs are based on reality, but in fact our beliefs colour our experiences; also, an original experience e.g. when we were a child is not the same as what’s happening now. Beliefs can be moral, religious or cultural and reflect who we are. They can be rational (‘it gets colder in winter’) or irrational (‘I am never going to make something of myself’).

Attitudes

This is an immediate belief or disposition about something specific. It is a recurring group of beliefs and behaviours aimed at specific groups, people, ideas or objects. They will normally be positive or negative and we will always behave that way to the target group. Examples of attitudes include confidence (I can or can’t do something), grateful (I an entitled to / grateful for XXX) and cheerful (I am generally happy / miserable).

Values

These are things (principles or qualities) that we hold in high regard or consider to be worthwhile or right / wrong. They are formed by a belief related to the worth of something – an idea or behaviour. Some values are common (e.g. family comes first, the value of friendship) or cultural (which the whole community have – see video at Study.com here).

The theory

Links to Wikipedia

Expectancy Value Theory suggests you balance your beliefs about something with the value you attach to it. The Theory of Reasoned Action suggests that beliefs and evaluation about behavioural outcomes determine attitudes, and intentions lead directly to behaviour.

Beliefs

Expressions of confidence – can change over time

Attitudes

Learned predispositions to something – are subject to change

Values

Ideals that guide our behaviour – Generally long lasting and often need life changing experience to change

Iceberg demonstrating implicit and explicit bias – from Owlcation

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Assess your overall health using a health questionnaire

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

At YouDrive we try and help people improve their health. We use ‘health’ but we understand there are other terms such as wellbeing or even happiness that reflect how we are doing in our lives – if you’re interested in the different definitions and ideas see our page on the subject.

We want to help whether you have a particular problem – physical, financial or mental – or if you just want to improve some specific part of your life or just make some improvements overall.

You’d be surprised, but there has been a serious amount of scientific work done in this area over the last twenty years.

Did you know the OECD have a Better Life index that since 2011 focusses on well-being rather than economic statistics and GDP, where each country is scored? 

The 2020 World Happiness Report is the 8th measuring people in 156 countries by how happy their citizens are. 

In the UK we have been measuring wellbeing since 2011 and you can see the results at a national level on our page  and at regional level on the ONS website .

On a more local level the Co-op Community Wellbeing measures how well your local community works – you just enter your postcode! 

So first we allow you to assess your current health (or wellbeing, or happiness).  We do this by questionnaire.  Which one is determined by the type of person you are:

  1. You understand yourself well and want a quick overview of your health and wellness, and will drill down in any areas needing work
  2. You want to do a more detailed assessment and then focus on areas you’re already aware of
  3. You want to look at the whole situation in detail – this has to be done on its original site.

By the way, we take your privacy seriously – we collect information that you choose to provide but we de-identify it as much as possible and will never share it with anyone without your explicit consent.

You can then drill down into some specific areas and there are more questionnaires to see your situation in these particular areas.  We provide you with specific information and refer you to other potential aspects of help. Our next step is to build a personalised action plan – for now we will make a suggestion for you to develop your own plan and then after a time you can see whether this has had a positive impact by retaking the test.

In future we will be engaging with medical and behavioural specialists to devise action plans for individual people with specific situations.

We have an overall questionnaire which you can complete which will assess your current state.

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

Add your YouDriver attitude to change - see how you view changes in your life

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

No matter how healthy you are at the moment, the chances are that there are some areas you could improve. It may be that you have a real problem in one or more areas, and you would like to make some improvements.

At YouDrive we accept that there are many different degrees of ‘not wellness’ in a large number of different health areas, ranging from physical illness such as covid-19 through mental illness such as anxiety through to financial problems like debt.  We try and help where the problem ranges from ‘slight’ to quite bad’ – after this expert help and intervention may be needed.

However, especially in these times, we have to try and make these changes ourselves, possibly with some help from others, whether remotely or face to face.

The thing is, to make an improvement we have to change some things.

This involves changing our behaviour in some respects, and that’s not always easy.

Henry Ford, the creator of the assembly line, is quoted as saying “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.  

Another way of looking at this: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” – attributed to Albert Einstein.

Consequently we need to make some changes.  The problem is that we have already developed a lot of habits, some of which we need to break and replace by better ones.  Some of our bad habits have become entrenched, and the bad results they create in turn engender further bad habits to develop – in effect the bad habits can feed on themselves.  Look at ChangeDrive for more examples.

We need to understand how we can make changes and stick to them, and that’s what this part of your health profile is about.

It will involve some learning, through reading, some videos and some additional information and also seeing how you react to change currently.

It will also ask you to consider whether you feel you are in charge of your future, or whether you feel it’s all fate.

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Locus of Control

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

  • We want to help people in all aspects of their health  – physical, financial and mental. We also provide detailed explanations of how overall health (or well-being) is measured.
  • We believe these things are often linked, so we try and address health holistically. We are building templates, questionnaires and exercises to help you identify what’s important to you.
  • We think people should try and take responsibility for  of their own health as much as they can.  See below for what that means.

People look at things differently.  Some people believe things happen to them, while others believe they can influence what happens to them. Technically this is called the ‘locus of control’.  People can have an Internal or external Locus of Control

Internal

  • More likely to take responsibility for actions

  • Tend to be less influenced by others

External

  • Blame outside forces for what happens
  • Don’t believe they can change their situation themselves

People tend to take more responsibility (locus gets more internal) as they get older.  However, external isn’t always bad – for example if you are physically unable to do some things you can accept it and focus on the things you can do.  This American video explains the concept and gives examples of how this can affect relationships.

So how do you see things?

If you want to find out how you see things, you can take a test to show what your locus of control is.  Most of the tests are based on work by Rotter dating back to 1966 – many have been updated since. 

Psychology Today have a 15 minute test which gives you a summary of your position you can buy the detailed results if you want to.

My Personality Test have a 10 minute test which gives you a summary/

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Fantasy and Reality

Difference between sexual fantasy and reality

Well for many fantasies are just that and are kept to the individual or partner. Those can sometimes be extreme in nature but that’s where it stops and it never gets to reality. Some partners want to go further and put the fantasy into reality.

Well in this case it requires thinking through especially if it involves third parties or doing things whereby you can get caught. There is nothing wrong with turning a legal fantasy into reality provided everyone is truly consenting and not coerced into it.

Pornography is now almost universally available - on phones, computers and tablets. It's no longer a case of 'top shelf' magazines! Can watching porn spice up a sexual relationship, or is it a sad addiction? Who watches porn anyway? How real is it? Is there a balance between a bit of spice and a compulsion?

Multi-partner, Group, threesomes, orgies, are not for everyone and need to be planned otherwise things could backfire. There are people who enjoy these types of sexual gratification but if a partner is reluctant then they should never be coerced or forced. Sex and sex acts do magical things to our bodies naturally but the brain has to remain in control and make sure the act doesn’t turn into an addiction.

Why not take the sex addiction test in the tabs below and see how you get on?

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You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

OCEAN Personality Types

People tend to believe that each individual is different and unique in their own way. While that may be true to an  extent, it’s not entirely accurate.

It’s certainly not helpful when firms are trying to recruit people ‘of a certain type’.

When it comes to personality types, there are tests that categorise people into one of a few groups that describe their characteristics.

The ‘Big Five’ personality traits  characteristics are :

  • Openness
  • Conscientiousness
  • Extraversion
  • Agreeableness
  • Neuroticism

Easily remembered as OCEAN.  You can find out what type of person you are by taking a free test here.  It’s from Truity and doesn’t need an email or login.

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Holiday habits

• A third of Britons who go abroad return to the same resort every year
• The average UK holidaymaker has been to the same place four times
• More than one in ten return to the same holiday spot ten or more times – and many even try to book the same hotel room.
• More than a third, 34 per cent, go to the same restaurant they ate at on their last trip, and more than a quarter, 26 per cent, don’t even bother trying to find new drinking locations
• Some 59 per cent of us go on the same holiday in successive years
• McDonalds and KFC are worldwide brands and people in a foreign city can always head to a McDonalds and KFC because you only need to point at the picture and with 3 fingers held up means you want 3 – language barrier overcome. No slight embarrassment not knowing the menu or protocol.
• Many go back because it is the easy option.

No more seasonal fruit and veg - but at what price?

Years ago we had seasonal fruit, but not now. Strawberries were April to August – now it’s January to November under poly-tunnel. How can a plant produce so much fruit??? Artificial feeding. How can they be so big?  Artificial feeding. How can they look so pristine with not a mark on them? Artificial feeding and pesticides to keep the insects off. But because they are grown in artificial circumstances they can attract new types of diseases so chemicals are added to stop those diseases taking off. But, is there an alternative? Yes buy organic fruit and veg – at least there is an element of inspection and testing.

Fresh food could be as bad as processed food

What is becoming scarier than processed food is fresh food. The farmers and scientists and government are now on a mission to feed the increasing population, HOW? Well, producing fresh food that we can grow quicker, faster, bigger, disease free and more aesthetically pleasing to the eye. But all these things come at a price.
The chemicals that farmers and growers put on the land to grow super-fast produce mean that the feed is so powerful it can double the growth and size in half the time. The pesticides they put on the plants kills everything and anything that lives on a plant, just so we don’t have a marked apple on the shelf. We do need chemicals to stop some diseases on fruit and veg but the chemicals on fruit and veg today go much further. This article in the Daily Mail on 1st November 2018 said;

On average, new research has found, a supermarket potato will have been doused with an astonishing 30 active ingredients (an active ingredient is the part of a substance or compound that produces its chemical or biological effect). Compare that to 40 years ago — when a potato would have been treated with just 5.3 active ingredients — and you start to see how mind-bogglingly dependent farming in Britain today is on chemicals.

Meat - is that healthy to eat?

Well years ago it was. When animals could go into the fields and eat grass and get normal supplements to keep them fit and healthy.  But then big business wanted more and started to produce feeds like rocket fuel, the sort of food body builders eat to accelerate muscle and weight. Can you blame them? Not really. If someone says; “Hey, here’s a food that will treble the size of your animal in half the time, which means you get it to market faster and it’s cheaper to feed, so less cost and more profit.”  Who wouldn’t?

But then you look at what they feed the animals and think it just doesn’t pass straight through the animal and out the other side – it is absorbed into the flesh. And then humans eat it. But, what’s the alternative? Locally produced, farm and grass reared, local butcher sold meats. Organic, just to add a bit of assurance nothing has been used on the land.

Out of date bread - where does it go after the supermarket?

Ever wondered where the old out of date bread goes when it comes off the supermarket shelves? Well it goes to a special company and it is all ground together into a giant mincing machine and ground up into crumbs. This includes the coloured branded plastic bag it came in and the tag on the end. As bread is yeast based it requires further chemicals to stop another fermentation process taking place.

It is then sold to farmers for winter feed to cows who eat the crumbs and plastic bag and tag. We then milk the cow or eat the beef. Just to remind you cows stomachs may be big but they are not designed to eat colour printed plastic. Yet again another Food Standards Agency and Agricultural Agency getting together to provide winter feed at a cheap cost with no regard for the cow or the consumer. But what’s the alternative – organic milk. Aldi, Co-op and Sainsbury sell organic milk very competitively.

Farmed fish / shellfish - is it good for us?

So what do we know, well firstly fish living together in huge pens in huge quantities attract disease. They also, in the case of salmon, lose their colour, so scientists created a food that has colour built in and contains chemicals that kill the fish lice and then we eat it. Take a look on YouTube at the investigations and make your own mind up.

The biggest fish farms in the world are now in the Baltic Sea. They farm pollock, haddock and cod and we also know the Baltic Sea is one of the most polluted seas on the globe. But, what is the alternative – fish caught in the open ocean.

Shellfish is a popular product in the UK but most prawns come from Thailand, Vietnam and South America. All are farmed. But, what’s the alternative – organic and ocean caught never farmed.

This recent documentary opens your eyes to fish farming and the issues they have  – click here.  

When is the best time to eat?

It’s not just eating the right food or drinking the right amount of water – it’s about when we do this. In the UK we eat as fuel and don’t eat for pleasure. We often push food down our throats as fast as we can – often late in the evening just before we go to bed!!  There is an old saying breakfast like a king, lunch like a queen, dinner like a prince and supper like a pauper. Eating during the day gives our bodies the chance to work off the fuel we have put into our bodies. Many people have such busy days they don’t get time to eat during the day. If you’re that busy your body needs fuel so snack every hour or two if you cannot give up the time at lunch to eat. Little and often is recommended rather than a big meal at the end of the day.

We are creating a new type of member – the YouDriver.

YouDrivers will be able to build their own health dashboard – they will take health questionnaires to see how healthy they are, they will look at all aspects of their health and understand exactly what matters to them.

They will go on a journey to decide which health areas they want to work on, how they want to tackle these and then they will be able to build their own action plans. 

We’re also inviting more people to get involved – whether by contributing their own views or by offering support to our site visitors.

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