Eight Dimensions of Wellness: Occupational Wellness
Alarm blaring at the crack of dawn begging you to get up to start your day. Moving slow with a case of the Mondays...except it's Wednesday. Dreading going into work but yet here you are day in and day out. Thinking "Those bills won't pay themselves, right?!" Well if that's your motivation to get you going for work you need to work on your Occupational Wellness.
Occupational wellness allows you to explore various career options and encourages you to pursue the opportunities you enjoy the most; preparing for and participating in work that provides personal satisfaction and life enrichment that is consistent with your values, goals, and lifestyle. This dimension includes taking a thoughtful and proactive approach to career planning and assessing personal satisfaction and performance in one’s work.
It's difficult to not "get caught up" in letting your credentials, degrees, accolades, and titles define you. I mean when you think of everything you went through to get them from family and friends being proud and bragging about you (or lack there of) to student loans and sleepless nights why shouldn't you just walk around with your credentials, degrees, accolades, or titles on a shirt lol.
I don't like telling people what my degrees are in but when you're in school, trying to land a job, and network you always get asked. So I definitely fell into letting my degrees define because it was always a topic of discussion and it was almost a safe haven with trying to become more than a basketball player. Fast forward I have my degrees and land my engineering job, which is a white male dominating field. Going in I was aware that I am a double minority I felt like I had to constantly prove myself again feeding into letting these things define me. Now I'm a year and some change into my job and I have that "What's next?" feeling with less pressure to prove myself. Outside of school and sports discovering what success looks like, how do I continue to expand my knowledge without the need for something to show for it (degrees, accolades, etc.), how do I develop a career plan that aids in tracking my progress to help me grow and not get comfortable and complacent and does this company's mission align with my goals and values. I enjoy what I do but I strongly dislike the amount of time I have to actually be at work so I have been working through these questions to better enjoy my career and develop my Occupational Wellness which has stemmed from developing my Intellectual Wellness as well as other dimensions as well.
Working through some of these questions have opened up more opportunities for me. I've begun working on different projects outside of my usual scope of work, traveling more and networking with people from different companies, learning about different aspects of research that I can apply to my line of work. I'm learning the more I let go of my degrees and accolades and focus on how they align with my goals, values, and personal interest the more gratification I get from work.
Don't be afraid to stir up the tea in your own life; explore your own occupational wellness with some additional questions: What are your passions and interests and how do they align with your current line of work? Is your work environment conducive to keeping stress levels low? If not what can you do to assist in conflict management? What goals have you set to work toward throughout your career? Define what you want and why and go get it! Work takes up too much of our day to not enjoy what you do!!!
*DISCLAIMER I AM NOT TELLING YOU TO QUIT YOUR JOB*
