Well Being
As a member of the Gallup Campus Wellbeing Consortium, TCU is
helping lead the way in researching and developing programs that
foster students’ experience and understanding of wellbeing. Program
interventions are designed with 5 elements of wellbeing in mind:
Career Wellbeing: How you occupy your time; liking what you do each
day, whether at work or at school.
Social Wellbeing: Relationships and love in your life.
Financial Wellbeing: Managing your economic life to reduce stress
and increase security.
Physical Wellbeing: Good health and enough energy to get things done
daily.
Community Wellbeing: Engagement and involvement in the area where
you live.
Wellbeing is something very few people experience simply by good
fortune. Instead, wellbeing requires self-awareness, knowledge about
one’s own thoughts and feelings, interests, abilities, strengths,
and values. It demands good decision-making skills guided by healthy
intentions and an awareness of the conditions most likely to promote
a sense of wellbeing, including appreciation for the whole scope of
wellbeing and the importance of taking an integrated approach that
does not sacrifice too much of some areas on behalf of others.
The benefits of wellbeing are numerous and quite practical.
Wellbeing isn’t just about feeling good. As people become more
accomplished with ensuring their wellbeing, they get more done,
develop stronger relationships, experience less stress, have more
energy throughout the day, improve their health, live longer lives,
establish more beneficial connections in their communities, have
greater clarity about the meaning and purpose of their lives, and
much more. Wellbeing really is about total quality of life.
An excellent tool for gauging the current state of a person’s
wellbeing, and for tracking the development of wellbeing over time,
is the Clifton Wellbeing Finder. The Wellbeing Finder is
administered and maintained online by the Gallup Organization. It
assists in identifying areas that need more attention as well as
areas of strength that to continue building on. It also allows
comparison of one’s own scores with others based on age, gender,
income, and education levels. Because it can be used on a daily a
basis, its tracking and trending potentials can help reveal patterns
that can be evaluated for their potential to positively or
negatively affect wellbeing. This program includes resources to use
of all this information to create a customized action plan for
improving wellbeing.
To maximize the potential benefits of this program, students have
many opportunities to work with peers, mentors and student
development professionals who are experts in various aspects of
wellbeing. Campus wellbeing partners include representatives from
every student affairs unit, from Career Services, to Housing and
Residential Life, from the Health Center to Campus Recreation, and
from Campus Life to Community Involvement and Service Learning, and
more. An important part of their work is collaborating so that their
efforts integrate with and complement each other more effectively in
supporting each students’ learning and growth in wellbeing. Peer
coaches and mentors provide support to students in learning about
and making use of all the many programs and services available to
them, and in setting goals, following through with their action
plans, and so becoming increasing effective in skills that will
serve them for a lifetime of greater wellbeing.
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