How is your wellbeing boat?

Montessori East, like many schools, is very much part of the lives of the families in our community, and especially at the moment when we’re literally in everyone’s living room! So we’ve had many conversations with parents about how they are coping, the challenges of home learning, juggling work and school and much more. Mostly we’ve found that everyone’s boat is taking on some water here and there, and together we can help each other weather the storm until it passes.

This week, we heard some wonderful guidance from Alice Peel and Kristina Freeman from Grow Your Mind in a Zoom parent talk on wellbeing.

Alice was quick to point out that although they talk to hundreds of children, parents and teachers about taking care of our mental health, she is just like the rest of us - with good and bad days and the normal rainbow of human experience and emotion with three children and a dog in the house. Thank goodness for that! Hello! - perfection doesn’t exist. What a relief, and let’s all be a bit kinder with the self-talk.

No matter our personal situation, we’ll all be experiencing stressors of one kind or another and it’s normal for us to have a stress response to these pressure points in our life. The point Alice made was that coming down from that, or closing off the stress response is really vital for our wellbeing.

So what can we do?

A key take-away was one word - Joy. That it is to find joy somewhere in your day and consciously choose to experience it as a moment of joy. We can all find joy in the simplest of ways and through all our senses. It might be a few minutes sitting in the sun, baking a cake, going for a walk, viewing the smile of a baby - whatever it is, see it as a joyous experience and let it fire up the positive brain chemistry.

So what will you do today that brings you joy?

If you would like to know more, Grow your Mind has heaps of free resources and podcasts on their website.