A wellness experience I dealt with that relates to the financial and occupational dimensions of
wellness is deciding what I was going to do if my company was required, as the OSHA
vaccine mandate indicated, were to be implemented. I have not received the COVID vaccine
and never had any intention to. My own bias is quite clear in this matter, as I am against the
vaccine. The OSHA vaccine mandate would have required businesses with 100 or more
employees to require vaccination of all employees or have those that are unvaccinated to
submit to weekly testing. The mandate was not implemented, but in the interim, I had to figure
out what my options were.
Financial wellness is one's satisfaction with their current and future financial situation.
(Garcia, 2015). This dilemma would have affected my financial wellness if I had to take on the
cost of weekly testing on my own and potentially lose time, and by extension money, during
my travel time to and from said testing.
Occupational wellness is one's personal satisfaction and enrichment from their work. (Garcia,
2015). My occupational wellness would have surely been affected by having to submit to
weekly COVID tests. My boss and I discussed how long I would be willing to tolerate the
testing. Would I end up being so burdened by it that I quit my job?
Thankfully, I did not have to make this choice as the mandate was ultimately squashed, but
real considerations into my future financial and occupational wellness had to be considered.
I had never considered or knew that there were eight dimensions of wellness in one's life. I
took away from this week's readings and recollecting on my decision a better understanding of
total wellness; that it is not just about the physical aspects.
I know that that my bias is explicit when it comes to the vaccination and I understand that. I
am open to health debate and discussion and others' opinions on the matter, but I know it's not
likely to change my opinion on the matter.
I live in a small village; there are around 500 residents. I have only lived here for about 18
months, so I do not know everyone yet. As I got to know people, one thing that surprised me
was the poverty level within such a small rural community. I am not sure why this surprised
me; rural poverty is widespread these days, but then. I found myself thinking, they do not look
poor, and I had to stop and kick my own arse; what does poor look like? I was, of course,
exhibiting bias. It is never pleasant to make this discovery about yourself, but it is good if you
act on it.
However, one aspect that I found especially shocking was fuel poverty. According to the
Dimensions of Wellness chart (Smith), this hindrance to wellness falls under the
environmental, emotional, financial, and physical dimensions. For example, if people cannot
heat their homes, they cannot achieve wellness. If they cannot fill their gas tank, they cannot
drive to work or buy food from larger, more economical supermarkets which are always
further away. In many cases, their physical and mental health may suffer.
On a positive note, the village is a close community, so the support networks and good.
Neighbours and community organizations are available to help, which fits the emotional and
social dimensions. However, again my bias comes into play. I failed to realize that some
people are reluctant to ask for help because they are embarrassed by their situations. This
makes the situation difficult. How can the wellness dimensions ever be in balance if they will
not accept help? Their economic and physical dimension may improve if they accept help, but
their emotional dimension may plummet because of shame.
I am glad I found the dimensions and their interconnectedness. It has helped me work out my
feelings about my situation. I suffer from depression, and I have always felt guilty about that.
Why am I depressed? I have a good life, enough money, and a happy family. I see now that if
just one of the dimensions is out of balance, it can throw the rest of.
2-1 Discussion: Wellness and You
The video and class readings have discussed the eight dimensions of wellness SAMHSA
(2016). An emotional wellness event is about racism which adversely impacts black children
due to explicit bias. Back in high school, a student was discriminated against by one of the
teachers due to his skin color. The teacher always made bad remarks about him and could
punish him for no good reason. As a result, the student developed low self-esteem, struggled
with social relationships, and performed poorly in class. His emotional well-being was
affected, and he later dropped out of school because he felt unwanted at the school.
I took away from this experience that a person's emotional well-being is very important. It is a
critical part of holistic wellness since it can affect a person's outlook on life, relationships, and
health. This experience has influenced my understanding of wellness as a key aspect of
someone's life. Having an adequate level of wellness makes you stay alert and responsible for
your fitness. Maintaining an effective health level is important because it helps someone
achieve a high-quality life. The reason why our health also matters is that everything we do
and the passion we feel relates to our comfort. For that reason, it is predominant for each of us
to attain effective health to overwhelm distress, minimize the danger of illnesses and enhance
a confident relationship.
Having a better understanding of bias influenced my thoughts about this experience and about
wellness in a greater way. I now comprehend how bias can affect a person's emotional
wellness SAMHSA. (2016). Bias can influence a person's actions and decisions, how we
interact with others, and our physical health. The student-facing discrimination was lacking in
social and emotional dimensions of wellness which was caused by a bias towards him by the
teacher. For a person to be whole, different dimensions contribute to a sense of well-being.
A somewhat recent experience for me that occurred within my community was when we
began to emerge from COVID-19 lockdowns, which happened a few times here in California,
I was repeatedly contacted by people my age to join groups at a local community center with
the purpose of reconnecting with each other after being away for so long. Truthfully, I wanted
nothing to do with it. I was texting, emailing, and using Zoom to connect with these very same
people for so long, why would I want to adjust to this new lifestyle I was finally getting used
to—staying home!
My bias was knowing that I absolutely should go connect with good friends and check up on
people that meant a lot to me in my life, but I often decided against it at first. Out of the eight
dimensions, I think this really influenced my emotional and spiritual wellness. I know that I
should go out, be social, reconnect with people in person, but it got so comfortable and easy to
stick with texting, zoom (cannot believe I'm saying that now—please no more Zoom), and
email. Everything I did or worked on outside my house was suddenly home with me. It was
easy. It was convenient. But I was not realizing what I was missing. This experience reminds
me of the importance of connecting with a compassionate community and being able to adapt
to changing circumstances.
In reviewing the 8 dimensions of wellness I can relate to a few experiences within my
community. At the beginning of the year my husband, two children and my dog moved from
California to Idaho. We are struggling with the Social Wellness; we left a great neighborhood
with great friends and here our street is quiet, and no one even waives. Well except for me, I
am that person that will waive frantically until you see me. Often, they don’t even look up.
If you look at various move to Idaho pages on social media, some of the people are rude and
say stay out! I am almost afraid to say I was born and raised in California.
My takeaway from this experience is I really took what we had for granted. I did not realize
that it had such an impact on me, understanding the bias and how it has influenced me really
makes sense now. My social wellness is off and could be contributing to why I am not the
early riser I used to be. AMAZING! I am already mustering up a plan in my head on how to
“break the ice.” We are almost done with our backyard; this might be the perfect opportunity
to have a neighbourhood get together? Or will it backfire, and no one will show…
struggle with feeling accepted in my community. c I am in a interracial marriage and I often feel
as if my culture does not always accept the choice I made to “love” a white women. c I feel as if
people have a bias and make assumptions about who I am as a black man. This constant
struggle has led me to have stress and anxiety that affects my overall mental health which in
turn has impacted my physical and social wellness. I feel like I do not “fit in” so I will stop
myself from going places because I am self-conscious. c I recognize that I need to accept who I
am and work on myself to keep my overall wellness balanced.
I know that there is implicit and explicit bias when it comes to my relationship with my wife,
and as well as with our kids. Some people will make assumptions about why we are together
based on this bias, and not truly understand that we love each other. I am starting to learn and
understand that I know my truth and I need to work on acceptance and focusing on the things
that are important to me and to not constantly worry about what other are thinking,
I understand I often view my occupation as a firefighter through a biased lens. It's a profession
that has an entire culture wrapped around it and several of the eight dimensions of wellness
that make up my fondness for the job (financial, occupational, physical, and social dimensions
as defined in our reading) (Garcia, 2015). I feel financially secure, have a great sense of
fulfilment from work, get to physically push myself through fitness and the stresses of
emergency incidents, and have a vast social circle of firefighters and their families. It's very
easy for me to find complete solace in only maintaining the social circles I have at work and to
neglect or fail to pursue relationships outside of work and my immediate family. I relate very
well with my coworkers, due to our professions and similar interests away from work (i.e.
sports, fitness, homeownership) and most of us are aligned on our perspectives of the outside
world. c We live together at work, so it's easy enough to hang out and do things with each other
outside of work together.
My wife constantly reminds me of the importance of maintaining relationships with people
who come from various walks of life. It assists the individual in continuing to grow and helps
deliver fresh perspectives on endless topics. c For the last two or three years I've worked hard to
keep up with relationships away from work and it has certainly made me aware of the biases I
carry and view the world through because of the all-encompassing nature of my job.
Naturally, a group of individuals who spend loads of time together and lead similar lives can
fall victim to group think, so stepping away from the group and conversing with friends and
family from different backgrounds helps break those biases.
I am completely aware my social dimension of wellness is most well-rounded when I can step
away from my work circle from time to time and take inventory of my morals and values as an
individual. Staying in touch with who I am and what I stand for, building relationships with
people away from work, and not letting the biases of a group hyper-influence me all help keep
my wellness levels high. Doing something dangerous for a profession requires some
indoctrination of thought and a bias that there's purpose and meaning to the work being
performed, but keeping perspective of people outside of the profession helps me be the best
member of society I can be.
My community experience is related to when I worked in communications as a dispatcher at a
hospital. This job was intense and training for this position involved three months of
instruction on all shifts. One of our biggest responsibilities was dispatching medical teams to
emergencies that were either called in through our emergency lines or through emergency
boxes. It was imperative to be quick and precise, especially on shifts where you worked alone.
Emergencies are obviously sporadic, so you never know when you are going to get that call.
For the most part, though, the job could seem repetitive, but one had many hats they needed to
wear.
The department needed some per diems and three new people were hired. One of the persons
had visual disability, an inability to read small print or see color. The team immediately
thought this person would not be able to perform the job. For our emergencies, we rely heavily
on color to differentiate on-call teams, there are materials categorized by color, and all
literature is in standard print. In our implicit bias we felt this person would not be able to do
the job. Despite our concerns, we knew immediately that we needed to work as a team to
design the literature and diagrams for this person to work with. We labelled everything that
was color-coded so they could read what the colors were and designed new charts that they
could see. We did everything we could to improve the workspace so that this person could
acclimate to the work environment. Along with the rest of the team, this person provided
direction as to what else we could do to help them out. The new hire was not intimidated; or at
least, they did not show signs of intimidation. This person exuded confidence and was able to
adapt to the stressors of the job despite their disability. Out of the three hires, this person was
the only one who successfully completed their training. This person was physically,
emotionally, socially, and spiritually well balanced; they were impressive. As a team, we
made changes in the office, and we had a shift in bias. We learned through a compassionate
work ethic and collaboration; we were able to provide a supportive work community
conducive to success. c
Looking back at this event, and after listening to Dr. Tony Evans message today, I
realized that it is in fact true that wellbeing is a choice. It is up to a person to choose wellbeing
or adversity. He states, "Wellbeing is prosperity or you can choose adversity... the negative
things that happen in our lives is because we chose it... you get to choose the rule here and the
rule can be wellbeing, or it can be adversity." Dr. Evans shares that freedom exists, so we have
the right to choose but there are consequences to the choices we make (Tony Evans the Urban
Alternative, 2022). Granted, there are circumstances that we cannot control, that we do not
have a choice over. However, in the presence of choice, we make the choice toward
wellbeing.
An experience within my community related to a dimension of wellness, was just listening
to/hearing someone out. That deals with an emotional/mental dimension; because I am helping
with stress, maintaining positivity and being sensitive to others. What I took away from the
experience, was listening to people can be very helpful. People are not heard out at times, and
when you sit to listen to people; it can help them out mentally and emotionally. It influenced
my understanding of wellness, by letting me see exactly what I was doing; while listening. It
helped me understand the language and meaning of an emotional/mental dimension and what
it represents. Having a better understanding of bias, influences my thoughts about this
experience; because it shows yes, I can help but I'm being biased that I'm a great listener. I
know I am, but it is still bias in my response because someone could have an entirely different
opinion on that matter. For wellness, bias gives me a better understanding by knowing the
different dimensions of wellness. Before, I could only give my general knowledge of being a
good listener; but looking up wellness and the definitions helped me get detailed
understanding. This is my analysis of wellness.
I found that in my 8 dimensions of wellness, that I am lacking in the emotional and social
dimensions (Garcia, C. (2015). The emotional dimension because I struggle with mental
health issues, as I opened about in the week 1 discussion. My issues with anxiety, depression
and ADHD cause me to struggle to cope effectively with life. I struggle with developing a
sense of connection as well. I transferred from a 4-year traditional college to SNHU in 2020.
As much as that school affected my mental health, I do miss the sense of community and
connection I had while living on campus. I am sure many of you can relate to the fact that,
while SNHUconnect is a great resource, it does not replace the buzzing community of a
college campus. I used to have my peers as part of my support system, but because getting to
know our peers is limited to discussion post, email, and SNHUconnect, I have had some
trouble establishing a support system within my peers at SNHU. These are explicit biases,
because I know how I feel about the situation and I feel this way based on what was presented
to me (Two types of bias). This is not a case of implicit bias, because in that case, I would not
be aware of how my bias impacts my wellness. Understanding bias influenced my thoughts
about wellness through the realization that some people are not aware of how they as a person
impact other. Knowing about bias will help you limit your biases in everyday life.
Garcia, C. (2015). What are the Eight Dimensions of Wellness in Your Life? Colorado Nurse,
115(1), 6.
Two types of bias. NCCC. Retrieved July 7, 2022, from
https://nccc.georgetown.edu/bias/module-3/1.php
Tony Evans the Urban Alternative. (2022, July 7). Dr. Tony Evans [Audio podcast].
Choosing Blessings or Curses. Retrieved from: https://www.oneplace.com/ministries/the-
alternative/
Garcia, C. (2015). What are the Eight Dimensions of Wellness in Your Life? Colorado Nurse,
115(1), 6.
SAMHSA. (2016, July 1). The eight dimensions of Wellness. YouTube. Retrieved July 7,
2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDzQdRvLAfM
SAMHSA. (2016) What individuals in recovery need to know about wellness
https://store.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/d7/priv/sma16-4950.pdf
