Improving Wellbeing and Making Positive Changes in Life

In this blog post, we will start to explore the benefits of online therapy and how it can help individuals with longstanding difficulties, stress, burnout, work-life balance, depressed moods, self-esteem issues, negative thinking patterns, personality difficulties, relationship problems, and anxiety. Liz Sneath Psychology Services offers a warm and friendly approach, delivering therapy tailored to your specific needs using evidence-based approaches.

Thoughts on Wellbeing

What is wellbeing? And how do we achieve a better sense of wellbeing?

Wellbeing can be thought of as a state of harmony, where things in our lives feel balanced, with a mixture of good feelings. Stress and burnout often occur when our wellbeing levels are lower. This is often due to a mismatch between our resources, abilities to cope and the perceived demands that are put on us, whether these demands are experienced at home or at work. Our wellbeing can also be affected by what we say to ourselves, and how we appraise or what we are doing. For example, our wellbeing is affected by negative thinking focusing on our perceived inadequacies, thoughts of not being good enough or failing, inability to cope, or fears about the future or the consequences of not being able to cope. All this can lead us to feeling frazzled, giving up, or striving too hard to try and fix things until we eventually collapse exhausted.

Everyone’s habitual thinking patterns, level of resources, resilience and sabotaging behaviours will be different. We can tackle this in therapy or wellbeing coaching by looking at several different areas step by step.

Today we are going to think about three specific strategies to help build our resources, and consider how making changes in our environment can also help our sense of wellbeing.

Learning how to use our breath

One of the best things you can do to manage stress or anxiety is learn how to breathe. Of course we already know how to breathe, however what I am talking about here is learning how to purposely use our breath – to calm or settle our nervous system.

There are numerous breathing videos on YouTube if you like to be guided in a breathing meditation. However, I prefer to teach clients to breathe with purpose themselves, so they can put this into practice at any point in the day.

A simple breathing exercise is to breathe in for four counts and breathe out for 6 counts. Some people find it helpful to visualise a balloon expanding as you count to 4, and a balloon deflating as you count out to 6. Lengthening the breath helps the nervous system settle down and move into a calmer state. Try it right now ……… just for a few minutes and notice how it impacts on your mood, and body state.

Using movement to energise and trigger a change

At other times we need help to get going, or start doing things. In this case our nervous system has slowed down too much, often due to becoming overwhelmed or swamped by negative thinking. A few techniques that can help here are:-

Walk to another room

Getting up and moving causes the body to release different chemicals. This creates energy and a different feeling inside your body. What are you waiting for! Get up and move to a different room right now ! Look out the window, go outside for a few minutes or put the kettle on. The important thing is to get up and move in any way. What was that like? Notice how you feel.

Shake it off

Shaking is another form of movement that also triggers the release of different chemicals in your body that help to settle down your nervous system. Start with shaking your hands and arms, then try shaking your legs, and then moving or twisting your hips from side to side. What does that feel like? If it feels good, then do some more.

Stretch your body UP

Stretch your body up –when our mood goes down or we feel deflated, our body posture often collapses into itself – our head comes down onto our chest as if we are rounding our body up into a ball. We can counter this collapsed position by raising our head up, pulling our shoulders down and stretching our body upwards - growing tall. Try this in the chair you are sitting right now. It works even better if you get up and stretch your arms up high towards the ceiling. Now walk around for a few minutes in this stretched up posture. What did that feel like?

Create a STOP DOING list

Write down a few things that are stopping you from getting on with the things you really want to do or achieve. These things might drain your energy, lower your mood or take over your valuable time. All of our time is limited, so why waste time doing things that are unnecessary or bad for your wellbeing?

Ideas for your list might include:-

• Stop responding to texts or WhatsApp messages immediately

• Stop listening to the news on TV

• Stop checking emails several times a day

• Stop spending hours on Facebook or Instagram

• Stop agreeing to go out for social events to be polite, when you end up dreading them, not enjoying them.

• Stop ruminating for hours on things that have already happened

Write these down and commit to stop doing them, or limit them (e.g. 30 minutes of Facebook/Instagram a day). This will free up valuable time to do other things that bring you happiness or are better for your wellbeing.

Start by picking one thing to stop. Add it to your STOP DOING list and commit to stop doing it. E.g. write down I will stop watching the news every day from [Date]. It takes time to break habits or start new ones, but keep going and notice how good it makes you feel!

I hope you have found some of these ideas useful. Please email me and let me know what has worked for you. Keep trying to bring more positive and rewarding experiences into your life, and if you have 2 minutes now, why not try the simple meditation below.

Simple Meditation

Why not try this simple meditation for 2 minutes a day, to clear the clutter from your mind and ground yourself in the present moment.

1. Find a place where you won’t be disturbed and sit comfortably – on the floor, grass or a chair – anywhere as long as you feel comfortable.

2. Sit up straight and take a deep slow breath in.

3. Roll your shoulders up to your head, then back and down a couple of times to help them relax.

4. Now close your eyes or look down to the floor.

5. Focus on your breathing, take some more deep slow breaths in. Listen to your breathing and feel the sensation of the cold air as it enters your nostrils, and the warm air as you exhale your breath.

6. Make your breath in and out longer, observing your breath passing down into your belly and back out again.

7. When your mind wanders (as all minds do), simply acknowledge it and gently bring your attention back to your breathing.

8. After a few minutes of this mindful breathing – open your eyes and focus back on the room – feeling calm and relaxed and ready to continue with your day.