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Transcript:
David Pace 0:05
Well, good morning. I’m David Pace, and I’m the science writer here at the College of Science.
Alex Barilec 0:10
And I’m Alex Barilec, and I’m a career coach here in the College of Science. And we’re here to introduce a new idea of information on what it means to approach wellness holistically here in the College of Science.
David Pace 0:25
Yep. And we’ve been doing these wellness tips for the last several months and kind of did an overview at the retreat recently. And we’d like to talk about that and we’d like to kick it off by talking about what we mean by wellness.
Alex Barilec 0:41
And so what we’re using when we talk about wellness is we’re using a resource from the NIH that’s called the eight dimensions of wellness. And what this resource does is it really helps to take all of the components of wellness and see how they fit together holistically. And they support your wellbeing in a bunch of different areas. So what David and I are going to do today to jump off this podcast mini series is we’re going to briefly introduce each of the eight dimensions to you and then over the coming weeks we’re going to dive a little bit deeper into each of them. So you’ve got a little bit more information about how to make this actionable in your life.
David Pace 1:20
So it’ll be basically a resource for you. Hopefully these will podcasts will live on our website. So I start, you talk to you and you can access them anytime you want. So let’s kick it off. Why don’t you start or should or do you want me to start?
Alex Barilec 1:37
I’ll jump right in. Okay, So dimension number one, we’ve got spiritual wellness, and this is all about our ability to establish peace and harmony in our lives. What a way to start.
David Pace 1:49
What a way to start. It’s a good one to start with the next one that we’re going to briefly mentioned is emotional wellness, which is basically the ability to understand ourselves. And I think the term emotional might mean a number of things to you. And we’ll we’ll talk about that when we talk about emotional wellness. But yeah, it’s it’s how do we understand ourselves.
Alex Barilec 2:14
Yeah. And that ties great into number three, which is intellectual wellness. And this is all about the ability to seek out new ideas, experiences and skills for lifelong learning.
David Pace 2:25
Very important and begin here at the University of Utah. I think since we are a school, right?
Alex Barilec 2:32
Definitely.
David Pace 2:33
So the fourth one that we’re going to talk about or mentioned briefly here is physical wellness. And that’s basically the ability to take care of our bodies.
Alex Barilec 2:45
Kind of like the fundamental pillar of memories, I think, and one that people will recognize right away, which is why I like that it came a little later. Yeah. Because it’s for people.
David Pace 2:55
Because usually when we think of wellness, at least when I think of wellness, I think, well, how am I feeling and how am I doing and how strong am I in my healthy?
Alex Barilec 3:04
Yeah. And one of the things that affects that, as many people know, is our environmental wellness. So that’s the fifth pillar. And this is all about the ability to care for the environment and our community and ourselves. And I think people often think of the natural world and we think of environment, which is 100% a part of this, but we can talk about the environment inside our offices, inside of our homes, the environment, in our relationships. So we can add a lot more depth to that one, I think, and expand people’s idea of what that dimension means.
David Pace 3:35
Including the environment in your fish tank.
So the sixth one, right, Social wellness, that’s the ability to have healthy relationships with others. As you can see, so far, all of these are profoundly interrelated. But I think it’s helpful to kind of parse them out into these eight dimensions.
Alex Barilec 3:57
Yeah. And so the final dimension of the seventh dimension, one that’s getting ahead of myself is financial wellness, and that’s the ability to live within our means, to explore all of the questions around money, around our stories around that, how to manage that and how to engage with that, both internally as well as externally.
David Pace 4:17
And that’s a good point. All of these components, all of these dimensions have an external and internal component that kind of are hopefully in a good, healthy tension with each other. And finally, then the eighth one is occupational wellness or vocational wellness. It’s the ability to find joy in our jobs and to have balance in our lives. And this is really about balance, isn’t it? The whole thing.
Alex Barilec 4:44
The whole thing. And so our hope over the next eight weeks and parts of this is to really help you dive a little bit more deeply into each of these dimensions of wellness so you can focus on creating balance in your life. You might really quickly identify a couple of these that are like, I haven’t really been paying attention to those areas. That might be a great place to start or for other people they might say, I’m really good in this area, but I’ve never even heard of this one. So our hope is that we can expand people’s idea and help them live a little bit more in balance and deepen their quality of life.
David Pace 5:18
So for your homework, I would suggest and tell me if you think this is a stupid idea, but maybe something jumped out at you. Think about it. Pick one of them, because that’s usually a good place to start because wellness it’s a big tamale that you get to take bite sized pieces of while think while remembering that it’s all connected intimately.
Alex Barilec 5:44
Yeah, there’s a great resource out there called The Wheel of Life. You can find it within the dimensions of wellness as well. There’s all sorts of free resources online that are assessments. You could probably do this in 5 minutes and you can just get a really good temperature gauge of where you’re at in each of these areas by answering a few questions. And that could use as a really good jumping off point to say, what are the areas I’m doing really well and what are the areas that I might want to focus on and that can help you really engage with this series a bit more in-depth.
David Pace 6:13
And also visit the university web page on wellness. They’ve got pretty good resources. They’re pretty good set of resources there. So how do we want to end this? Do you want to have a cheer? Let’s get well.
Alex Barilec 6:28
Let’s get well. We’ll cheers to that and we’ll see you in the next episode now.
David Pace 6:33
Thanks, Alex.
Alex Barilec 6:34
Thanks, David.
David Pace 6:34
Take care.