Globalization for Military and Civilians

      I recently read a blog post from the US Military's European Commander, Adm. James Stavridis.  He began a conversation about our military’s culture savvy and effectiveness abroad.  Without calling into question the strength and capabilities of our military, he suggested that our forces would be incredibly more effective if, as a part of their training, individual military officers each received culture and language training, with the goal being to have bilingual and multicultural military officers. (Read the blog post here).

As someone who has lived abroad and seriously studied a foreign language, I know that it can be a daunting and often times frustrating task to become acclimated to both a foreign culture and language.  But at the same time I have experienced firsthand the open-mindedness that culture immersion, the effectiveness of speaking the native tongue when traveling abroad, and the general efforts to being a more engaged global citizen.

I fully support Adm. James Stavridis, already fluent in English, Spanish, and French and currently studying Portuguese, as he urges the US military to add foreign language and foreign culture training to the requirements of becoming an officer.

Tying this into the 8 spheres of wellness that I described in my last post, it is clear that these efforts would fall under the umbrella of 2; studying foreign language and culture is a way of exercising both intellectual and social wellness.  Studies have shown that individuals who are bi- or multilingual have an intellectual benefit over unilingual individuals.  A NYT study, to cite just one, suggests that being bilingual plainly makes you smarter (read here).  And what better way to integrate globally than to familiarize ourselves with foreign cultures – moving from thinking foreigners are weird and stupid to understanding that different is sometimes just that: different. 

I fully support foreign language study in the military, in college, in junior and high schools, and as early as parents can provide such learning for their children.  I think that the more consciously we all work to exercise as many of our spheres of wellness that we can, the happier and more productive we all will be.

Let me know what you think about the Admiral’s suggestion for US military officers, and also feel free to share your personal experiences with foreign language, culture, and travel.

Brian

Linking Spheres to Attain Mutual Wellness

          As part of an exploratory committee for the University, I have recently began studying the 7 spheres of wellness, in an effort to encourage participation in various wellness-related programs on campus.  Due to the addition of an 8th sphere (financial wellness) to the common scheme by our group, I thought of a new opportunity to encourage individuals to interact with, and to contribute to their community.
 
The benefits of following the 7 spheres of wellness are intuitive, cumulative, and contagious.  Each sphere (emotional wellness, intellectual wellness, environmental wellness, spiritual wellness, physical wellness, social wellness, and occupational wellness) addresses a distinct aspect of one's life that can cause stress, may require expertise of some kind to get under control, and is important to control to achieve general well-being.  It was not difficult for our group to decide that financial wellness was an important additional topic to address, as many people experience stress or confusion when trying to tackle their finances.  Thus, our group added financial wellness as the 8th sphere to tackle, which will likely consist - at least at first - of individual consultations and follow-ups with experienced financial planners.
 
It was in the development of this new idea that I recognized the overlap between financial wellness and social wellness.  Social wellness can be interpreted as prioritizing, to a certain extent, contributing to the common welfare of one's community over one's own self. 
 
Although individuals' time contributions to their community is incredibly important (more important than financial contributions? There's probably a case to be made for both), allocation of one's time for their community likely fits either solely under the social wellness sphere or in the overlap between the social wellness sphere and the occupational wellness sphere, as a person must have sufficient work-life balance to have the freedom to donate their time to their community, for example volunteering at a charity event.

In much the same way that someone needs to have free time in order to donate their time, however, they also need to have disposable income in order to donate their money.  Someone must simultaneously plan their finances on a monthly basis, allocate a certain, relatively nonburdensome amount of money to give to charity/their community/a local organization, and then they must be disciplined enough to stick to their budget.  In this way, a person can take control of their finances while improving their social wellness.  This can be achieved through the support and expertise offered in financial wellness programs.

Although in depth interpretations of what each sphere means and how we can collectively work on improving our wellnesses can seem boring, overly theoretical, and too optimistic, the underlying ideas are, again, intuitive.

In order to be universally "well" every person will likely have to achieve some level of emotional, intellectual, environmental, financial, spiritual (broadly speaking, not pigeon-holed into the practice of any specific religion, per se), physical, social, and occupational wellness.  In this situation, as I have just outlined, it is important to incorporate one's charitable contributions in their financial planning.  Surely everyone wants to give back, but only those who have saved enough (time or money) can.

Be well.