Wellbeing and mental health have become really important areas of study and exploration for me over the past few years. My role as a leader in the pastoral care at a high school resulted in me becoming increasingly interested in wellbeing and what practises encourage, improve, and enhance an individual’s ability to “live well” from a holistic perspective. This interest has seen me explore various definitions and explanations of what wellbeing is through additional study and reading of academic papers and studies into what contributes to wellbeing; attending courses and workshops exploring positive education, trauma informed practices such as through the Institute of Positive Education, Berry Street, and Australian Children’s Foundation; watching of TED talks on resilience, grit, self-determination theory, eudemonic vs hedonic wellbeing theories; reading of a variety of books; explored the VIA Character Strengths and their application to improve agency and capacity in individuals; countless conversations with school leaders and psychologists who have more experience and a collective knowledge greater than I could ever gain on my own.
I have taken all of this and tried to work on my own wellbeing through adopting a number of habits and boundaries into my daily routine. I find that when I keep to my routine and habits that it has a positive impact on how I feel about myself and world around me, likewise, when I fall into not regularly doing these practises it has a detrimental impact. I have tried to ensure that these routines cover the five domains of needs:
- Physical.
- Emotional.
- Cognitive.
- Energetic.
- Spiritual.
This has lead to my routine of early rising, running, stretches, prayer, and saxophone practice prior to the day beginning. Despite all of these practises that have been built into my life, it is still easy to fall into the “Negativity Bias” that we all inherently lean towards as human beings. This is something that I have been working on changing in my job through looking for authentic and meaningful ways to affirm students and colleagues, however I feel I can still work on this a lot more and that’s where this challenge I am going to undertake comes in.
I am currently reading “The Resilience Project” and have been reflecting upon the three key elements that Hugh Van Cuylenburg argues are key to promoting wellbeing: Gratitude, Empathy, and Mindfulness. Reading this book hasn’t really given me any significant revelations, but rather has reminded me of other books and TED talks looking at wellbeing though the Pos. Ed. lens whether that be through the Institute of Positive Education, the Berry Street Education Model, reading books by Seligmen, Street, and Brunzell or the TED talk by Br David Steindl-Radst which I have included a link to this talk below:
I am a big believer in needing to live something if you want to be able to share it with others. I am going to challenge myself over this next three months (the remainder of 2024) to work on finding opportunities for gratitude in my personal life and interactions with others. I am not going to necessarily be looking for the big things, but instead focusing on the small, every day experiences and trying to find things to be grateful for in the midst of every day life. The challenge is going to see me do two things:
- Keep on online Gratitude Journal: I am going to take ten minutes at the end of every day to stop and reflect on what I am grateful for on that day. My plan is to keep a record of this as an online gratitude journal.
- Write letters of appreciation / gratitude: One of the strategies written about in “The Resilience Project” was the power of writing letters of gratitude to people for what they have done. I think that as a society we probably don’t acknowledge and show our appreciation for others enough. I am going to work on writing one authentic letter of gratitude to a different person each month. While this doesn’t seem like a lot, it will be a start and I want to see me actually complete the challenge rather than falling short.
These are habits that I would love to become a natural part of the way that I live my life. I know from previous experiences in wanting to add things that it takes small steps – if I do too much too soon I always fall short of what I wanted to do. With this in mind, my posts each day aren’t going to be long winded academic dissertations, rather what I am grateful for and why.
Looking forward to the challenge and seeing how it impacts my wellbeing and outlook on life and the life of those with whom I do life with.
