Supporting Your Own Wellbeing
This article is a summary of the Presentation, titled “Your Personal Wellbeing Toolkit: How to ignite joy amongst the chaos“, delivered by Madhavi Nawana Parker (Managing Director, Author, Coach and Speaker, Positive Minds Australia) at the recent SA/NT Summit. The summary has been provided by communikate et al, partner of the 2023 Educate Plus SA/NT Summit
Working in education can be a highly emotional career.
We know this through our own experiences, however as Director of Positive Minds Australia Madhavi Nawana Parker highlighted at this year’s SA/NT Summit, advancement professionals in schools are often called upon to help regulate other people’s emotions too.
Humans, as a species, aren’t good at managing their emotions, the wellbeing expert said in her keynote address.
“The first thing we do when we’re stressed is we need a place to dump it or something to blame it on,” she said.
“Quite often in roles like yours [advancement], you’ll find that your inbox is full of demands and expectations and the need to co-regulate other people’s emotions throughout your day.”
Madhavi said that by listening to others talk about their stress and sharing their emotions, our own bodies start to take that on, and we accumulate high levels of stress hormone cortisol.
That insight set the tone for the remainder of Madhavi’s presentation, as she shared some evidence-based strategies we could use to support our own wellbeing, as well as that of those around us.
“When we have healthy wellbeing, we are able to cope with frustration, sadness, anger, disappointment and all of the normal emotions of life much better,” Madhavi said.
“It increases our longevity, improves our immune system, it helps us feel better, think better and most all of can broaden our perspective on life.”
We’ve collated three of the easiest to implement strategies and shared them here.
- Our actions matter
Research by psychologist Barbara Fredrickson shows positive, joyful emotions move quickly through our body and mind, whereas uncomfortable emotions like stress, disappointment and frustration “stick like Velcro”.
Madhavi recommended writing a “reverse bucket list” of all the things we do that are impactful. How are you impactful in your workplace? How are you impactful in your family, or in your community?
Then, once you’ve got a list, created micro-moments throughout every day to remind yourself of them. Set a reminder, on your phone, on a post-it note, or something you wear around your wrist, and those micro-moments of joy throughout the day will release dopamine instead of cortisol and contribute to better wellbeing.
- Be thankful
During intense hardship, our ability to cope depends on the depth and breadth of our social connections – that’s why it’s important to spend as much time as we can around those who bring out the best in us.
Madhavi encouraged us to reflect on that and in a practical exercise, think of someone in our life who has had a significantly positive impact on us, and send them a thankful text message.
She said that emotions are contagious and by doing good, we feel good.
- Reverse engineering
“Our central nervous system was never designed to be this switched on and contactable all day long,” Madhavi said.
“You open your inbox and even if you don’t have time to answer the emails, you’ve already got all the problems sitting in your head. Now, we never feel like we can get to the end of our to-do list.”
Her solution? A ‘done list’. Madhavi recommends at the end of the day writing a list of all the tasks you’ve finished, all the jobs you’ve helped someone else to complete. That way, your body releases dopamine by celebrating what you did do, instead of cortisol, by stressing about what you didn’t do or still have to do.
