Life Well Lived 3.0

A little over two years ago, when the price of oil was hitting new lows and advisors and their clients were stressed, we created a health and wellness program in the branch dubbed Life Well Lived (LWL). The program was designed primarily for the advisors at the 53^rd. The thinking behind LWL was that in order for advisors to take care of their clients, the advisors needed to take care of themselves first. So, we created a program that focused on healthy living. Borrowing from the philosophy of my good friend, Dr. Greg Wells, we built a program that focused on the relationships between diet, exercise, sleep and mental health.

Well, fast forward to today and we are a couple of weeks away from launching Life Well Lived 3.0 and I couldn’t be more excited. In partnership with the Toronto Triathlon Festival, Equinox Toronto, the Toronto Athletic Club, Manulife and Steam Whistle Brewing, we have designed another fun program focused on the health and wellbeing of our Toronto associates.

We’ll kick off the programming with Manulife’s Vitality program and a comprehensive physical assessment courtesy of the team at the Toronto Athletic Club. Lunch speakers include Alex Hutchinson, Ph.D., author of Endure: Mind, Body and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, and Jaclyn Pritchard, lead dietitian, Cleveland Clinic Canada. Equinox Toronto is kindly hosting monthly group spinning and yoga sessions over the four-month duration of LWL 3.0. And we’ve scheduled in a fun social outing at Steam Whistle Brewing.

Setting this up is a lot of work. This year, I enlisted the help of several talented people in the Toronto Complex and I’m proud of what we created. Still, some ask why go to all the effort. The answer can be found in the philosophy of Canadian Olympian (and, I daresay, my friend) Simon Whitfield. He was kind enough to visit our offices earlier this year, while LWL 3.0 was still on the drawing board. Among other things, he shared his perspective about the importance of having “empathy for your future self.” We think LWL 3.0 meets that test.

We invite each of you to join this journey with your colleagues to learn more about ways we can all improve our physical and mental wellbeing in a fun spirit. Watch for more updates coming soon.