Mental Health And Wellbeing

THE RESILIENCE PROJECT

GEM - Gratitude, Empathy and Mindfulness

In our last newsletter we had a focus on Gratitude and challenged you to play the Gratitude Scavenger Hunt game. This week we are focussing on Empathy.

EMPATHY

Working on empathy helps us to identify, understand and feel what another person is feeling. When we show empathy or we do something kind for someone else our brain releases oxytocin. This leads to increasing our self-esteem/confidence, energy levels, positivity and overall happiness.

Whole Family Activity:

Neighbourhood Kindness Challenge

As a family, choose an act of kindness from the list below that you would like to do for a neighbour or family friend. Each family member can select one to commit to, or you can choose to do one together.

• Cook them something delicious like a cake, hot bread, or cookies.
• Write a note to put in their letterbox thanking them for being a great neighbour or friend.
• Design them a Thank You card.
• Pick or buy some flowers to deliver to them.
• Choose a little plant from your garden to give them.
• Make them a gift from things around your house.
• Offer to do a job for them, like wash their car or water their garden.
• Offer to take their pets for a walk.
• Invite them over for afternoon tea.
• Invite them on a walk.
• Recommend one of your favourite books to borrow and read.
• Ask them if they need anything from the shops next time you buy groceries.
• Say hello next time you see them, and ask them how their day is going.
• Feel free to do more than one and spread the kindness even further!

Report back to each other in one week and share how your acts of kindness were received, and how doing them made you feel.

Family Habit Builder:

Every night at dinner, have each person thank another family member for something they’ve done or said today, or give another family member a compliment.

‘THE IMPERFECTS’ podcast

Hugh, from the Resilience Project, has put together a podcast which is all about how perfectly imperfect we all are. Constantly comparing ourselves to others can not only be exhausting, but extremely harmful. However, when we share our struggles, we start to realise that everyone, no matter how successful, has something they are battling with.

In this podcast, Hugh, Josh and Ryan chat to a variety of interesting people who bravely share their struggles and imperfections, and we all learn some valuable take-aways we can apply to our own imperfect lives.

The Imperfects has three different formats: an interview, the Vulnerabili(tea) House, and the Academy of Imperfection. Podcasts can be found here

Fiona Sewell

Assistant Principal