Wellbeing Week: The Ultimate Checklist

It’s World Wellbeing Week, a time to celebrate the many aspects of wellbeing, from meaningful work to physical, mental and emotional health, social resilience to community relations and care for the environment.

The Five Ways to Wellbeing - a set of evidence-based public mental health messages aimed at improving the mental health and wellbeing of the whole population - developed by the New Economic Foundation are a good tool to utilise during this week to make the most out of your wellbeing.

What do the Five Ways to Wellbeing look like?

As the name suggests, there are five different things to think about: Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Learn, and Give.

Connect: having connections with other people is a basic, fundamental, human need, and one that keeps the world turning. Building strong relationships with people around you - whether it’s family, friends, school mates, work mates, or people you meet on experiences like NCS - is super important for promoting wellbeing and good mental health. 

Be Active: It’s well known, and talked about, that moving your body is good for your mind too. Regular physical activity is associated with lower rates of depression and anxiety across all age groups, and the good thing is, it doesn’t mean you have to be hitting the gym all day every day. Just getting up and going for a walk is a great way to look after yourself. 

Take Notice: Being present and taking notice of your present surroundings can strengthen and broaden your self awareness, which is something that in turn allows you to make positive choices based on your values and motivations. 

Learn: When we learn new things, we not only take on new perspectives and ideas, but we enhance our self-esteem and find new ways of interacting with people. The practice of setting goals and learning through them, is associated with higher levels of positive wellbeing. 

Give: When we help others, we help ourselves too, it’s as simple as that. Research into actions for promoting happiness has shown that committing an act of kindness once a week over a six-week period is associated with an increase in wellbeing. 

wellbeing checklist

So, with that in mind, we’ve put together a week of wellbeing checklist, with two tasks every day, for you to connect with yourself, be active, take notice of what you’re doing, learn a little, and give back…

Monday: 
Journal your entire day 
Take some time to read as much of a book as you can

Tuesday: 
Phone, email, text, or even write a letter to a family member to check in 
Journal about what you’re grateful for

Wednesday:
Go for a thirty minute walk
Try a meditation session

Thursday:
Challenge yourself to drink five glasses of water throughout the day
Check in on a friend and see how they are

Friday:
Make a mood/manifestation board
Journal about what you’re proud of

Saturday:
See if a family member needs some help around the house and offer your time
Take time to learn a new skill 

Sunday:
Have a self care evening
Go to bed an hour earlier to get some well deserved zzz’s

Let us know how you get on over on our Instagram at @NCS, and happy Wellbeing Week!