How to maximise your wellbeing in these corona-times.
Let’s call a spade a spade and admit that most people’s wellbeing is taking a hit right now. Whether you’re a key worker (in which case, thank you!), working from home, home-schooling, just been made redundant, socially isolated, shielding or any combination, life seems pretty tough right now. And you know what? It is. It is tough. So now is a great time to work out how to prop up your wellbeing. Because it is as important as ever to take care of yourself.
The number one question that you have to answer is
What is the biggest threat to your wellbeing?
This, to a certain extent, is going to depend on the situation in which you find yourself. If you’re at home on your own, the lack of interaction, loneliness, may be your key issue. If you’re in a house with other people, lack of time alone might be a challenge. If your job has changed – gone, on hiatus, or just changed by working from home – your sense of achievement or even sense of self could be threatened.
To address these, write out a list of things that you can do for 5 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour or 2 hours that would support your wellbeing.
Start first with things that you find relaxing. Meditation, sitting outdoors, enjoying a cup of tea, doing some physical exercise, taking a bath, reading a book, watching a film. Whatever you know relaxes you.
Next, connection. Just because you live with people doesn’t mean you aren’t going to miss connections. It might be that you miss the quantity of connections that you usually have, or it could be that you’re missing the quality of connections. If you’re two adults working from home and trying to home-school children, I think it would be easy right now to miss quality time together. Whether it’s a text message, phone call, video call, virtual pub quiz, watching a film at the same time, buying a gift for someone, making rainbows for people to see, writing a letter or being involved in group projects, find ways of connecting that enhance your wellbeing and note those down too.
My final category is productivity which may not be as obvious as the other categories. But if your job satisfaction has changed – for whatever reason – lack of productivity can really undermine your wellbeing. Think of things that you can do that make you feel productive. Feeling productive increases our feelings of competence and satisfaction and can really help our overall mindset and wellbeing.
Once you have those activities down, work out what resources you need. Do you need extra supplies? Do you need extra support? Communicate that extra support to those around you. (Especially parents. If there is another parent available – regardless of if they usually live under your roof – communicate clearly what is required.) Finally, work out if there is anything I (yes me, Angharad) can do to help or support you. I’m here for you guys and would love to help in any way that I can.
Let me know! Keep an eye out for video on topics like this on the Facebook page Extra Support. I’ll also be converting these videos into an academy along with some of my longer webinars that you’ll be able to access whenever you like. I’m hoping to have this go live on Monday 6 April. Just reply with ‘curious’ if you’d like to hear more!
Keep safe,
Angharad