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