The Resilience Project

Dear Parents

We have sent you some information about the key pillars of resilience: Gratitude, Empathy & Mindfulness. The whole school has been focusing on these key pillars in their CARE groups and some of the students will be bringing home some activities they have completed in their groups or various stories about what they have learnt.

An ongoing focus has been the focus on Gratitude, where students have been encouraged to complete Gratitude journals. The students have enjoyed completing these and love thinking and focusing on “What went well for me today?”. Some students have continued doing this beyond the 21 days!  This has been one of the focuses in CARE groups.

Evidence

When you pay attention to all the wonderful things in your life, rather than focusing on the things you want or don’t have, your brain does something awesome — it makes you feel better about yourself and the world. And it only takes 21 days for our brains to make this switch! Practising gratitude helps you to feel more energetic and excited about the future. You may notice that you can concentrate better at school or work or feel more determined to play your best in sport. It can even help you have a better sleep and not get sick as often!

We encourage you to discuss this pillar at home and maybe try out the following activity around the dinner table:

Each person could share one or more things they are grateful for that day. It could be something as simple as patting a nice dog or as big as winning a running race! 

Practising gratitude by noticing what you have rather than worrying about what you don’t have helps keep your attention focussed on the positives in your life. If you do this each day, you become 3 times more likely to notice a positive in your life than a negative!

You say ‘thank you’ to people when they give you a gift or do something nice for you — practising gratitude is like saying ‘thank you’ to life for the same!

Thanks,

The Wellbeing Team

Fiona Arthur and Vicky Soldatos