10 tips to improve wellbeing (that have worked for me)

1. Reward yourself for all your hard work.

If your life were a video game, what would make it fun to play? As the designer of the game, you get to decide the difficulty level, the cheats and the rewards. Make sure after each level (which in school life could consist of each day, each week, each term and each year) you have clear rewards for yourself. After each day it could be something small like your favourite snack or a movie night. After each week it could be a night out with friends. After each term a weekend away or that new pair of shoes. And finally, with six weeks off at the end of the year, I think you deserve an extended holiday for a week or two at least. For me, the promise of an Italian summer motivates me to get through the cold mornings and late nights!

2. Be vulnerable and open.

A problem shared is a problem halved. The beauty of current statistics on mental health among school teachers is that you can guarantee you are not alone if you are feeling stressed. Now that it is all out on the open, stress need not be this giant stigma that people are ashamed of. It is a natural by product of working in a difficult and demanding job. Talk to people openly about that which is troubling you and you will immediately feel lighter. In addition the people you talk to might just have physical, tangible ways of lightening your load.

3. Take a slightly elevated perspective.

Imagine you were hovering above yourself watching your life unfold. Is it in a state of order or chaos? To save time and effort and ensure that you get enough time to relax, try having clear system in place for as many aspects of your life as possible. The time in which you plan lessons, the time in which you mark books, the way you ensure differentiation, the time you give to your family, the time you get up in the morning and the time you go to bed. All these, and many other areas of life, can be designed into a system. Once you get into the habit of sticking to your systems, you will liberate your mind to relax without having to constantly react to the ongoing movement of time. All the best businesses have systems for everything; this is the reason that no matter which Nandos (one of my favourite franchises) you go to, you get the same experience. Taking that slightly elevated perspective and observing our own mind is also a profoundly spiritual practice, the best selling spiritual text ‘The Power of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle suggests doing exactly this to avoid becoming overtaken by our overactive minds. Confused? A more in depth blog on this technique is coming soon.

4. Download Headspace

If I were to choose just one of these tips to help improve your wellbeing, this would be it. Start a meditation practice. Meditation was the one thing that improved my wellbeing when I was at an all time low and gave me the impetus and strength to get back into education. The easiest way to start a meditation practice if you have no idea what it is all about, in my opinion, is to download the Headspace app on your smart phone or computer. You can do the Take 10 program free of charge and see the difference that relaxing for 10 minutes a day, without any stimulation, can have on your life. Download it, try it! You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

5. Make time to exercise

Exercise is the body’s natural anti depressant. When we exercise we flood our brain with serotonin, the feel good drug. A synthetic anti depressant from the doctor works in a similar field with the same drug, which is why they are known as Selective Seretonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI). A major difference in my eyes is that taking the drug instead of exercising means you miss out on all the holistic goodness of moving your body, it gets you out the house or off the sofa, it burns calories and much more. I have nothing against taking medication, and understand that it is of profound benefit to many people. But some people do not want to take that route. My advice if that is you, find your nearest yoga studio where you will get to meditate at the same time. If meditation isn’t your thing, there is sure to be a form of movement that suits you, whether it is joining the gym or even going for a simple evening walk.

6. Upgrade your media

This may be a controversial one, but it is something that has a profound impact on my wellbeing. Switch off the news! When I think about the countless hours I have spent watching or listening to daily news updates it makes my head hurt. How much of that information did I retain? Very little! How angry and scared did it make me on a daily basis? Very! The beauty of the modern age is we are much more in control of what we watch and listen to. We are the Netflix generation who decide what to watch and when. Have a healthy diet of comedy, documentaries and the occasional episode of Take Me Out (no need to take life too seriously)!

A major upgrade to my media has also been the addition of audio books and podcasts for my commute. There are thousands of hours worth of podcasts on your smart phone covering any range of topics. I look forward to my commute to and from work these days instead of berating the traffic and getting angry at the ominous newsbeat every hour on the hour. I promise you will not fall behind with what is going on in the world, in this age of information it is near impossible to completely escape.

7. Make somebody else smile

“If you want to be successful in life, help other people.”

Not that you should need any excuse to be kind, but being of service to others is a sure way to feel connected and happy. As teachers, or anyone working in the school environment I am sure you are all doing this in abundance. Ask yourself the question at the end of the day, “Who did I help?” and remind yourself of the value you give to the world. (On a side note, getting school kids to answer this question at the end of a lesson is a great addition to a plenary that makes them feel good and shows what they have mastered).

8. Upgrade your diet

As the saying goes, food is medicine. This is a real foundation level element of wellbeing that so many of us overlook. However, there is really very little difference between foods and drugs and medicines. Any item of food can fall under any one of those categories depending on the key ingredient that we add: Intent. Ask yourself the question next time you consume something. Are you eating it because you want to nourish yourself and treat yourself with love and respect? Or are you eating it because something to do with distraction, greed or laziness? It is a difficult one to get right, and something I regularly fail with, but even chocolate and red wine can be medicinal, nourishing and a well deserved treat. The problem is that they are easily abused and sugar is thought to be more addictive than cocaine. For me, I try to think about the 80/20 rule. As long as 80% of your diet is clean, real, unprocessed food you should be good. Even science now proves the saying “You are what you eat”, with research showing that the aforementioned serotonin is made in the gut. Garbage in, garbage out.

9. Be present

I am sure this post is full of contradictions given that I have suggested using lots of incentives to get you through the day, such as holidays and treat nights. But try as much as possible to keep your attention on the present moment. This will become especially easy if you start a meditation practice, as mentioned above. The past and future should be no more than a tool to inform the present. The past is slowly evaporating into memories that become less and less accurate and the futures we anticipate will mostly not come to pass, if ever with 100% accuracy. More importantly, the scientific truth for your wellbeing is that your body does not know the difference between actual threats and imagined ones and the stress hormones are released either way. In that fight or flight mode, cortisol rushes to your limbs and focuses the attention of your body away from your vital organs, where it is needed most. For the second time in this post I would recommend ‘The Power of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle for a deeper understanding of this concept.

10. Be brutally honest with yourself

Tried steps 1-9 as well as a whole bunch of other things and still find yourself feeling helpless?

Listen to your intuition. I sincerely hope that we can improve the culture of all schools to one where wellbeing is placed above all else and hopefully the statistics on teachers leaving the profession will improve. My aim with this blog is to help in some way to make that happen. However, sometimes sticking it out is just not possible. There was a time in my life where I genuinely felt I had no choice but to take a break from the profession. 99% of people I spoke to advised me to stick it out, and in fact it was only one person I remember who said with real conviction that I should not (as well as a handful of others who I knew would support me either way). That was my mom, and I knew deep down that she was the one who was right. It was and is something of a last resort and is not a decision to be taken lightly.  It certainly was not easy and there were many conflicting emotions but it really was the best thing for me. For some people they absolutely should stick it out, but only the individual has the right answer. Whatever you decide I can guarantee you one thing about your life, it goes on.

Lessons from yoga to remove distress from school life.

Did you know that not all stress is bad?

There are two types of stress that we can encounter, most people are only familiar with the negative version of stress, when asked, which we refer to as distress. It can be defined as follows:

great pain, anxiety or sorrow, acute physical or mental suffering, affliction or trouble.

However distress does have an opposite which is more beneficial to us. It is a form of stress which promotes our physical, mental or spiritual growth rather than inhibiting it (as too much distress might). The name of this form of stress is eustress, which is defined as:

beneficial stress, e.g. psychological or physical, consisting of the greek prefix 'eu' meaning good (i.e. eu-phoria) and stress, literally meaning "good stress".

It is this form of stress (on the physical level) one encounters in the practice of yoga (as well as many other physical endeavours), and it is in becoming more mindful of how we can manage that stress during our practice that we can better deal with the psychological stresses in our day to day/work life.

Teaching: A stressful job!

There is no doubt about it, the modern teacher is under a lot of stress. Planning, assessing, dealing with parents, dealing with behaviour, more planning, record keeping, the list goes on and on. The bad news is, lets face it, that stress is going nowhere. The good news is, we can take action to ensure that it is a form of eustress more than it is a form of distress.

Become a warrior!

My least favourite postures in all of yoga are the warrior poses. It forces the legs into a prolonged stretch that makes my calves, hamstrings and quads feel like they are on fire. But as time goes on and I relax and breathe into the posture, I feel more relaxed and at ease. Furthermore, as the weeks go by, I feel my legs strengthening and each week I can stretch a little further and hold a little longer. By being mindful of exactly how much stress I am under I can help my whole body, mind and spirit to grow. 

It is absolutely possible to push it too far and cause an injury, and to distress my muscles and joints. It is absolutely possible that I skip my yoga practice altogether and gain some extra pounds. But I don't. Not when I am treating myself with the respect and love I deserve. I am voluntarily receiving a little challenge and in doing so I feel strong, like a warrior! 

Am I saying you should all take up yoga? No. I am sure you would not regret it, but the lesson can be transferred to all areas of life and in reading this you can learn those lessons too.

So, how can we take heed of this lesson and make our working life less distressing? Well, we can first of all accept that we choose this profession with all its stresses and acknowledge the gift of stress to help us grow. Can we take on too much work? Take too much home? Choose to hide away from the work and do half a job or no job at all? Of course, and we often do, but it is in doing these things that we cause ourselves more distress and the blood pressure and the paperwork mounts. 

However, we can choose to take proactive action in order to feel that stress in a positive way, at times that suit us. Some ideas to do this you ask?

• Try planning your week in advance and make time for exercise, leisure and relaxation.
• Prioritise your time effectively, put first things first.
• Talk to others, be open about your stresses, they are a natural and beautiful thing worth sharing. 
• When the stress is becoming too much, be honest with yourself and seek help or change your game plan. Remember, "if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got."
• Try setting some goals, keep those goals in mind when encountering stress, it will get you through the challenges. Even eustress can be tough, that's the idea, it makes the rewards more rewarding when you work for it.

If you have any other ideas for de-stressing your school, or you have any other questions or comments about this blog, post them in the comments below.

Until next time, make sure you do something eu-stressful each day.