The impact of behavior on quality of life

Abstract

The focus of my article centers on two main issues: why exercise is important and how to help people succeed in an exercise program that initially fails. In keeping with the theme of the conference, in the eye of the beholder, I thought that I might begin my talk with an orientation stemming from views by the late philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn, who coined the phrase paradigm shift, referred, in his paper on the Essential Tension [The Third University of Utah Research Conference on the Identification of Scientific Talent, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1959], to the German term, einstellungen, as a way of seeing and interpreting objects in our world. Each person has a personal way of seeing based upon training, orientation, experiences, and daily problems. In my field, we have spent the last 20 years trying to reach a consensus about the benefits of physical activity. Yet, during that time we have known that only 10–25% of adults living in free market societies are active enough in their leisure time to reap those benefits. Hopefully, now we will follow Kuhn's advice and also consider the idea of pre-consensus, in which we diverge from existing policies to forge new policies designed to better deliver physical activity to the population to enhance the quality of life.