DO ONE THING

Saturday 10th October is World Mental Health Day and Mind are inviting us all to ‘Do one thing’ for better mental health. They’ve even created a useful calendar, with ways that we can take simple steps to look after our mental health throughout the month.

Doing one thing each day, or as often as you can throughout the week, is a really simple way of making space to care for our mental health and wellbeing. 

Wellbeing will mean different things to different people. Mind have focused their calendar around the 5 Ways of Wellbeing. We use our Wellbeing Triangle; the principle that living well involves living in connection with our self, others and a sense of ‘Other’.

However you define wellbeing, over the next week we’d encourage you to create your own calendar of wellbeing. You could start off by planning for the week ahead, plan out a couple of weeks, a whole month or create something that you’ll be able to repeat month after month.

Some time over the next week take fifteen minutes to sit down with a pen and a piece of paper, a hot cuppa and your [physical or phone based] calendar. Using your understanding of wellbeing, scribble down as many ‘one thing’ ideas as you can on a blank piece of paper. You might want to use some suggestions from Mind as inspiration. Or take inspiration from some of these ideas based around our Wellbeing Triangle:

IDEAS

Before you put these ideas into a wellbeing calendar, look through your suggestions and ask yourself the following questions:

# Is this realistic? Am I likely to have the energy, time and headspace to do this on this day?

The idea is that these are simple things that you can easily fit around your schedule of life. Have your diary dates in front of you and work out what will work with your existing plans. Try to schedule your ‘one thing’ on a day when it would best fit.

# Is this a good balance of wellbeing?

 Do your activities reflect those areas of wellbeing that are important to you or, when you look at them, do you find that they tend to focus on one area? If, for example, you notice that a lot of your ideas focus around spending time with others, you might want to include some more ways to engage with wonder: go on a slow walk around the block and notice the seasonal changes, write down ten things you are grateful for.

# Am I stretching myself?

Check out the three ideas cards below, use the arrows to navigate to each one.