Introduction
Many of you may know Dan Vandenburg as the club's Mental Health Champion, which is a scheme sponsored by England Athletics. He does various talks and things related to looking after your mental health.
As such, Dan wanted to do something for the club during what is probably a testing time mentally for many of us. Towards this, he will be posting on facebook every weekday around 3pm with a tip on how to look after your mental health during lockdown.
Tips for week 1 are also set out in this article Mental Wellbeing during Covid 19 Week1
Tips for week 2 are also set out in this article Mental Wellbeing during Covid 19 Week2
Welcome to week 3 of Dan’s tips from facebook on how to look after your mental health during lockdown. The text of these posts is repeated below in his words.
These tips are based on a tried and tested 5 point wellbeing model. Each weekday will be linked to one point in the model. The points and days related to each one are (click on the link to go straight to the that tip for this week):
1: Connect with people around you - Monday
2: Be active (hopefully an easier one for Eagles!) - Tuesday
4: Give back to the community - Thursday
5: Take notice of your feelings and the world around you - Friday
If you ever want to talk to Dan in private, he is a trained Mental health First Aider and you can reach him on wellbeing@ealingeagles.com.
In the immortal words of Jerry Springer "Look after eachother and yourselves".
Monday - Connect with People
Hello Eagles
It's day #11 of my wellbeing at home tips and since today is Monday we are in the relams of connecting with the people around you.
You may or may not know that I am a big gamer, I own about 300 boardgames which I hoard in my study. They are a great way to interact with others and provide a way to get to know each other better.
They are going through a somewhat of a golden age at the moment with many newer boardgames making the transition from geeky closet material to well known
alongside more traditional games...Catan anyone?
This link gives a run down of some of the better ones so why not give them a try?
Don't have any players to hand? Fear not there are many boardgame websites where you can play online against friends or strangers in a whole new world.
Some of my favourates are:
Board Game Arena: https://boardgamearena.com/welcome
Yucata: https://www.yucata.de/en
Boite a Jeux: http://www.boiteajeux.net/
and Tabletopia: https://tabletopia.com/
These are all accessible for free but many operate a subscription option for more games, more options or access during peak busy times.
I hope you explore a couple of new games during lockdown
Tuesday - Be active
Hello all
it's day 12 of my wellbeing at home tips. Today is Tuesday and that means we are focussing on Be Active.
The NHS have released tips on how to be active and get fit for free. I don't think they've been updated since the announcement on Sunday from the PM but many still ring true.
Some of the list aren't possible during lockdown but there are still plenty of ideas there you can do.
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/free-fitness-ideas/
I also want to mention two new Eagles initiatives Eagles Reboot and Eagles Reset. Reboot is an activity scheme to increase your activity levels over 11 weeks incase they have slipped during lockdown. Reset is an activity tracker suitable for anyone of any activity level.
That it for today, you can get in touch with me on mental health matters on wellbeing@ealingeagles.com
Wednesday - Keep learning
It's day 13 of my wellbeing at home tips.
Today is Wednesday so we are on the theme of Keep Learning.
I'm actually going to use this as a shameless plug of the fact I am doing a virtual talk tonight on wellbeing at home. It will be recorded and have time for questions after. Come and learn how to feel better while spending more time at home.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NfVV04VSTnJFK7PRyq4ihm2zjLaLeyTH/view?usp=sharing
Thursday - Give back to the community
its day 14 of my wellbeing at home tips. Today is Thursday so we are talking about Giving back to the community.
Several good things came up in my talk yesterday. One of them was kindness. Random acts of kindness can be very powerful and really make the difference for both the giver and the reciever.
Maybe make a plan to do a random act of kindness every day or every other day. You can organise this how you like but can really help with yours and someone elses wellbeing.
Also remember it is a very important time to be kind to yourself right now. This is one of the hardest things to do in life for many.
that's it for today!
as always you can get in touch with me on wellbeing@ealingeagles.com
Friday - Take notice
It's day 15 of my wellbeing and working from home tips. Today is Friday (yay) and as such today's theme is Taking notice of your feelings and the world around you.
Today I'm using another things we talked about in my Wednesday evening presentation. Attached as a pic is a conversation you can have with yourself or someone else about how you are feeling, how you can know you may be starting to slip in some way and what you can usefully do to get back on track.
This is stolen from my work and so I'm working this weekend to make a template Eagles could use.
I think it is a helpful framing for anyone to asess themselves or someone they are close to (friend, colleague, family, doesn't really matter too much as long as there is trust and honesty).
Let me know what you think of this conversation design and I'll incorporate your views this weekend. You can reach me on wellbeing@ealingeagles.com.
have a great weeknd it's looking nice and sunny at the moment in Isleworth Riverside area.
