Personal Wellbeing

Feelings of wellbeing are fundamental to your overall health, enabling you to successfully overcome difficulties and achieve what you want out of life.

Past experiences, attitudes and outlook can all impact wellbeing as can physical or emotional trauma following specific incidents.  A child’s wellbeing will be affected by the wellbeing of their parents so it is essential parents take time for themselves.

What Gets in the Way of Our Wellbeing?   

Stress is common and we will all experience it at times. Not all stress is bad for us but when it gets out of balance it can have a negative effect.

The effect may be:

• physical –  poor sleep, muscle tension
• emotional – low mood, irritability
• mental -negative thoughts, excessively worrying
• behavioural – avoiding situations, staying in more

Five Steps to Boost your Personal Wellbeing

What would life be like if you weren’t happy? Unless we learn to control our emotions we will not have made much progress in personal development.

According to research, these five things can really help to boost your mental wellbeing:

1. Connect – connect with the people around you, your family, friends, colleagues and neighbours. Spend time developing these relationships.
2. Be active – you don’t have to go to the gym. Take a walk, go cycling or play a game of football. Find an activity that you enjoy and make it a part of your life.
3. Keep learning – learning new skills can give you a sense of achievement and a new confidence. So why not sign up for that cooking course, start learning to play a musical instrument, or figure out how to fix your bike?
4. Give to others – even the smallest act can count, whether it’s a smile, a thank you or a kind word. Larger acts, such as volunteering at your local community centre, can improve your mental wellbeing and help you build new social networks.
5. Be mindful – be more aware of the present moment, including your thoughts and feelings, your body and the world around you. Some people call this awareness “mindfulness”. It can positively change the way you feel about life and how you approach challenges.

If you are unhappy of feel areas in your life are unbalanced you can always contact your GP to discuss as there are many therapies that could help your situation.