Month: June 2024

Hello, Hello, Hello! The Time is One – in the morning – and I am fired up about Wellness! It’s the last day of entry for Week 1, a Wellness week. I know… Technically it’s 1 AM on Wednesday, BUT it was Tuesday when I started writing this blog article so bear with me. I am going to reference a research report put out by the Center for International Forestry Research in 2007. The reference material has to do with Chapter 3 of their research report titled “Poverty and Wellbeing: A New Concept”.

The link to this specific chapter in the report is: https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep02089.8

Now, in 2021 I was researching ways to create a more financially stable USA, ways to bring people in “poverty” out of it. But after research and after my introduction to the 9 Dimensions of Wellness (Falcone, 2017) featured in another blog article here, my idea of poverty from a materialism and financial perspective was smashed after reading Chapter 3 of the Center for International Forestry Research’s report. The material therein opened up my mind to their ‘new concept’ of what poverty is.

On page 12, in sub-section “Poverty and Wellbeing have Many Dimensions” (Cahyat et al., 2007), that’s when it got good for me when I read it. Simply put, the description behind what constitutes poverty was more sophisticated in meaning compared to my understanding of poverty stemming from my public K-12 system education based on historical events surrounding the USA’s Great Depression during the decade of the 1930’s before our entry into The War to End All Wars, or World War II (2).

What I took away from this research report on poverty was that when I engage in my future endeavors to live a complete life addressing my needs within the 9 Dimensions of Wellness (Falcone, 2017), this new concept of poverty presented by the Center for International Forestry Research could externalize my pursuits of personally subjective wellbeing in the 9 Dimensions of Wellbeing (Falcone, 2017) by keeping in mind I am not alone in pursuing greater happiness. As archaic as that may sound, once I began researching the 9 Dimensions of Wellness, it was apparent to me that to achieve wellness goals for a complete welling, such pursuits can be self-serving. I must look out for my own happiness. This pursuit in the 9 Dimensions of Wellbeing seemed to become not only a pursuit of a complete life, but perhaps the endeavor of a self-centered game of the survival of the fittest. Like, I may achieve greater happiness in pursuing my complete wellbeing, but it is MY complete wellbeing. But, if I combine an understanding, and therefor acceptance of, this new concept of poverty with my complete personal wellbeing, I can better prepare myself to not only pursue my complete wellbeing in the 9 Dimensions of Wellbeing, but look out for my community members and the ills of poverty, then becoming more involved in how infrastructure and services are created and conducted which influence our environment, our social life, our politics and governance, and our economics as well as economic safety nets.

To address poverty in meaningful ways that impacts the overall quality of life in our country might possibly have to come first before we can all pursue greater happiness in our endeavors of a complete wellbeing in the 9 Dimensions of Wellness subjectively. Like, we should not idle while self-serving our own needs and subjectively personal pursuits of happiness within the 9 Dimensions of Wellness when poverty strikes our villages, our cities, our country. So, if the belief in this moment is that poverty is the simple result of a lack of financial means to buy our way out of our misfortune, we need to evolve our thought.

Read this research report (Cahyat et al., 2007), namely Chapter 3 on a new perspective of what poverty should be considered as. Then consider what I had to say on combining the needs of actively addressing this new idea of what poverty is in the report while also keeping in mind our subjective pursuits of our own complete wellbeing in the 9 Dimensions of Wellness (Falcone, 2017).

Signing off…

Dewy

References

• Introduction to Health (2017), Authored by: Kelly Falcone, EdD, Provided by: Palomar College. Located at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g4OYMjgg7ISQeITbqjoWIAd_f5PoXZB_JAIsoQxKfyg/edit?usp=sharing License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Cahyat, A., Gönner, C., Haug, M., & Limberg, G. (2007). Towards wellbeing: Monitoring poverty in Kutai Barat, Indonesia (pp. 11-14, Rep.). Center for International Forestry Research. Retrieved March 21, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep02089.8

Hello, world! The Time is One – in the morning – and I am fired up about: The 9 Dimensions of Wellness! I am going to get right into it.

The 9 Dimensions of Wellness is an idea that there is more to wellness than traditional physical and mental wellbeing.

The 9 dimensions are presented as thus (Falcone, 2017): regulated wellbeing in emotions, physical wellbeing, culture, social life, the environment and our surroundings, our occupation(s), our spirituality, our intellect, and finally, our finances.

I will provide the open-source book reference at the end of this post. However, in this blog topic, I will shoot from the hip hereafter regarding what constitutes the 9 dimensions. I am simply giving an adaptation of the founding idea that there should be 9 dimensions to wellbeing and those 9 dimensions preceding given seem to cover today’s wellness essentials. But whose to say these specific dimensions will not accumulate additional dimensions as time goes on.

So… let’s get into my idea of what these 9 dimensions should be about. Starting with…

Emotional Regulation

How on EARTH are we to be well when life is full of meaning and emotional attachment??? Because life is full of meaning, surely emotions are blessings in disguise. Although, emotions can also cause dis-ease and discomfort given events outcomes. I believe it starts with what we experience throughout our lifetimes. Day-to-day, even the most benign of moments can flourish to spectacular meaning-making and emotional attachment given time and reflection. There is also how we combine multiple wellness dimensions within a given life event which can expound the need for a base life-block to build on the other dimensions when so many dimensions are wrapped up into a single event. For example, a music festival or concert. So many, if not all 9 dimensions are tapped into for this single event. We got to have stamina, there is spirituality and cultural wellbeing involved, we might have to take time away from our occupations, and finances need to be in order to afford tickets, concessions, and souvenirs. Intellect may involve musician and lyrical knowledge. Of course, these events are social events fostering tremendous emotional responses throughout sets and songs. Simply put, the approach to reaching for wellness goals in all of these life-blocks might not be achievable if compartmentalized and separated or instantiated. Such an approach may make life bland and uneventful for the sake of a singular dimension. Like, if we aren’t trying to combine several of the dimensional wellbeing characteristics into making life events achieve wellness goals in multiple dimensions, we aren’t trying hard enough to live a complete life moment-to-moment with all dimensions at play in our ethical decision-making, meaning-making, and our pursuits of greater happiness. So, I cannot think of a better base building block out of these 9 dimensions of wellness than emotional regulation. All the others quite possibly trickle down to the emotions felt when achieving wellness goals in all other dimensions, so we would do well to be ready to regulate our emotional attachments to the ups and downs of the other dimensions throughout our lifetime and ever after.

Okay, so it’s late. I was going to continue on with the rest of the dimensions, but I carried on a good New York minute on emotional regulation, and I touched on the other dimensions. I will likely do a part 2 to run down my take on the other dimensions after some rest. Probs going to move the start of my blog cycle week to… TUESDAYS! You heard it here.

Check out the free open-source text link in the reference citation for Introduction to Health (2017) by Kelly Falcone, EdD. That read is where I learned about the 9 dimensions of wellness. Extreme eye-opener for me that expanded my wellness perspective out of the two-factor social statuses and materialism I was in as an adolescent and young adult. Fantastic read! The 9 dimensions of wellness are mentioned right at the start of the first chapter. Check out the rest of the text, too! Read the whole thing if you like reading. I can’t say I’ll reiterate content of this textual work, but it has some great knowledge. I consider free thinking a positive life perspective influencer so I may draw from this text’s ideas for my wellness blog articles, but I mainly provide adaptation to them and mainly base my blog articles on wellness from personal experience with respect to my heritage and community upbringing while incorporating my worldview brought on from connectivity to the world-wide web since around Y2K. But, when I do consider 3rd party views reasonable, don’t worry, I will get on my citations and do my best from a blogging perspective not to plagiarize. But then again, this is a new age with the world-wide web and I am not writing academic or professional work. This is a blog! This is therapeutic for me. I am merely writing to express myself and life experiences. Use common sense as always!

Signing off!

Dewy

References

• Introduction to Health (2017), Authored by: Kelly Falcone, EdD, Provided by: Palomar College. Located at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g4OYMjgg7ISQeITbqjoWIAd_f5PoXZB_JAIsoQxKfyg/edit?usp=sharing License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

Week One and I am fired up about wellness!

Wellness could be considered a pillar of creation, and rightly so. Throughout time and space, land and seas, roads and squares, homes and institutions… wellness has evolved and revolved, as it should. For greater wellness today, and from here on out, there is a potential need for the good of civil life to stop the expansion of creativity in certain markets and accept that which is now established as having achieved a pinnacle of usefulness, and therefore such a product needs to find its way into the possession of all citizens regardless of status, examples being homeless, in a care facility of whatever nature, or incarcerated. A bit dreamy, I’m afraid, as arguments for civilization’s security and domestic tranquility’s assurance could be made to bar certain citizens of a technological wonder. And that’s okay, as such arguments could surely appeal to a democratically decided rule of some sort, and that’s pretty much why democracy was invented, to showcase human reasoning between two opposing ideas of necessity concerning domestic tranquility’s assurance with rules for all to live by as the biproduct.

Now, I kind of slid right into that idea that certain products should make into the possession of all citizens as those products, I dare say, are at its pinnacle and further engineering is futile; however, needs for fine tuning in a desire to perfect the pinnacle should be their ends, and for all time use. It seems to me in my interactions with other citizens is that materialistic needs surely create happiness, and happiness influences that citizens wellness. This truth cannot be discarded. Materialistic phenomena surely influence wellness, whether a lack thereof, or albeit in possession. What bothers me is that the most beautiful of idea in civilization – The Common Era – is being reduced to whispers. Citizens are being more and more quirky, pursuing their own delights, their own pleasures, their own ideas of necessity for their current circumstances and disregarding the greater good. Some things in life simply change the mindset of citizens to self-serving ideologies given power, whether consumer power or social influence in today’s America.

In the year 2021, my mind was opened to two new ideas on what should constitute wellness in all-encompassing ways. Before this, my ideas were infantile, stuck on material things which created happiness, and happiness was wellness. Happiness as wellness through material things was not everything, as I did everything I could to create a social life. So, my overall wellbeing was constituted by social statuses and material procurements. But, in the year 2021, I was opened to a couple new perspectives on what should constitute citizenship wellness.

These new perspectives were reasonable, to say the least. One broke down wellness into 9 “dimensions”, or life-blocks. The other had 4 categories of wellness, or 4 life-blocks. Very similar ideologically. Each gave wonderful insights into wellness beyond social status and material wealth. I do, however, have reservations as to new perspectives regarding a more complete idea of wellness fitting in with the now whispers of a Common Era’s return, and what it might take to achieve such in America.

Right now, I am wondering if others felt the same way regarding the two-factor wellness influencers: social status and materialism sufficing for happiness. I was just a boy in a village with a population of around 5 thousand going through the K-12 system in the 1990s and first half of the first decade of the 2000s, so give me some slack. Like, when I was going through Junior-High and High School, the world-wide web launched, mobile phones with text-massages were launched, and we were all addicted to AOL’s Instant Messenger (or either MSN’s Messenger or Yahoo Messenger for some interactive fun).

Okay, enough of the trip down memory lane. The two life-changing perspectives for me regarding a more complete wellbeing will be referred to as —

Idea (A): The 9 Dimensions of Wellness (Falcone, 2017).

Idea (B): The Nested Spheres of Poverty (Cahyat et al., 2007).

In my upcoming posts in Season 1: Week 1: Wellness Week, I will be making posts dedicated to Idea (A) and Idea (B) – The 9 Dimensions of Wellness, and The Nested Spheres of Poverty. More in-depth with my own reactions to them each regarding plausibility in not only my own life, but to a Common Era.

References

• Introduction to Health (2017), Authored by: Kelly Falcone, EdD, Provided by: Palomar College. Located at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g4OYMjgg7ISQeITbqjoWIAd_f5PoXZB_JAIsoQxKfyg/edit?usp=sharing License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Cahyat, A., Gönner, C., Haug, M., & Limberg, G. (2007). Towards wellbeing: Monitoring poverty in Kutai Barat, Indonesia (pp. 11-14, Rep.). Center for International Forestry Research. Retrieved March 21, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep02089.8

Afterword

I am not attempting an academic essay or professional writing of any kind. This is a blog. A public blog accessible on the world-wide web. I do have instruction on academic writing concerning references. I may or may not follow those instructions. However, I will to the best of my ability, given light that this is the 21st Century and civilization now has an electronic means and otherwise to communicate world-wide, and I, an American afforded free speech to citizens of the Unites States, will do my best to provide my source material when also available by the means and mediums in common as to how I communicate this blog on the world-wide web so that readers of this blog may peruse content by which I derive certain content and material herein. Simply put, cut me some slack, Jack! Like, I’ll provide references as best as I can! I am not trying to create a wikipedia, man! I am trying to free my mind here. This is therapeutic to me. I am simply creating content. If you don’t like my content, create your own website and have a go at this. There is plenty of web space for all of us still alive and for many generations to come. If anything comes from this, employ some common sense! And that common sense better reflect the times we all live in.