Training for life coaching is usually long on counseling methods and coaching philosophy, but short on diagnosis and theory. Too often it lets the coach define wellness without any structure or content for what the good life needs to look like. Unless clients can be given feedback that provides them an objective view of their self-concept compared to an established norm for what is healthy, coaching clients feel judged when the structure and content come out of the coach.

Nine particular dimensions of holistic health have been addressed for over 4000 years. They were core concepts in the Mosaic law, which Stephen stated Moses had partly learned in Egypt (Acts 7: 22). They were all taught by wise King Solomon 1000 years later, and soon after that, by the Persian philosopher Zoroaster. [1] They were also all taught by Jesus, who said He wasn’t changing anything from Moses. 300 years after Christ, they were being taught by several ascetic philosophers along the Nile River in Egypt, and they influenced Pope Gregory to identify seven of the nine unhealthy traits as the “seven deadly sins.”[2]

More recently, the field of positive psychology has studied character strengths. Peterson and Seligman did an exhaustive historical review of what Western civilization has considered to be wellness virtues.[3] They found no clear consensus, but the six strengths they featured (wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence) are rather abstract, and therefore do not translate easily into measurements of attitude or behavior. Michael Bishop also reviewed the history of wellness theories in both philosophy and psychology.[4] Like Peterson and Seligman, Bishop found no agreement in the literature of either positive psychology or philosophical wellness about how to define or measure wellness. He argued for the construction of “positive causal networks,” composed of emotions and attitudes subjectively defined, plus traits and lifestyles defined by observers. Each aspect of such a network would contribute to the development of the other aspects. The Traditional Assessment of Wellness does exactly that.

The Traditional Assessment of Wellness (TAW) has been constructed as a network of causally related characteristics, as Bishop called for. It features more behaviorally measurable traits, and looks at both positive/healthy and negative/maladaptive ways of expressing nine traditional resources related to wellness: truth, respect, security, concern, anger, sexuality, money, time/energy, and bodily health. These traits and their positive counterpart “virtues” have dominated most of the literature on pastoral counseling since that time. Until the time of Freud, these were the most widely discussed and used psychological concepts in the Western world.

The TAW measures the issue of truthfulness: adherence to standards of Honesty in public and private behavior, plus a Denial (lie) scale that shows the tendency to see and present oneself in a flattering light on this test. This issue of honesty was mentioned alongside the other eight by ancient philosophers in Persia, Egypt and Greece,[5] and honest self-awareness and self-disclosure have been associated with most of history’s leading wellness measures of health and mental health.[6]

In addition to the 18 basic scores, the TAW gives combination scales for the nine issues (for example, combining Denial and Honesty for one score on Truth). It also yields a Total Wellness Index that uses all the items and sums up all nine issues. All scores will be adjusted to correct for social desirability distortions (the Denial scale). Each will be conveyed as a percentile, based on the normative sample that has taken the test, or upon one’s identifying group. For example, a business, a civic organization, or a student body could take the test and receive scores in both population percentiles, and in percentiles for their own group.