Mental Wellbeing during Covid 19 Week4

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

Tips for week 3 are also set out in this article Mental Wellbeing during Covid 19 Week 3

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

3: Keep learning - Wednesday

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

Hi all it's day # 16 of my wellbeing at home tips (time flies).

Today is a Monday which means we are talking about Connecting with the people around you.

success.com have put together this nice list of 9 ways to stay connected to people

https://www.success.com/9-ways-to-stay-connected-during-social-distancing/

It has some things I really like such as writing someone a letter (how many of us still do that these days?) and reaching out to those around you who you know may be struggling more or could be.

Many of us are already doing some of these but hopefully we can all find something new to do here.

As always you can contact me on wellbeing@ealingeagles.com

Tuesday - Be active

it's day 17 of my wellbeing at home tips.

Today is a Tuesday (for anyone who has forgotten due to lockdown vibes) so that means we are talking about Being Active

The Express published a video on Saturday of 8 excercises you can do to develop and maintain strength while at home using things like bean cans as weights (!).

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/diets/1258922/lockdown-exercise-coronavirus-the-eight-exercises-you-can-do-while-stuck-at-home

The article also mentions some other guided excercise classes you can do using youtube etc or DVDs - bit of a blast from the recent past there!

Hope you are able to keep active in a way suitable to your own situation

Wednesday - Keep learning

Hello all it's day 18 of my wellbeing at home tips. Today is Wednesday so we have a tip about how to Keep Learning.

This week is also Mental Health Awareness week, a week where we are all encouraged to think more about mental health. I didn't organise anything specific as we already have these tips and talks given/planned.

Here's a link to the campaign's official pages.

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/campaigns/mental-health-awareness-week

I wanted to bring these both together somehow and so want to change tack and ask YOU a question.

What on the topic of mental health would you like to find out more about, which I could then help the club with?

All suggestions welcome below. Or if you would prefer please email to me on wellbeing@ealingeagles.com

Also just so I am not shortchanging you on a tip here's a snippet to end with:

To help you learn more about the power of kindness here's a variety of testimonials from people about how kindness has changed their lives for the better. They're a subsection of the page linked above.

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/campaigns/mental-health-awareness-week/kindness-stories

Thursday - Give back to the community

Today it's day 19 of my wellbeing at home tips. Today is Thursday so my tip is themed to the wellbeing pillar of Giving back to the community.

https://www.dosomethinggood.org.uk/ operates in Ealing and is a website to help people find people to help. It is endorsed by Ealing Council

There's lots of ways to get involved and lots of differing oportunities for different kinds of people

Why not have a look.

I look forwards to hearing your suggestions on what mental health work I can focus on to help you all the most based off of my tip yesterday :)

Stay safe

Daniel

Friday - Take notice

It's day 20 of my wellbeing at home tips.

Today is Friday before the long weekend (yay) so my tip is linked to Taking notice of your feelings and the world around you.

I went to a presentation recently from someone with lived experience of depression in their latter end of their career this week.

In my first post I mentioned the 5 pillars of wellbeing each day of these tips are linked to. In this talk the speaker unpacked them in a different light and I wanted to share with you all.

The pillars I am using are:

  • Connect with the people around you

  • Be Active

  • Keep learning

  • Give back to the community

  • Take notice of your feelings and the world around you

The ones mentioned in the talk were:

  • Connect with nature and people

  • Active. Be active

  • Nice. be nice and kind to yourself and others

  • Discover. Learn new things, be curious

  • Observe yourself and around you

I felt they communicate similar things but the second has the advantage of being the acronym CAN DO so I'll take it that that was their goal - get a good acronym for the topic of convo. What do you think about the two? Which do you prefer?

I hope you all have a great weekend.

Update: I'll finish the template for the conversation I posted last week this weekend and share next Wednesday.